{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "39aqujvo FAHRENHEIT 451 by RAY BRADBURY. {{This digitised version was scanned and proof-read by Eva Looshan. The source was the 1976 Panther paperback. I have endeavoured to reproduce the book as exactly as possible. What I haven’t done is consistently indicate italics, because they weren’t picked up by my OCR program. In a few cases, where I referred back to the printed page and noticed italics, I made the correspondeing text all upper case. I hope soon to be able to refer again to the text and to create a html version, which will include the emphasis the author chose. For any other errors, I apologise most profusely. If you read this book perhaps you will be inspired to duplicate this text file and spread it as widely as you can throughout the digital world. It is a fitting fate for such a wonderful work, a book which deserves to be as famous as its thematic cousins ‘1984’ and ‘Brave New World’"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_002.txt", "text": "39aqujvo RAY BRADBURY FAHRENHEIT 451 This one, with gratitude, is for DON CONGDON. FAHRENHEIT 451: The temperature at which book-paper catches fire and burns"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "39aqujvo PART I IT WAS A PLEASURE TO BURN IT was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning. Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame. He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that. smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered. He hung up his black-beetle-coloured helmet and shined it, he hung his flameproof jacket neatly; he showered luxuriously, and then, whistling, hands in pockets, walked across the upper floor of the fire station and fell down the hole. At the last moment, when disaster seemed positive, he pulled his hands from his pockets and broke his fall by grasping the golden pole. He slid to a squeaking halt, the heels one inch from the concrete floor downstairs. He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent, air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air an to the cream-tiled escalator rising to the suburb. Whistling, he let the escalator waft him into the still night air. He walked toward the comer, thinking little at all about nothing in particular. Before he reached the corner, however, he slowed as if a wind had sprung up from nowhere, as if someone had called his name. The last few nights he had had the most uncertain feelings about the sidewalk just around the corner here, moving in the starlight toward his house. He had felt that a moment before his making the turn, someone had been there. The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, quietly, and only a moment before he came, simply turned to a shadow and let him through."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Perhaps his nose detected a faint perfume, perhaps the skin on the backs of his hands, on his face, felt the temperature rise at this one spot where a person’s standing might raise the immediate atmosphere ten degrees for an instant. There was no understanding it. Each time he made the turn, he saw only the white, unused, buckling sidewalk, with perhaps, on one night, something vanishing swiftly across a lawn before he could focus his eyes or speak. But now, tonight, he slowed almost to a stop. His inner mind, reaching out to turn the corner for him, had heard the faintest whisper. Breathing? Or was the atmosphere compressed merely by someone standing very quietly there, waiting? He turned the corner. The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. Her head was half bent to watch her shoes stir the circling leaves. Her face was slender and milk-white, and in it was a kind of gentle hunger that touched over everything with tireless curiosity. It was a look, almost, of pale surprise; the dark eyes were so fixed to the world that no move escaped them. Her dress was white and it whispered. He almost thought he heard the motion of her hands as she walked, and the infinitely small sound now, the white stir of her face turning when she discovered she was a moment away from a man who stood in the middle of the pavement waiting. The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain. The girl stopped and looked as if she might pull back in surprise, but instead stood regarding Montag with eyes so dark and shining and alive, that he felt he had said something quite wonderful. But he knew his mouth had only moved to say hello, and then when she seemed hypnotized by the salamander on his arm and the phoenix-disc on his chest, he spoke again. “Of course,” he said, “you’re a new neighbour, aren’t you?” “And you must be”-she raised her eyes from his professional symbols-“the fireman.” Her voice trailed off. “How oddly you say that.” “I’d-I’d have known it with my eyes shut,” she said, slowly. “What-the smell of kerosene? My wife always complains,” he laughed. “You never wash it off completely.” “No, you don’t,” she said, in awe. He felt she was walking in a circle about him, turning him end for end, shaking him quietly, and emptying his pockets, without once moving herself. “Kerosene,” he said, because the silence had lengthened, “is nothing but perfume to me.” “Does it seem like that, really?” “Of course. Why not?” She gave herself time to think of it. “I don’t know.” She turned to face the sidewalk going toward their homes. “Do you mind if I walk back with you? I’m Clarisse McClellan.” “Clarisse."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Guy Montag. Come along. What are you doing out so late wandering around? How old are you?” They walked in the warm-cool blowing night on the silvered pavement and there was the faintest breath of fresh apricots and strawberries in the air, and he looked around and realized this was quite impossible, so late in the year. There was only the girl walking with him now, her face bright as snow in the moonlight, and he knew she was working his questions around, seeking the best answers she could possibly give. “Well,” she said, “I’m seventeen and I’m crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane. Isn’t this a nice time of night to walk? I like to smell things and look at things, and sometimes stay up all night, walking, and watch the sun rise.” They walked on again in silence and finally she said, thoughtfully, “You know, I’m not afraid of you at all.” He was surprised. “Why should you be?” “So many people are. Afraid of firemen, I mean. But you’re just a man, after all…” He saw himself in her eyes, suspended in two shining drops of bright water, himself dark and tiny, in fine detail, the lines about his mouth, everything there, as if her eyes were two miraculous bits of violet amber that might capture and hold him intact. Her face, turned to him now, was fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it. It was not the hysterical light of electricity but-what? But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of the candle. One time, when he was a child, in a power-failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon …. And then Clarisse McClellan said: “Do you mind if I ask? How long have you worked at being a fireman?” “Since I was twenty, ten years ago.” “Do you ever read any of the books you bum?” He laughed. “That’s against the law!” “Oh. Of course.” “It’s fine work. Monday bum Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ‘em to ashes, then bum the ashes. That’s our official slogan.” They walked still further and the girl said, “Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?” “No. Houses. have always been fireproof, take my word for it.” “Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.” He laughed. She glanced quickly over. “Why are you laughing?” “I don’t know.” He started to laugh again and stopped “Why?” “You laugh when I haven’t been funny and you answer right off."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "You never stop to think what I’ve asked you.” He stopped walking, “You are an odd one,” he said, looking at her. “Haven’t you any respect?” “I don’t mean to be insulting. It’s just, I love to watch people too much, I guess.” “Well, doesn’t this mean anything to you?” He tapped the numerals 451 stitched on his char-coloured sleeve. “Yes,” she whispered. She increased her pace. “Have you ever watched the jet cars racing on the boulevards down that way? “You’re changing the subject!” “I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly,” she said. “If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he’d say, that’s grass! A pink blur? That’s a rose-garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn’t that funny, and sad, too?” “You think too many things,” said Montag, uneasily. “I rarely watch the ‘parlour walls’ or go to races or Fun Parks. So I’ve lots of time for crazy thoughts, I guess. Have you seen the two-hundred-foot-long billboards in the country beyond town? Did you know that once billboards were only twenty feet long? But cars started rushing by so quickly they had to stretch the advertising out so it would last.” “I didn’t know that!” Montag laughed abruptly. “Bet I know something else you don’t. There’s dew on the grass in the morning.” He suddenly couldn’t remember if he had known this or not, and it made him quite irritable. “And if you look”-she nodded at the sky-“there’s a man in the moon.” He hadn’t looked for a long time. They walked the rest of the way in silence, hers thoughtful, his a kind of clenching and uncomfortable silence in which he shot her accusing glances. When they reached her house all its lights were blazing. “What’s going on?” Montag had rarely seen that many house lights. “Oh, just my mother and father and uncle sitting around, talking. It’s like being a pedestrian, only rarer. My uncle was arrested another time-did I tell you?-for being a pedestrian. Oh, we’re most peculiar.” “But what do you talk about?” She laughed at this. “Good night!” She started up her walk. Then she seemed to remember something and came back to look at him with wonder and curiosity. “Are you happy?” she said. “Am I what?” he cried. But she was gone-running in the moonlight. Her front door shut gently. “Happy! Of all the nonsense.” He stopped laughing. He put his hand into the glove-hole of his front door and let it know his touch. The front door slid open. Of course I’m happy. What does she think? I’m not? he asked the quiet rooms."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "He stood looking up at the ventilator grille in the hall and suddenly remembered that something lay hidden behind the grille, something that seemed to peer down at him now. He moved his eyes quickly away. What a strange meeting on a strange night. He remembered nothing like it save one afternoon a year ago when he had met an old man in the park and they had talked …. Montag shook his head. He looked at a blank wall. The girl’s face was there, really quite beautiful in memory: astonishing, in fact. She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it has to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses but moving also toward a new sun. “What?” asked Montag of that other self, the subconscious idiot that ran babbling at times, quite independent of will, habit, and conscience. He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you? People were more often-he searched for a simile, found one in his work-torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people’s faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought? What incredible power of identification the girl had; she was like the eager watcher of a marionette show, anticipating each flicker of an eyelid, each gesture of his hand, each flick of a finger, the moment before it began. How long had they walked together? Three minutes? Five? Yet how large that time seemed now. How immense a figure she was on the stage before him; what a shadow she threw on the wall with her slender body! He felt that if his eye itched, she might blink. And if the muscles of his jaws stretched imperceptibly, she would yawn long before he would. Why, he thought, now that I think of it, she almost seemed to be waiting for me there, in the street, so damned late at night … . He opened the bedroom door. It was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mausoleum after the moon had set. Complete darkness, not a hint of the silver world outside, the windows tightly shut, the chamber a tomb-world where no sound from the great city could penetrate. The room was not empty. He listened. The little mosquito-delicate dancing hum in the air, the electrical murmur of a hidden wasp snug in its special pink warm nest. The music was almost loud enough so he could follow the tune."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over, and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. Darkness. He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back. Without turning on the light he imagined how this room would look. His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb, her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time. The room was cold but nonetheless he felt he could not breathe. He did not wish to open the curtains and open the french windows, for he did not want the moon to come into the room. So, with the feeling of a man who will die in the next hour for lack of air,.he felt his way toward his open, separate, and therefore cold bed. An instant before his foot hit the object on the floor he knew he would hit such an object. It was not unlike the feeling he had experienced before turning the corner and almost knocking the girl down. His foot, sending vibrations ahead, received back echoes of the small barrier across its path even as the foot swung. His foot kicked. The object gave a dull clink and slid off in darkness. He stood very straight and listened to the person on the dark bed in the completely featureless night. The breath coming out of the nostrils was so faint it stirred only the furthest fringes of life, a small leaf, a black feather, a single fibre of hair. He still did not want outside light. He pulled out his igniter, felt the salamander etched on its silver disc, gave it a flick…. Two moonstones looked up at him in the light of his small hand-held fire; two pale moonstones buried in a creek of clear water over which the life of the world ran, not touching them. “Mildred !"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "“ Her face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall; but it felt no rain; over which clouds might pass their moving shadows, but she felt no shadow. There was only the singing of the thimble-wasps in her tamped-shut ears, and her eyes all glass, and breath going in and out, softly, faintly, in and out of her nostrils, and her not caring whether it came or went, went or came. The object he had sent tumbling with his foot now glinted under the edge of his own bed. The small crystal bottle of sleeping-tablets which earlier today had been filled with thirty capsules and which now lay uncapped and empty in the light of the tiny flare. As he stood there the sky over the house screamed. There was a tremendous ripping sound as if two giant hands had torn ten thousand miles of black linen down the seam. Montag was cut in half. He felt his chest chopped down and split apart. The jet-bombs going over, going over, going over, one two, one two, one two, six of them, nine of them, twelve of them, one and one and one and another and another and another, did all the screaming for him. He opened his own mouth and let their shriek come down and out between his bared teeth. The house shook. The flare went out in his hand. The moonstones vanished. He felt his hand plunge toward the telephone. The jets were gone. He felt his lips move, brushing the mouthpiece of the phone. “Emergency hospital.” A terrible whisper. He felt that the stars had been pulverized by the sound of the black jets and that in the morning the earth would be thought as he stood shivering in the dark, and let his lips go on moving and moving. They had this machine. They had two machines, really. One of them slid down into your stomach like a black cobra down an echoing well looking for all the old water and the old time gathered there. It drank up the green matter that flowed to the top in a slow boil. Did it drink of the darkness? Did it suck out all the poisons accumulated with the years? It fed in silence with an occasional sound of inner suffocation and blind searching. It had an Eye. The impersonal operator of the machine could, by wearing a special optical helmet, gaze into the soul of the person whom he was pumping out. What did the Eye see? He did not say. He saw but did not see what the Eye saw. The entire operation was not unlike the digging of a trench in one’s yard. The woman on the bed was no more than a hard stratum of marble they had reached. Go on, anyway, shove the bore down, slush up the emptiness, if such a thing could be brought out in the throb of the suction snake. The operator stood smoking a cigarette."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "The other machine was working too. The other machine was operated by an equally impersonal fellow in non-stainable reddish-brown overalls. This machine pumped all of the blood from the body and replaced it with fresh blood and serum. “Got to clean ‘em out both ways,” said the operator, standing over the silent woman. “No use getting the stomach if you don’t clean the blood. Leave that stuff in the blood and the blood hits the brain like a mallet, bang, a couple of thousand times and the brain just gives up, just quits.” “Stop it!” said Montag. “I was just sayin’,” said the operator. “Are you done?” said Montag. They shut the machines up tight. “We’re done.” His anger did not even touch them. They stood with the cigarette smoke curling around their noses and into their eyes without making them blink or squint. “That’s fifty bucks.” “First, why don’t you tell me if she’ll be all right?” “Sure, she’ll be O.K. We got all the mean stuff right in our suitcase here, it can’t get at her now. As I said, you take out the old and put in the new and you’re O.K.” “Neither of you is an M.D. Why didn’t they send an M.D. from Emergency?” “Hell! ” the operator’s cigarette moved on his lips. “We get these cases nine or ten a night. Got so many, starting a few years ago, we had the special machines built. With the optical lens, of course, that was new; the rest is ancient. You don’t need an M.D., case like this; all you need is two handymen, clean up the problem in half an hour. Look”-he started for the door-“we gotta go. Just had another call on the old ear-thimble. Ten blocks from here. Someone else just jumped off the cap of a pillbox. Call if you need us again. Keep her quiet. We got a contra-sedative in her. She’ll wake up hungry. So long.” And the men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths, the men with the eyes of puff-adders, took up their load of machine and tube, their case of liquid melancholy and the slow dark sludge of nameless stuff, and strolled out the door. Montag sank down into a chair and looked at this woman. Her eyes were closed now, gently, and he put out his hand to feel the warmness of breath on his palm. “Mildred,” he said, at last. There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that’s too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood. Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life! Half an hour passed. The bloodstream in this woman was new and it seemed to have done a new thing to her."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Her cheeks were very pink and her lips were very fresh and full of colour and they looked soft and relaxed. Someone else’s blood there. If only someone else’s flesh and brain and memory. If only they could have taken her mind along to the dry-cleaner’s and emptied the pockets and steamed and cleansed it and reblocked it and brought it back in the morning. If only … He got up and put back the curtains and opened the windows wide to let the night air in. It was two o’clock in the morning. Was it only an hour ago, Clarisse McClellan in the street, and him coming in, and the dark room and his foot kicking the little crystal bottle? Only an hour, but the world had melted down and sprung up in a new and colourless form. Laughter blew across the moon-coloured lawn from the house of Clarisse and her father and mother and the uncle who smiled so quietly and so earnestly. Above all, their laughter was relaxed and hearty and not forced in any way, coming from the house that was so brightly lit this late at night while all the other houses were kept to themselves in darkness. Montag heard the voices talking, talking, talking, giving, talking, weaving, reweaving their hypnotic web. Montag moved out through the french windows and crossed the lawn, without even thinking of it. He stood outside the talking house in the shadows, thinking he might even tap on their door and whisper, “Let me come in. I won’t say anything. I just want to listen. What is it you’re saying?” But instead he stood there, very cold, his face a mask of ice, listening to a man’s voice (the uncle?) moving along at an easy pace: “Well, after all, this is the age of the disposable tissue. Blow your nose on a person, wad them, flush them away, reach for another, blow, wad, flush. Everyone using everyone else’s coattails. How are you supposed to root for the home team when you don’t even have a programme or know the names? For that matter, what colour jerseys are they wearing as they trot out on to the field?” Montag moved back to his own house, left the window wide, checked Mildred, tucked the covers about her carefully, and then lay down with the moonlight on his cheek-bones and on the frowning ridges in his brow, with the moonlight distilled in each eye to form a silver cataract there. One drop of rain. Clarisse. Another drop. Mildred. A third. The uncle. A fourth. The fire tonight. One, Clarisse. Two, Mildred. Three, uncle. Four, fire, One, Mildred, two, Clarisse. One, two, three, four, five, Clarisse, Mildred, uncle, fire, sleeping-tablets, men, disposable tissue, coattails, blow, wad, flush, Clarisse, Mildred, uncle, fire, tablets, tissues, blow, wad, flush. One, two, three, one, two, three! Rain. The storm. The uncle laughing. Thunder falling downstairs. The whole world pouring down. The fire gushing up in a volcano."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "All rushing on down around in a spouting roar and rivering stream toward morning. “I don’t know anything any more,” he said, and let a sleep-lozenge dissolve on his tongue. At nine in the morning, Mildred’s bed was empty. Montag got up quickly, his heart pumping, and ran down the hall and stopped at the kitchen door. Toast popped out of the silver toaster, was seized by a spidery metal hand that drenched it with melted butter. Mildred watched the toast delivered to her plate. She had both ears plugged with electronic bees that were humming the hour away. She looked up suddenly, saw him, and nodded. “You all right?” he asked. She was an expert at lip-reading from ten years of apprenticeship at Seashell ear-thimbles. She nodded again. She set the toaster clicking away at another piece of bread. Montag sat down. His wife said, “I don’t know why I should be so hungry.” “You-?” “I’m HUNGRY.” “Last night,” he began. “Didn’t sleep well. Feel terrible,” she said. “God, I’m hungry. I can’t figure it.” “Last night-” he said again. She watched his lips casually. “What about last night?” “Don’t you remember?” “What? Did we have a wild party or something? Feel like I’ve a hangover. God, I’m hungry. Who was here?” “A few people,” he said. “That’s what I thought.” She chewed her toast. “Sore stomach, but I’m hungry as all-get-out. Hope I didn’t do anything foolish at the party.” “No,” he said, quietly. The toaster spidered out a piece of buttered bread for him. He held it in his hand, feeling grateful. “You don’t look so hot yourself,” said his wife. In the late afternoon it rained and the entire world was dark grey. He stood in the hall of his house, putting on his badge with the orange salamander burning across it. He stood looking up at the air-conditioning vent in the hall for a long time. His wife in the TV parlour paused long enough from reading her script to glance up. “Hey,” she said. “The man’s THINKING!” “Yes,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you.” He paused. “You took all the pills in your bottle last night.” “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” she said, surprised. “The bottle was empty.” “I wouldn’t do a thing like that. Why would I do a thing like that?” she asked. “Maybe you took two pills and forgot and took two more, and forgot again and took two more, and were so dopy you kept right on until you had thirty or forty of them in you.” “Heck,” she said, “what would I want to go and do a silly thing like that for?” “I don’t know,” he said. She was quite obviously waiting for him to go. “I didn’t do that,” she said. “Never in a billion years.” “All right if you say so,” he said. “That’s what the lady said.” She turned back to her script. “What’s on this afternoon?” he asked tiredly."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "She didn’t look up from her script again. “Well, this is a play comes on the wall-to-wall circuit in ten minutes. They mailed me my part this morning. I sent in some box-tops. They write the script with one part missing. It’s a new idea. The home-maker, that’s me, is the missing part. When it comes time for the missing lines, they all look at me out of the three walls and I say the lines: Here, for instance, the man says, `What do you think of this whole idea, Helen?’ And he looks at me sitting here centre stage, see? And I say, I say —” She paused and ran her finger under a line in the script. ” `I think that’s fine!’ And then they go on with the play until he says, `Do you agree to that, Helen!’ and I say, `I sure do!’ Isn’t that fun, Guy?” He stood in the hall looking at her. “It’s sure fun,” she said. “What’s the play about?” “I just told you. There are these people named Bob and Ruth and Helen.” “Oh.” “It’s really fun. It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed. How long you figure before we save up and get the fourth wall torn out and a fourth wall-TV put in? It’s only two thousand dollars.” “That’s one-third of my yearly pay.” “It’s only two thousand dollars,” she replied. “And I should think you’d consider me sometimes. If we had a fourth wall, why it’d be just like this room wasn’t ours at all, but all kinds of exotic people’s rooms. We could do without a few things.” “We’re already doing without a few things to pay for the third wall. It was put in only two months ago, remember?” “Is that all it was?” She sat looking at him for a long moment. “Well, good-bye, dear.” . “Goodbye,” he said. He stopped and turned around. “Does it have a happy ending?” “I haven’t read that far.” He walked over, read the last page, nodded, folded the script, and handed it back to her. He walked out of the house into the rain. The rain was thinning away and the girl was walking in the centre of the sidewalk with her head up and the few drops falling on her face. She smiled when she saw Montag. “Hello! “ He said hello and then said, “What are you up to now?” “I’m still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it. “I don’t think I’d like that,” he said. “You might if you tried.” “I never have.” She licked her lips. “Rain even tastes good.” “What do you do, go around trying everything once?” he asked. “Sometimes twice.” She looked at something in her hand. “What’ve you got there?” he said. “I guess it’s the last of the dandelions this year. I didn’t think I’d find one on the lawn this late."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Have you ever heard of rubbing it under your chin? Look.” She touched her chin with the flower, laughing. “Why?” “If it rubs off, it means I’m in love. Has it?” He could hardly do anything else but look. “Well?” she said. “You’re yellow under there.” “Fine! Let’s try YOU now.” “It won’t work for me.” “Here.” Before he could move she had put the dandelion under his chin. He drew back and she laughed. “Hold still!” She peered under his chin and frowned. “Well?” he said. “What a shame,” she said. “You’re not in love with anyone.” “Yes, I am ! “ “It doesn’t show.” “I am very much in love!” He tried to conjure up a face to fit the words, but there was no face. “I am ! “ “Oh please don’t look that way.” “It’s that dandelion,” he said. “You’ve used it all up on yourself. That’s why it won’t work for me.” “Of course, that must be it. Oh, now I’ve upset you, I can see I have; I’m sorry, really I am.” She touched his elbow. “No, no,” he said, quickly, “I’m all right.” “I’ve got to be going, so say you forgive me. I don’t want you angry with me.” “I’m not angry. Upset, yes.” “I’ve got to go to see my psychiatrist now. They make me go. I made up things to say. I don’t know what he thinks of me. He says I’m a regular onion! I keep him busy peeling away the layers.” “I’m inclined to believe you need the psychiatrist,” said Montag. “You don’t mean that.” He took a breath and let it out and at last said, “No, I don’t mean that.” “The psychiatrist wants to know why I go out and hike around in the forests and watch the birds and collect butterflies. I’ll show you my collection some day.” “Good.” “They want to know what I do with all my time. I tell them that sometimes I just sit and think. But I won’t tell them what. I’ve got them running. And sometimes, I tell them, I like to put my head back, like this, and let the rain fall into my mouth. It tastes just like wine. Have you ever tried it?” “No I—” “You HAVE forgiven me, haven’t you?” “Yes.” He thought about it. “Yes, I have. God knows why. You’re peculiar, you’re aggravating, yet you’re easy to forgive. You say you’re seventeen?” “Well-next month.” “How odd. How strange. And my wife thirty and yet you seem so much older at times. I can’t get over it.” “You’re peculiar yourself, Mr. Montag. Sometimes I even forget you’re a fireman. Now, may I make you angry again?” “Go ahead.” “How did it start? How did you get into it? How did you pick your work and how did you happen to think to take the job you have? You’re not like the others. I’ve seen a few; I know."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time any more for anyone else. You’re one of the few who put up with me. That’s why I think it’s so strange you’re a fireman, it just doesn’t seem right for you, somehow.” He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other. “You’d better run on to your appointment,” he said. And she ran off and left him standing there in the rain. Only after a long time did he move. And then, very slowly, as he walked, he tilted his head back in the rain, for just a few moments, and opened his mouth…. The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse. The dim light of one in the morning, the moonlight from the open sky framed through the great window, touched here and there on the brass and the copper and the steel of the faintly trembling beast. Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, gently, gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber-padded paws. Montag slid down the brass pole. He went out to look at the city and the clouds had cleared away completely, and he lit a cigarette and came back to bend down and look at the Hound. It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wildness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself. “Hello,” whispered Montag, fascinated as always with the dead beast, the living beast. At night when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the Hound and let loose rats in the firehouse areaway, and sometimes chickens, and sometimes cats that would have to be drowned anyway, and there would be betting to see which the Hound would seize first. The animals were turned loose. Three seconds later the game was done, the rat, cat, or chicken caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentling paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the Hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine. The pawn was then tossed in the incinerator. A new game began. Montag stayed upstairs most nights when this went on."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "There had been a time two years ago when he had bet with the best of them, and lost a week’s salary and faced Mildred’s insane anger, which showed itself in veins and blotches. But now at night he lay in his bunk, face turned to the wall, listening to whoops of laughter below and the piano-string scurry of rat feet, the violin squeaking of mice, and the great shadowing, motioned silence of the Hound leaping out like a moth in the raw light, finding, holding its victim, inserting the needle and going back to its kennel to die as if a switch had been turned. Montag touched the muzzle. . The Hound growled. Montag jumped back. The Hound half rose in its kennel and looked at him with green-blue neon light flickering in its suddenly activated eyebulbs. It growled again, a strange rasping combination of electrical sizzle, a frying sound, a scraping of metal, a turning of cogs that seemed rusty and ancient with suspicion. “No, no, boy,” said Montag, his heart pounding. He saw the silver needle extended upon the air an inch, pull back, extend, pull back. The growl simmered in the beast and it looked at him. Montag backed up. The Hound took a step from its kennel. Montag grabbed the brass pole with one hand. The pole, reacting, slid upward, and took him through the ceiling, quietly. He stepped off in the half-lit deck of the upper level. He was trembling and his face was green-white. Below, the Hound had sunk back down upon its eight incredible insect legs and was humming to itself again, its multi-faceted eyes at peace. Montag stood, letting the fears pass, by the drop-hole. Behind him, four men at a card table under a green-lidded light in the corner glanced briefly but said nothing. Only the man with the Captain’s hat and the sign of the Phoenix on his hat, at last, curious, his playing cards in his thin hand, talked across the long room. “Montag … ?” “It doesn’t like me,” said Montag. “What, the Hound?” The Captain studied his cards. “Come off it. It doesn’t like or dislike. It just `functions.’ It’s like a lesson in ballistics. It has a trajectory we decide for it. It follows through. It targets itself, homes itself, and cuts off. It’s only copper wire, storage batteries, and electricity.” Montag swallowed. “Its calculators can be set to any combination, so many amino acids, so much sulphur, so much butterfat and alkaline. Right?” “We all know that.” “All of those chemical balances and percentages on all of us here in the house are recorded in the master file downstairs. It would be easy for someone to set up a partial combination on the Hound’s ‘memory,’ a touch of amino acids, perhaps. That would account for what the animal did just now. Reacted toward me.” “Hell,” said the Captain. “Irritated, but not completely angry."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Just enough ‘memory’ set up in it by someone so it growled when I touched it.” “Who would do a thing like that?.” asked the Captain. “You haven’t any enemies here, Guy.” “None that I know of.” “We’ll have the Hound checked by our technicians tomorrow. “This isn’t the first time it’s threatened me,” said Montag. “Last month it happened twice.” “We’ll fix it up. Don’t worry” But Montag did not move and only stood thinking of the ventilator grille in the hall at home and what lay hidden behind the grille. If someone here in the firehouse knew about the ventilator then mightn’t they “tell” the Hound … ? The Captain came over to the drop-hole and gave Montag a questioning glance. “I was just figuring,” said Montag, “what does the Hound think about down there nights? Is it coming alive on us, really? It makes me cold.” “It doesn’t think anything we don’t want it to think.” “That’s sad,” said Montag, quietly, “because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that’s all it can ever know.”’ Beatty snorted, gently. “Hell! It’s a fine bit of craftsmanship, a good rifle that can fetch its own target and guarantees the bull’s-eye every time.” “That’s why,” said Montag. “I wouldn’t want to be its next victim. “Why? You got a guilty conscience about something?” Montag glanced up swiftly. Beatty stood there looking at him steadily with his eyes, while his mouth opened and began to laugh, very softly. One two three four five six seven days. And as many times he came out of the house and Clarisse was there somewhere in the world. Once he saw her shaking a walnut tree, once he saw her sitting on the lawn knitting a blue sweater, three or four times he found a bouquet of late flowers on his porch, or a handful of chestnuts in a little sack, or some autumn leaves neatly pinned to a sheet of white paper and thumb-tacked to his door. Every day Clarisse walked him to the corner. One day it was raining, the next it was clear, the day after that the wind blew strong, and the day after that it was mild and calm, and the day after that calm day was a day like a furnace of summer and Clarisse with her face all sunburnt by late afternoon. “Why is it,” he said, one time, at the subway entrance, “I feel I’ve known you so many years?” “Because I like you,” she said, “and I don’t want anything from you. And because we know each other.” “You make me feel very old and very much like a father.” “Now you explain,” she said, “why you haven’t any daughters like me, if you love children so much?” “I don’t know.” “You’re joking!” “I mean-” He stopped and shook his head. “Well, my wife, she … she just never wanted any children at all.” The girl stopped smiling."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "“I’m sorry. I really, thought you were having fun at my expense. I’m a fool.” “No, no,” he said. “It was a good question. It’s been a long time since anyone cared enough to ask. A good question.” “Let’s talk about something else. Have you ever smelled old leaves? Don’t they smell like cinnamon? Here. Smell.” “Why, yes, it is like cinnamon in a way.” She looked at him with her clear dark eyes. “You always seem shocked.” “It’s just I haven’t had time—” “Did you look at the stretched-out billboards like I told you?” “I think so. Yes.” He had to laugh. “Your laugh sounds much nicer than it did” “Does it?” “Much more relaxed.” He felt at ease and comfortable. “Why aren’t you in school? I see you every day wandering around.” “Oh, they don’t miss me,” she said. “I’m anti-social, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking about things like this.” She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. “Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That’s not social to me at all. It’s a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can’t do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lamp-posts, playing `chicken’ and ‘knock hub-caps.’ I guess I’m everything they say I am, all right. I haven’t any friends. That’s supposed to prove I’m abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?” “You sound so very old.” “Sometimes I’m ancient. I’m afraid of children my own age. They kill each other. Did it always used to be that way? My uncle says no. Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I’m afraid of them and they don’t like me because I’m afraid."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "My uncle says his grandfather remembered when children didn’t kill each other. But that was a long time ago when they had things different. They believed in responsibility, my uncle says. Do you know, I’m responsible. I was spanked when I needed it, years ago. And I do all the shopping and house-cleaning by hand. “But most of all,” she said, “I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they’re going. Sometimes I even go to the Fun Parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don’t care as long as they’re insured. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone’s happy. Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Or I listen at soda fountains, and do you know what?” “What?” “People don’t talk about anything.” “Oh, they must!” “No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming-pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else. And most of the time in the cafes they have the jokeboxes on and the same jokes most of the time, or the musical wall lit and all the coloured patterns running up and down, but it’s only colour and all abstract. And at the museums, have you ever been? All abstract. That’s all there is now. My uncle says it was different once. A long time back sometimes pictures said things or even showed people.” “Your uncle said, your uncle said. Your uncle must be a remarkable man.” “He is. He certainly is. Well, I’ve got to be going. Goodbye, Mr. Montag.” “Goodbye.” “Goodbye….” One two three four five six seven days: the firehouse. “Montag, you shin that pole like a bird up a tree.” Third day. “Montag, I see you came in the back door this time. The Hound bother you?” “No, no.” Fourth day. “Montag, a funny thing. Heard tell this morning. Fireman in Seattle, purposely set a Mechanical Hound to his own chemical complex and let it loose. What kind of suicide would you call that?” Five six seven days. And then, Clarisse was gone. He didn’t know what there was about the afternoon, but it was not seeing her somewhere in the world. The lawn was empty, the trees empty, the street empty, and while at first he did not even know he missed her or was even looking for her, the fact was that by the time he reached the subway, there were vague stirrings of un-ease in him. Something was the matter, his routine had been disturbed. A simple routine, true, established in a short few days, and yet … ? He almost turned back to make the walk again, to give her time to appear."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "He was certain if he tried the same route, everything would work out fine. But it was late, and the arrival of his train put a stop to his plan. The flutter of cards, motion of hands, of eyelids, the drone of the time-voice in the firehouse ceiling “… one thirty-five. Thursday morning, November 4th,… one thirty-six … one thirty-seven a.m… ” The tick of the playing-cards on the greasy table-top, all the sounds came to Montag, behind his closed eyes, behind the barrier he had momentarily erected. He could feel the firehouse full of glitter and shine and silence, of brass colours, the colours of coins, of gold, of silver: The unseen men across the table were sighing on their cards, waiting. “…one forty-five…” The voice-clock mourned out the cold hour of a cold morning of a still colder year. “What’s wrong, Montag?” Montag opened his eyes. A radio hummed somewhere. “… war may be declared any hour. This country stands ready to defend its—” The firehouse trembled as a great flight of jet planes whistled a single note across the black morning sky. Montag blinked. Beatty was looking at him as if he were a museum statue. At any moment, Beatty might rise and walk about him, touching, exploring his guilt and selfconsciousness. Guilt? What guilt was that? “Your play, Montag.” Montag looked at these men whose faces were sunburnt by a thousand real and ten thousand imaginary fires, whose work flushed their cheeks and fevered their eyes. These men who looked steadily into their platinum igniter flames as they lit their eternally burning black pipes. They and their charcoal hair and soot-coloured brows and bluish-ash-smeared cheeks where they had shaven close; but their heritage showed. Montag started up, his mouth opened. Had he ever seen a fireman that didn’t have black hair, black brows, a fiery face, and a blue-steel shaved but unshaved look? These men were all mirror-images of himself! Were all firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities? The colour of cinders and ash about them, and the continual smell of burning from their pipes. Captain Beatty there, rising in thunderheads of tobacco smoke. Beatty opening a fresh tobacco packet, crumpling the cellophane into a sound of fire. Montag looked at the cards in his own hands. “I-I’ve been thinking. About the fire last week. About the man whose library we fixed. What happened to him?” “They took him screaming off to the asylum” “He. wasn’t insane.” Beatty arranged his cards quietly. “Any man’s insane who thinks he can fool the Government and us.” “I’ve tried to imagine,” said Montag, “just how it would feel. I mean to have firemen burn our houses and our books.” “We haven’t any books.” “But if we did have some.” “You got some?” Beatty blinked slowly. “No.” Montag gazed beyond them to the wall with the typed lists of a million forbidden books."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.19", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Their names leapt in fire, burning down the years under his axe and his hose which sprayed not water but kerosene. “No.” But in his mind, a cool wind started up and blew out of the ventilator grille at home, softly, softly, chilling his face. And, again, he saw himself in a green park talking to an old man, a very old man, and the wind from the park was cold, too. Montag hesitated, “Was-was it always like this? The firehouse, our work? I mean, well, once upon a time…” “Once upon a time!” Beatty said. “What kind of talk is THAT?” Fool, thought Montag to himself, you’ll give it away. At the last fire, a book of fairy tales, he’d glanced at a single line. “I mean,” he said, “in the old days, before homes were completely fireproofed ” Suddenly it seemed a much younger voice was speaking for him. He opened his mouth and it was Clarisse McClellan saying, “Didn’t firemen prevent fires rather than stoke them up and get them going?” “That’s rich!” Stoneman and Black drew forth their rulebooks, which also contained brief histories of the Firemen of America, and laid them out where Montag, though long familiar with them, might read: “Established, 1790, to burn English-influenced books in the Colonies. First Fireman: Benjamin Franklin.” RULE 1. Answer the alarm swiftly. 2. Start the fire swiftly. 3. Burn everything. 4. Report back to firehouse immediately. 5. Stand alert for other alarms. Everyone watched Montag. He did not move. The alarm sounded. The bell in the ceiling kicked itself two hundred times. Suddenly there were four empty chairs. The cards fell in a flurry of snow. The brass pole shivered. The men were gone. Montag sat in his chair. Below, the orange dragon coughed into life. Montag slid down the pole like a man in a dream. The Mechanical Hound leapt up in its kennel, its eyes all green flame. “Montag, you forgot your helmet!” He seized it off the wall behind him, ran, leapt, and they were off, the night wind hammering about their siren scream and their mighty metal thunder ! It was a flaking three-storey house in the ancient part of the city, a century old if it was a day, but like all houses it had been given a thin fireproof plastic sheath many years ago, and this preservative shell seemed to be the only thing holding it in the sky. “Here we are !” The engine slammed to a stop. Beatty, Stoneman, and Black ran up the sidewalk, suddenly odious and fat in the plump fireproof slickers. Montag followed. They crashed the front door and grabbed at a woman, though she was not running, she was not trying to escape. She was only standing, weaving from side to side, her eyes fixed upon a nothingness in the wall as if they had struck her a terrible blow upon the head."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.20", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Her tongue was moving in her mouth, and her eyes seemed to be trying to remember something, and then they remembered and her tongue moved again: ” ‘Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.’ “ “Enough of that!” said Beatty. “Where are they?” He slapped her face with amazing objectivity and repeated the question. The old woman’s eyes came to a focus upon Beatty. “You know where they are or you wouldn’t be here,” she said. Stoneman held out the telephone alarm card with the complaint signed in telephone duplicate on the back “Have reason to suspect attic; 11 No. Elm, City. – E. B.” “That would be Mrs. Blake, my neighbour;” said the woman, reading the initials. “All right, men, let’s get ‘em!” Next thing they were up in musty blackness, swinging silver hatchets at doors that were, after all, unlocked, tumbling through like boys all rollick and shout. “Hey! ” A fountain of books sprang down upon Montag as he climbed shuddering up the sheer stair-well. How inconvenient! Always before it had been like snuffing a candle. The police went first and adhesive-taped the victim’s mouth and bandaged him off into their glittering beetle cars, so when you arrived you found an empty house. You weren’t hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn’t be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don’t scream or whimper, as this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to tease your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up. Janitorial work, essentially. Everything to its proper place. Quick with the kerosene! Who’s got a match! But now, tonight, someone had slipped. This woman was spoiling the ritual. The men were making too much noise, laughing, joking to cover her terrible accusing silence below. She made the empty rooms roar with accusation and shake down a fine dust of guilt that was sucked in their nostrils as they plunged about. It was neither cricket nor correct. Montag felt an immense irritation. She shouldn’t be here, on top of everything! Books bombarded his shoulders, his arms, his upturned face A book alighted, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering. In the dim, wavering light, a page hung.open and it was like a snowy feather, the words delicately painted thereon. In all the rush and fervour, Montag had only an instant to read a line, but it blazed in his mind for the next minute as if stamped there with fiery steel. “Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.” He dropped the book. Immediately, another fell into his arms. “Montag, up here! “ Montag’s hand closed like a mouth, crushed the book with wild devotion, with an insanity of mindlessness to his chest. The men above were hurling shovelfuls of magazines into the dusty air."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.21", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "They fell like slaughtered birds and the woman stood below, like a small girl, among the bodies. Montag had done nothing. His hand had done it all, his hand, with a brain of its own, with a conscience and a curiosity in each trembling finger, had turned thief.. Now, it plunged the book back under his arm, pressed it tight to sweating armpit, rushed out empty, with a magician’s flourish! Look here! Innocent! Look! He gazed, shaken, at that white hand. He held it way out, as if he were far-sighted. He held it close, as if he were blind. “Montag! “ He jerked about. “Don’t stand there, idiot!” The books lay like great mounds of fishes left to dry. The men danced and slipped and fell over them. Titles glittered their golden eyes, falling, gone. “Kerosene! They pumped the cold fluid from the numbered 451 tanks strapped to their shoulders. They coated each book, they pumped rooms full of it. They hurried downstairs, Montag staggered after them in the kerosene fumes. “Come on, woman!” The woman knelt among the books, touching the drenched leather and cardboard, reading the gilt titles with her fingers while her eyes accused Montag. “You can’t ever have my books,” she said. “You know the law,” said Beatty. “Where’s your common sense? None of those books agree with each other. You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel. Snap out of it! The people in those books never lived. Come on now! “ She shook her head. “The whole house is going up;” said Beatty, The men walked clumsily to the door. They glanced back at Montag, who stood near the woman. “You’re not leaving her here?” he protested. “She won’t come.” “Force her, then!” Beatty raised his hand in which was concealed the igniter. “We’re due back at the house. Besides, these fanatics always try suicide; the pattern’s familiar.” Montag placed his hand on the woman’s elbow. “You can come with me.” “No,” she said. “Thank you, anyway.” “I’m counting to ten,” said Beatty. “One. Two.” “Please,” said Montag. “Go on,” said the woman. “Three. Four.” “Here.” Montag pulled at the woman. The woman replied quietly, “I want to stay here” “Five. Six.” “You can stop counting,” she said. She opened the fingers of one hand slightly and in the palm of the hand was a single slender object. An ordinary kitchen match. The sight of it rushed the men out and down away from the house. Captain Beatty, keeping his dignity, backed slowly through the front door, his pink face burnt and shiny from a thousand fires and night excitements. God, thought Montag, how true! Always at night the alarm comes. Never by day! Is it because the fire is prettier by night? More spectacle, a better show? The pink face of Beatty now showed the faintest panic in the door. The woman’s hand twitched on the single matchstick. The fumes of kerosene bloomed up about her."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.22", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Montag felt the hidden book pound like a heart against his chest. “Go on,” said the woman, and Montag felt himself back away and away out of the door, after Beatty, down the steps, across the lawn, where the path of kerosene lay like the track of some evil snail. On the front porch where she had come to weigh them quietly with her eyes, her quietness a condemnation, the woman stood motionless. Beatty flicked his fingers to spark the kerosene. He was too late. Montag gasped. The woman on the porch reached out with contempt for them all, and struck the kitchen match against the railing. People ran out of houses all down the street. They said nothing on their way back to the firehouse. Nobody looked at anyone else. Montag sat in the front seat with Beatty and Black. They did not even smoke their pipes. They sat there looking out of the front of the great salamander as they turned a corner and went silently on. “Master Ridley,” said Montag at last. “What?” said Beatty. “She said, `Master Ridley.’ She said some crazy thing when we came in the door. `Play the man,’ she said, `Master Ridley.’ Something, something, something.” ” `We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out,”’ said Beatty. Stoneman glanced over at the Captain, as did Montag, startled. Beatty rubbed his chin. “A man named Latimer said that to a man named Nicholas Ridley, as they were being burnt alive at Oxford, for heresy, on October 16, 1555.” Montag and Stoneman went back to looking at the street as it moved under the engine wheels. “I’m full of bits and pieces,” said Beatty. “Most fire captains have to be. Sometimes I surprise myself. WATCH it, Stoneman!” Stoneman braked the truck. “Damn!” said Beatty. “You’ve gone right by the comer where we turn for the firehouse.” “Who is it?” “Who would it be?” said Montag, leaning back against the closed door in the dark. His wife said, at last, “Well, put on the light.” “I don’t want the light.” “Come to bed.” He heard her roll impatiently; the bedsprings squealed. “Are you drunk?” she said. So it was the hand that started it all. He felt one hand and then the other work his coat free and let it slump to the floor. He held his pants out into an abyss and let them fall into darkness. His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms. He could feel the poison working up his wrists and into his elbows and his shoulders, and then the jump-over from shoulder-blade to shoulder-blade like a spark leaping a gap. His hands were ravenous. And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger, as if they must look at something, anything, everything. His wife said, “What are you doing?” He balanced in space with the book in his sweating cold fingers."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.23", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "A minute later she said, “Well, just don’t stand there in the middle of the floor.” He made a small sound. “What?” she asked. He made more soft sounds. He stumbled towards the bed and shoved the book clumsily under the cold pillow. He fell into bed and his wife cried out, startled. He lay far across the room from her, on a winter island separated by an empty sea. She talked to him for what seemed a long while and she talked about this and she talked about that and it was only words, like the words he had heard once in a nursery at a friend’s house, a two-year-old child building word patterns, talking jargon, making pretty sounds in the air. But Montag said nothing and after a long while when he only made the small sounds, he felt her move in the room and come to his bed and stand over him and put her hand down to feel his cheek. He knew that when she pulled her hand away from his face it was wet. Late in the night he looked over at Mildred. She was awake. There was a tiny dance of melody in the air, her Seashell was tamped in her ear again and she was listening to far people in far places, her eyes wide and staring at the fathoms of blackness above her in the ceiling. Wasn’t there an old joke about the wife who talked so much on the telephone that her desperate husband ran out to the nearest store and telephoned her to ask what was for dinner? Well, then, why didn’t he buy himself an audio-Seashell broadcasting station and talk to his wife late at night, murmur, whisper, shout, scream, yell? But what would he whisper, what would he yell? What could he say? And suddenly she was so strange he couldn’t believe he knew her at all. He was in someone else’s house, like those other jokes people told of the gentleman, drunk, coming home late at night, unlocking the wrong door, entering a wrong room, and bedding with a stranger and getting up early and going to work and neither of them the wiser. “Millie…. ?” he whispered. “What?” “I didn’t mean to startle you. What I want to know is ….” “Well?” “When did we meet. And where?” “When did we meet for what?” she asked. “I mean-originally.” He knew she must be frowning in the dark. He clarified it. “The first time we ever met, where was it, and when?” “Why, it was at —” She stopped. “I don’t know,” she said. He was cold. “Can’t you remember?” “It’s been so long.” “Only ten years, that’s all, only ten!” “Don’t get excited, I’m trying to think.” She laughed an odd little laugh that went up and up."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.24", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "“Funny, how funny, not to remember where or when you met your husband or wife.” He lay massaging his eyes, his brow, and the back of his neck, slowly. He held both hands over his eyes and applied a steady pressure there as if to crush memory into place. It was suddenly more important than any other thing in a lifetime that he knew where he had met Mildred. “It doesn’t matter,” She was up in the bathroom now, and he heard the water running, and the swallowing sound she made. “No, I guess not,” he said. He tried to count how many times she swallowed and he thought of the visit from the two zinc-oxide-faced men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths and the electronic-eyed snake winding down into the layer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water, and he wanted to call out to her, how many have you taken TONIGHT! the capsules! how many will you take later and not know? and so on, every hour! or maybe not tonight, tomorrow night! And me not sleeping, tonight or tomorrow night or any night for a long while; now that this has started. And he thought of her lying on the bed with the two technicians standing straight over her, not bent with concern, but only standing straight, arms folded. And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn’t cry. For it would be the dying of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman, while the hungry snake made her still more empty. How do you get so empty? he wondered. Who takes it out of you? And that awful flower the other day, the dandelion! It had summed up everything, hadn’t it? “What a shame! You’re not in love with anyone !” And why not? Well, wasn’t there a wall between him and Mildred, when you came down to it? Literally not just one, wall but, so far, three! And expensive, too! And the uncles, the aunts, the cousins, the nieces, the nephews, that lived in those walls, the gibbering pack of tree-apes that said nothing, nothing, nothing and said it loud, loud, loud. He had taken to calling them relatives from the very first. “How’s Uncle Louis today?” “Who?” “And Aunt Maude?” The most significant memory he had of Mildred, really, was of a little girl in a forest without trees (how odd!) or rather a little girl lost on a plateau where there used to be trees (you could feel the memory of their shapes all about) sitting in the centre of the “living-room.” The living-room; what a good job of labelling that was now. No matter when he came in, the walls were always talking to Mildred."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.25", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "“Something must be done!I” “Yes, something must be done!” “Well, let’s not stand and talk!” “Let’s do it! “ “I’m so mad I could SPIT!” What was it all about? Mildred couldn’t say. Who was mad at whom? Mildred didn’t quite know. What were they going to do? Well, said Mildred, wait around and see. He had waited around to see. A great thunderstorm of sound gushed from the walls. Music bombarded him at such an immense volume that his bones were almost shaken from their tendons; he felt his jaw vibrate, his eyes wobble in his head. He was a victim of concussion. When it was all over he felt like a man who had been thrown from a cliff, whirled in a centrifuge and spat out over a waterfall that fell and fell into emptiness and emptiness and never-quite-touched-bottom-never-never-quite-no not quite-touched-bottom … and you fell so fast you didn’t touch the sides either … never … quite … touched . anything. The thunder faded. The music died. “There,” said Mildred, And it was indeed remarkable. Something had happened. Even though the people in the walls of the room had barely moved, and nothing had really been settled, you had the impression that someone had turned on a washing-machine or sucked you up in a gigantic vacuum. You drowned in music and pure cacophony. He came out of the room sweating and on the point of collapse. Behind him, Mildred sat in her chair and the voices went on again: “Well, everything will be all right now,” said an “aunt.” “Oh, don’t be too sure,” said a “cousin.” “Now, don’t get angry!” “Who’s angry?” “YOU are ! “ “You’re mad!” “Why should I be mad!” “Because!” “That’s all very well,” cried Montag, “but what are they mad about? Who are these people? Who’s that man and who’s that woman? Are they husband and wife, are they divorced, engaged, what? Good God, nothing’s connected up.” “They—” said Mildred. “Well, they-they had this fight, you see. They certainly fight a lot. You should listen. I think they’re married. Yes, they’re married. Why?” And if it was not the three walls soon to be four walls and the dream complete, then it was the open car and Mildred driving a hundred miles an hour across town, he shouting at her and she shouting back and both trying to hear what was said, but hearing only the scream of the car. “At least keep it down to the minimum !” he yelled: “What?” she cried. “Keep it down to fifty-five, the minimum! ” he shouted. “The what?” she shrieked. “Speed!” he shouted. And she pushed it up to one hundred and five miles an hour and tore the breath from his mouth. When they stepped out of the car, she had the Seashells stuffed in her ears. Silence. Onlv the wind blowing softlv. “Mildred.” He stirred in bed. He reached over and pulled one of the tiny musical insects out of her ear."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.26", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "“Mildred. Mildred?” “Yes.” Her voice was faint. He felt he was one of the creatures electronically inserted between the slots of the phono-colour walls, speaking, but the speech not piercing the crystal barrier. He could only pantomime, hoping she would turn his way and see him. They could not touch through the glass. “Mildred, do you know that girl I was telling you about?” “What girl?” She was almost asleep. “The girl next door.” “What girl next door?” “You know, the high-school girl. Clarisse, her name is.” “Oh, yes,” said his wife. “I haven’t seen her for a few days-four days to be exact. Have you seen her?” “No.” “I’ve meant to talk to you about her. Strange.” “Oh, I know the one you mean.” “I thought you would.” “Her,” said Mildred in the dark room. “What about her?” asked Montag. “I meant to tell you. Forgot. Forgot.” “Tell me now. What is it?” “I think she’s gone.” “Gone?” “Whole family moved out somewhere. But she’s gone for good. I think she’s dead.” “We couldn’t be talking about the same girl.” “No. The same girl. McClellan. McClellan, Run over by a car. Four days ago. I’m not sure. But I think she’s dead. The family moved out anyway. I don’t know. But I think she’s dead.” “You’re not sure of it! “ “No, not sure. Pretty sure.” “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” “Forgot.” “Four days ago!” “I forgot all about it.” “Four days ago,” he said, quietly, lying there. They lay there in the dark room not moving, either of them. “Good night,” she said. He heard a faint rustle. Her hands moved. The electric thimble moved like a praying mantis on the pillow, touched by her hand. Now it was in her ear again, humming. He listened and his wife was singing under her breath. Outside the house, a shadow moved, an autumn wind rose up and faded away But there was something else in the silence that he heard. It was like a breath exhaled upon the window. It was like a faint drift of greenish luminescent smoke, the motion of a single huge October leaf blowing across the lawn and away. The Hound, he thought. It’s out there tonight. It’s out there now. If I opened the window … He did not open the window. He had chills and fever in the morning. “You can’t be sick,” said Mildred. He closed his eyes over the hotness. “Yes.” “But you were all right last night.” “No, I wasn’t all right ” He heard the “relatives” shouting in the parlour. Mildred stood over his bed, curiously. He felt her there, he saw her without opening his eyes, her hair burnt by chemicals to a brittle straw, her eyes with a kind of cataract unseen but suspect far behind the pupils, the reddened pouting lips, the body as thin as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon. He could remember her no other way."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.27", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "“Will you bring me aspirin and water?” “You’ve got to get up,” she said. “It’s noon. You’ve slept five hours later than usual.” “Will you turn the parlour off?” he asked. “That’s my family.” “Will you turn it off for a sick man?” “I’ll turn it down.” She went out of the room and did nothing to the parlour and came back. “Is that better?” “Thanks.” “That’s my favourite programme,” she said. “What about the aspirin?” “You’ve never been sick before.” She went away again. “Well, I’m sick now. I’m not going to work tonight. Call Beatty for me.” “You acted funny last night.” She returned, humming. “Where’s the aspirin?” He glanced at the water-glass she handed him. “Oh.” She walked to the bathroom again. “Did something happen?” “A fire, is all.” “I had a nice evening,” she said, in the bathroom. “What doing?” “The parlour.” “What was on?” “Programmes.” “What programmes?” “Some of the best ever.” “Who?”. “Oh, you know, the bunch.” “Yes, the bunch, the bunch, the bunch.” He pressed at the pain in his eyes and suddenly the odour of kerosene made him vomit. Mildred came in, humming. She was surprised. “Why’d you do that?” He looked with dismay at the floor. “We burned an old woman with her books.” “It’s a good thing the rug’s washable.” She fetched a mop and worked on it. “I went to Helen’s last night.” “Couldn’t you get the shows in your own parlour?” “Sure, but it’s nice visiting.” She went out into the parlour. He heard her singing. “Mildred?” he called. She returned, singing, snapping her fingers softly. “Aren’t you going to ask me about last night?” he said. “What about it?” “We burned a thousand books. We burned a woman.” “Well?” The parlour was exploding with sound. “We burned copies of Dante and Swift and Marcus Aurelius.” “Wasn’t he a European?” “Something like that.” “Wasn’t he a radical?” “I never read him.” “He was a radical.” Mildred fiddled with the telephone. “You don’t expect me to call Captain Beatty, do you?” “You must! “ “Don’t shout!” “I wasn’t shouting.” He was up in bed, suddenly, enraged and flushed, shaking. The parlour roared in the hot air. “I can’t call him. I can’t tell him I’m sick.” “Why?” Because you’re afraid, he thought. A child feigning illness, afraid to call because after a moment’s discussion, the conversation would run so: “Yes, Captain, I feel better already. I’ll be in at ten o’clock tonight.” “You’re not sick,” said Mildred. Montag fell back in bed. He reached under his pillow. The hidden book was still there. “Mildred, how would it be if, well, maybe, I quit my job awhile?” “You want to give up everything? After all these years of working, because, one night, some woman and her books—” “You should have seen her, Millie! “ “She’s nothing to me; she shouldn’t have had books. It was her responsibility, she should have thought of that. I hate her."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.28", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "She’s got you going and next thing you know we’ll be out, no house, no job, nothing.” “You weren’t there, you didn’t see,” he said. “There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” “She was simple-minded.” “She was as rational as you and I, more so perhaps, and we burned her.” “That’s water under the bridge.” “No, not water; fire. You ever seen a burned house? It smoulders for days. Well, this fire’ll last me the rest of my life. God! I’ve been trying to put it out, in my mind, all night. I’m crazy with trying.” “You should have thought of that before becoming a fireman.” “Thought! ” he said. “Was I given a choice? My grandfather and father were firemen. In my sleep, I ran after them.” The parlour was playing a dance tune. “This is the day you go on the early shift,” said Mildred. “You should have gone two hours ago. I just noticed.” “It’s not just the woman that died,” said Montag. “Last night I thought about all the kerosene I’ve used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I’d never even thought that thought before.” He got out of bed. “It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I came along in two minutes and boom! it’s all over.” “Let me alone,” said Mildred. “I didn’t do anything.” “Let you alone! That’s all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” And then he shut up, for he remembered last week and the two white stones staring up at the ceiling and the pump-snake with the probing eye and the two soap-faced men with the cigarettes moving in their mouths when they talked. But that was another Mildred, that was a Mildred so deep inside this one, and so bothered, really bothered, that the two women had never met. He turned away. Mildred said, “Well, now you’ve done it. Out front of the house. Look who’s here.”. “I don’t care.” “There’s a Phoenix car just driven up and a man in a black shirt with an orange snake stitched on his arm coming up the front walk.” “Captain Beauty?” he said, “Captain Beatty.” Montag did not move, but stood looking into the cold whiteness of the wall immediately before him. “Go let him in, will you?"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.29", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Tell him I’m sick.” “Tell him yourself!” She ran a few steps this way, a few steps that, and stopped, eyes wide, when the front door speaker called her name, softly, softly, Mrs. Montag, Mrs. Montag, someone here, someone here, Mrs. Montag, Mrs. Montag, someone’s here. Fading. Montag made sure the book was well hidden behind the pillow, climbed slowly back into bed, arranged the covers over his knees and across his chest, half-sitting, and after a while Mildred moved and went out of the room and Captain Beatty strolled in, his hands in his pockets. “Shut the ‘relatives’ up,” said Beatty, looking around at everything except Montag and his wife. This time, Mildred ran. The yammering voices stopped yelling in the parlour. Captain Beatty sat down in the most comfortable chair with a peaceful look on his ruddy face. He took time to prepare and light his brass pipe and puff out a great smoke cloud. “Just thought I’d come by and see how the sick man is.” “How’d you guess?” Beatty smiled his smile which showed the candy pinkness of his gums and the tiny candy whiteness of his teeth. “I’ve seen it all. You were going to call for a night off.” Montag sat in bed. “Well,” said Beatty, “take the night off!” He examined his eternal matchbox, the lid of which said GUARANTEED: ONE MILLION LIGHTS IN THIS IGNITER, and began to strike the chemical match abstractedly, blow out, strike, blow out, strike, speak a few words, blow out. He looked at the flame. He blew, he looked at the smoke. “When will you be well?” “Tomorrow. The next day maybe. First of the week.” Beatty puffed his pipe. “Every fireman, sooner or later, hits this. They only need understanding, to know how the wheels run. Need to know the history of our profession. They don’t feed it to rookies like they used to. Damn shame.” Puff. “Only fire chiefs remember it now.” Puff. “I’ll let you in on it.” Mildred fidgeted. Beatty took a full minute to settle himself in and think back for what he wanted to say. “When did it all start, you ask, this job of ours, how did it come about, where, when? Well, I’d say it really got started around about a thing called the Civil War. Even though our rulebook claims it was founded earlier. The fact is we didn’t get along well until photography came into its own. Then—motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass.” Montag sat in bed, not moving. “And because they had mass, they became simpler,” said Beatty. “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.30", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?” “I think so.” Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. “Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.” “Snap ending.” Mildred nodded. “Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten-or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumour of a title to you, Mrs. Montag) whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: ‘now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbours.’ Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.” Mildred arose and began to move around the room, picking things up and putting them down. Beatty ignored her and continued “Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click? Pic? Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!” Mildred smoothed the bedclothes. Montag felt his heart jump and jump again as she patted his pillow. Right now she was pulling at his shoulder to try to get him to move so she could take the pillow out and fix it nicely and put it back. And perhaps cry out and stare or simply reach down her hand and say, “What’s this?” and hold up the hidden book with touching innocence. “School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?” “Let me fix your pillow,” said Mildred. “No! ” whispered Montag, “The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at. dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.” Mildred said, “Here.” “Get away,” said Montag. “Life becomes one big pratfall, Montag; everything bang; boff, and wow!” “Wow,” said Mildred, yanking at the pillow. “For God’s sake, let me be!” cried Montag passionately. Beatty opened his eyes wide. Mildred’s hand had frozen behind the pillow."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.31", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Her fingers were tracing the book’s outline and as the shape became familiar her face looked surprised and then stunned. Her mouth opened to ask a question … “Empty the theatres save for clowns and furnish the rooms with glass walls and pretty colours running up and down the walls like confetti or blood or sherry or sauterne. You like baseball, don’t you, Montag?” “Baseball’s a fine game.” Now Beatty was almost invisible, a voice somewhere behind a screen of smoke “What’s this?” asked Mildred, almost with delight. Montag heaved back against her arms. “What’s this here?” “Sit down!” Montag shouted. She jumped away, her hands empty. “We’re talking ! “ Beatty went on as if nothing had happened. “You like bowling, don’t you, Montag?” “Bowling, yes.” “And golf?” “Golf is a fine game.” “Basketball?” “A fine game.”. “Billiards, pool? Football?” “Fine games, all of them.” “More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don’t have to think, eh? Organize and organize and superorganize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee. Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before.” Mildred went out of the room and slammed the door. The parlour “aunts” began to laugh at the parlour “uncles.”, “Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog?lovers, the cat?lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second?generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic?books survive. And the three?dimensional sex?magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade?journals.” “Yes, but what about the firemen, then?” asked Montag. “Ah.” Beatty leaned forward in the faint mist of smoke from his pipe. “What more easily explained and natural?"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.32", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well?read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That’s you, Montag, and that’s me.” The door to the parlour opened and Mildred stood there looking in at them, looking at Beatty and then at Montag. Behind her the walls of the room were flooded with green and yellow and orange fireworks sizzling and bursting to some music composed almost completely of trap?drums, tom?toms, and cymbals. Her mouth moved and she was saying something but the sound covered it. Beatty knocked his pipe into the palm of his pink hand, studied the ashes as if they were a symbol to be diagnosed and searched for meaning. “You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.” “Yes.” Montag could lip?read what Mildred was saying in the doorway. He tried not to look at her mouth, because then Beatty might turn and read what was there, too. “Coloured people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Bum the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.33", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too. Five minutes after a person is dead he’s on his way to the Big Flue, the Incinerators serviced by helicopters all over the country. Ten minutes after death a man’s a speck of black dust. Let’s not quibble over individuals with memoriams. Forget them. Burn them all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.” The fireworks died in the parlour behind Mildred. She had stopped talking at the same time; a miraculous coincidence. Montag held his breath. “There was a girl next door,” he said, slowly. “She’s gone now, I think, dead. I can’t even remember her face. But she was different. How?how did she happen?” Beatty smiled. “Here or there, that’s bound to occur. Clarisse McClellan? We’ve a record on her family. We’ve watched them carefully. Heredity and environment are funny things. You can’t rid yourselves of all the odd ducks in just a few years. The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That’s why we’ve lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we’re almost snatching them from the cradle. We had some false alarms on the McClellans, when they lived in Chicago. Never found a book. Uncle had a mixed record; anti?social. The girl? She was a time bomb. The family had been feeding her subconscious, I’m sure, from what I saw of her school record. She didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl’s better off dead.” “Yes, dead.” “Luckily, queer ones like her don’t happen, often. We know how to nip most of them in the bud, early. You can’t build a house without nails and wood. If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the Government is inefficient, top?heavy, and tax?mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non?combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.34", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide?rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won’t be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I’ve tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your dare-devils, jet cars, motor?cycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremin, loudly. I’ll think I’m responding to the play, when it’s only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don’t care. I just like solid entertainment.” Beatty got up. “I must be going. Lecture’s over. I hope I’ve clarified things. The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we’re the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dyke. Hold steady. Don’t let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don’t think you realize how important you are, to our happy world as it stands now.” Beatty shook Montag’s limp hand. Montag still sat, as if the house were collapsing about him and he could not move, in the bed. Mildred had vanished from the door. “One last thing,” said Beatty. “At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh? Well, Montag, take my word for it, I’ve had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They’re about non?existent people, figments of imagination, if they’re fiction. And if they’re non?fiction, it’s worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another’s gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost.” “Well, then, what if a fireman accidentally, really not, intending anything, takes a book home with him?” Montag twitched. The open door looked at him with its great vacant eye. “A natural error. Curiosity alone,” said Beatty. “We don’t get over?anxious or mad. We let the fireman keep the book twenty?four hours. If he hasn’t burned it by then, we simply come and burn it for him.” “Of course.” Montag’s mouth was dry. “Well, Montag. Will you take another, later shift, today? Will we see you tonight perhaps?” “I don’t know,” said Montag. “What?” Beatty looked faintly surprised. Montag shut his eyes. “I’ll be in later. Maybe.” “We’d certainly miss you if you didn’t show,” said Beatty, putting his pipe in his pocket thoughtfully. I’ll never come in again, thought Montag."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.35", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "“Get well and keep well,” said Beatty. He turned and went out through the open door. Montag watched through the window as Beatty drove away in his gleaming yellow?flame?coloured beetle with the black, char?coloured tyres. Across the street and down the way the other houses stood with their flat fronts. What was it Clarisse had said one afternoon? “No front porches. My uncle says there used to be front porches. And people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn’t want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over. My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn’t look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn’t want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches. And the gardens, too. Not many gardens any more to sit around in. And look at the furniture. No rocking?chairs any more. They’re too comfortable. Get people up and running around. My uncle says … and … my uncle … and … my uncle …” Her voice faded. Montag turned and looked at his wife, who sat in the middle of the parlour talking to an announcer, who in turn was talking to her. “Mrs. Montag,” he was saying. This, that and the other. “Mrs. Montag?” Something else and still another. The converter attachment, which had cost them one hundred dollars, automatically supplied her name whenever the announcer addressed his anonymous audience, leaving a blank where the proper syllables could be filled in. A special spot?wavex?scrambler also caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the vowels and consonants beautifully. He was a friend, no doubt of it, a good friend. “Mrs. Montag?now look right here.” Her head turned. Though she quite obviously was not listening. Montag said, “It’s only a step from not going to work today to not working tomorrow, to not working at the firehouse ever again.” , “You are going to work tonight, though, aren’t you?” said Mildred. “I haven’t decided. Right now I’ve got an awful feeling I want to smash things and kill things :’ “Go take the beetle.” “No thanks.” “The keys to the beetle are on the night table. I always like to drive fast when I feel that way. You get it up around ninetyfive and you feel wonderful. Sometimes I drive all night and come back and you don’t know it. It’s fun out in the country. You hit rabbits, sometimes you hit dogs. Go take the beetle.” “No, I don’t want to, this time. I want to hold on to this funny thing. God, it’s gotten big on me. I don’t know what it is."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.36", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "I’m so damned unhappy, I’m so mad, and I don’t know why I feel like I’m putting on weight. I feel fat. I feel like I’ve been saving up a lot of things, and don’t know what. I might even start reading books.” “They’d put you in jail, wouldn’t they?” She looked at him as if he were behind the glass wall. He began to put on his clothes, moving restlessly about the bedroom. “Yes, and it might be a good idea. Before I hurt someone. Did you hear Beatty? Did you listen to him? He knows all the answers. He’s right. Happiness is important. Fun is everything. And yet I kept sitting there saying to myself, I’m not happy, I’m not happy.” “I am.” Mildred’s mouth beamed. “And proud of it.” “I’m going to do something,” said Montag. “I don’t even know what yet, but I’m going to do something big.” “I’m tired of listening to this junk,” said Mildred, turning from him to the announcer again Montag touched the volume control in the wall and the announcer was speechless. “Millie?” He paused. “This is your house as well as mine. I feel it’s only fair that I tell you something now. I should have told you before, but I wasn’t even admitting it to myself. I have something I want you to see, something I’ve put away and hid during the past year, now and again, once in a while, I didn’t know why, but I did it and I never told you.” He took hold of a straight?backed chair and moved it slowly and steadily into the hall near the front door and climbed up on it and stood for a moment like a statue on a pedestal, his wife standing under him, waiting. Then he reached up and pulled back the grille of the air?conditioning system and reached far back inside to the right and moved still another sliding sheet of metal and took out a book. Without looking at it he dropped it to the floor. He put his hand back up and took out two books and moved his hand down and dropped the two books to the floor. He kept moving his hand and dropping books, small ones, fairly large ones, yellow, red, green ones. When he was done he looked down upon some twenty books lying at his wife’s feet. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t really think. But now it looks as if we’re in this together.” Mildred backed away as if she were suddenly confronted by a pack of mice that had come up out of the floor. He could hear her breathing rapidly and her face was paled out and her eyes were fastened wide. She said his name over, twice, three times. Then moaning, she ran forward, seized a book and ran toward the kitchen incinerator. He caught her, shrieking. He held her and she tried to fight away from him, scratching. “No, Millie, no! Wait!"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.37", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Stop it, will you? You don’t know … stop it!” He slapped her face, he grabbed her again and shook her. She said his name and began to cry. “Millie! ”’ he said. “Listen. Give me a second, will you? We can’t do anything. We can’t burn these. I want to look at them, at least look at them once. Then if what the Captain says is true, we’ll burn them together, believe me, we’ll burn them together. You must help me.” He looked down into her face and took hold of her chin and held her firmly. He was looking not only at her, but for himself and what he must do, in her face. “Whether we like this or not, we’re in it. I’ve never asked for much from you in all these years, but I ask it now, I plead for it. We’ve got to start somewhere here, figuring out why we’re in such a mess, you and the medicine at night, and the car, and me and my work. We’re heading right for the cliff, Millie. God, I don’t want to go over. This isn’t going to be easy. We haven’t anything to go on, but maybe we can piece it out and figure it and help each other. I need you so much right now, I can’t tell you. If you love me at all you’ll put up with this, twenty?four, forty?eight hours, that’s all I ask, then it’ll be over. I promise, I swear! And if there is something here, just one little thing out of a whole mess of things, maybe we can pass it on to someone else.” She wasn’t fighting any more, so he let her go. She sagged away from him and slid down the wall, and sat on the floor looking at the books. Her foot touched one and she saw this and pulled her foot away. “That woman, the other night, Millie, you weren’t there. You didn’t see her face. And Clarisse. You never talked to her. I talked to her. And men like Beatty are afraid of her. I can’t understand it. Why should they be so afraid of someone like her? But I kept putting her alongside the firemen in the house last night, and I suddenly realized I didn’t like them at all, and I didn’t like myself at all any more. And I thought maybe it would be best if the firemen themselves were burnt.” “Guy! “ The front door voice called softly: “Mrs. Montag, Mrs. Montag, someone here, someone here, Mrs. Montag, Mrs. Montag, someone here.” Softly. They turned to stare at the door and the books toppled everywhere, everywhere in heaps. “Beatty!” said Mildred. “It can’t be him.” “He’s come back!” she whispered. The front door voice called again softly. “Someone here …” “We won’t answer.” Montag lay back against the wall and then slowly sank to a crouching position and began to nudge the books, bewilderedly, with his thumb, his forefinger."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.38", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "He was shivering and he wanted above all to shove the books up through the ventilator again, but he knew he could not face Beatty again. He crouched and then he sat and the voice of the front door spoke again, more insistently. Montag picked a single small volume from the floor. “Where do we begin?” He opened the book half?way and peered at it. “We begin by beginning, I guess.” “He’ll come in,” said Mildred, “and burn us and the books!” The front door voice faded at last. There was a silence. Montag felt the presence of someone beyond the door, waiting, listening. Then the footsteps going away down the walk and over the lawn. “Let’s see what this is,” said Montag. He spoke the words haltingly and with a terrible selfconsciousness. He read a dozen pages here and there and came at last to this: ” `It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break eggs at the smaller end.”’ Mildred sat across the hall from him. “What does it mean? It doesn’t mean anything! The Captain was right! “ “Here now,” said Montag. “We’ll start over again, at the beginning.”"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "39aqujvo PART II THE SIEVE AND THE SAND THEY read the long afternoon through, while the cold November rain fell from the sky upon the quiet house. They sat in the hall because the parlour was so empty and grey-looking without its walls lit with orange and yellow confetti and skyrockets and women in gold-mesh dresses and men in black velvet pulling one-hundred-pound rabbits from silver hats. The parlour was dead and Mildred kept peering in at it with a blank expression as Montag paced the floor and came back and squatted down and read a page as many as ten times, aloud. ” `We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over, so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.’” Montag sat listening to the rain. “Is that what it was in the girl next door? I’ve tried so hard to figure.” “She’s dead. Let’s talk about someone alive, for goodness’ sake.” Montag did not look back at his wife as he went trembling along the hall to the kitchen, where he stood a long .time watching the rain hit the windows before he came back down the hall in the grey light, waiting for the tremble to subside. He opened another book. ” `That favourite subject, Myself.”’ He squinted at the wall. ” `The favourite subject, Myself.”’ “I understand that one,” said Mildred. “But Clarisse’s favourite subject wasn’t herself. It was everyone else, and me. She was the first person in a good many years I’ve really liked. She was the first person I can remember who looked straight at me as if I counted.” He lifted the two books. “These men have been dead a long time, but I know their words point, one way or another, to Clansse.” Outside the front door, in the rain, a faint scratching. Montag froze. He saw Mildred thrust herself back to the wall and gasp. “I shut it off.” “Someone—the door—why doesn’t the door-voice tell us—” Under the door-sill, a slow, probing sniff, an exhalation of electric steam. Mildred laughed. “It’s only a dog, that’s what! You want me to shoo him away?” “Stay where you are!” Silence. The cold rain falling. And the smell of blue electricity blowing under the locked door. “Let’s get back to work,” said Montag quietly. Mildred kicked at a book. “Books aren’t people. You read and I look around, but there isn’t anybody!” He stared at the parlour that was dead and grey as the waters of an ocean that might teem with life if they switched on the electronic sun. “Now,” said Mildred, “my `family’ is people. They tell me things; I laugh, they laugh! And the colours!” “Yes, I know.” “And besides, if Captain Beatty knew about those books—” She thought about it. Her face grew amazed and then horrified."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "“He might come and bum the house and the `family.’ That’s awful! Think of our investment. Why should I read? What for?” “What for! Why!” said Montag. “I saw the damnedest snake in the world the other night. It was dead but it was alive. It could see but it couldn’t see. You want to see that snake. It’s at Emergency Hospital where they filed a report on all the junk the snake got out of you! Would you like to go and check their file? Maybe you’d look under Guy Montag or maybe under Fear or War. Would you like to go to that house that burnt last night? And rake ashes for the bones of the woman who set fire to her own house! What about Clarisse McClellan, where do we look for her? The morgue! Listen!” The bombers crossed the sky and crossed the sky over the house, gasping, murmuring, whistling like an immense, invisible fan, circling in emptiness. “Jesus God,” said Montag. “Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn’t someone want to talk about it? We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 1960. Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world? Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are? I’ve heard rumours; the world is starving, but we’re well-fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much? I’ve heard the rumours about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don’t, that’s sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes! I don’t hear those idiot bastards in your parlour talking about it. God, Millie, don’t you see? An hour a day, two hours, with these books, and maybe…” The telephone rang. Mildred snatched the phone. “Ann!” She laughed. “Yes, the White Clown’s on tonight!” Montag walked to the kitchen and threw the book down. “Montag,” he said, “you’re really stupid. Where do we go from here? Do we turn the books in, forget it?” He opened the book to read over Mildred’s laughter. Poor Millie, he thought. Poor Montag, it’s mud to you, too. But where do you get help, where do you find a teacher this late? Hold on. He shut his eyes. Yes, of course. Again he found himself thinking of the green park a year ago. The thought had been with him many times recently, but now he remembered how it was that day in the city park when he had seen that old man in the black suit hide something, quickly in his coat . … The old man leapt up as if to run. And Montag said, “Wait !"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "“ “I haven’t done anything! ” cried the old man trembling. “No one said you did.” They had sat in the green soft light without saying a word for a moment, and then Montag talked about the weather, and then the old man responded with a pale voice. It was a strange quiet meeting. The old man admitted to being a retired English professor who had been thrown out upon the world forty years ago when the last liberal arts college shut for lack of students and patronage. His name was Faber, and when he finally lost his fear of Montag, he talked in a cadenced voice, looking at the sky and the trees and the green park, and when an hour had passed he said something to Montag and Montag sensed it was a rhymeless poem. Then the old man grew even more courageous and said something else and that was a poem, too. Faber held his hand over his left coat-pocket and spoke these words gently, and Montag knew if he reached out, he might pull a book of poetry from the man’s coat. But he did not reach out. His. hands stayed on his knees, numbed and useless. “I don’t talk things, sir,” said Faber. “I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.” That was all there was to it, really. An hour of monologue, a poem, a comment, and then without even acknowledging the fact that Montag was a fireman, Faber with a certain trembling, wrote his address on a slip of paper. “For your file,” he said, “in case you decide to be angry with me.” “I’m not angry,” Montag said, surprised. Mildred shrieked with laughter in the hall. Montag went to his bedroom closet and flipped through his file-wallet to the heading: FUTURE INVESTIGATIONS (?). Faber’s name was there. He hadn’t turned it in and he hadn’t erased it. He dialled the call on a secondary phone. The phone on the far end of the line called Faber’s name a dozen times before the professor answered in a faint voice. Montag identified himself and was met with a lengthy silence. “Yes, Mr. Montag?” “Professor Faber, I have a rather odd question to ask. How many copies of the Bible are left in this country?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about! “ “I want to know if there are any copies left at all.” “This is some sort of a trap! I can’t talk to just anyone on the phone!” “How many copies of Shakespeare and Plato?” “None ! You know as well as I do. None!” Faber hung up. Montag put down the phone. None. A thing he knew of course from the firehouse listings. But somehow he had wanted to hear it from Faber himself. In the hall Mildred’s face was suffused with excitement. “Well, the ladies are coming over!” Montag showed her a book."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "“This is the Old and New Testament, and-” “Don’t start that again!” “It might be the last copy in this part of the world.” “You’ve got to hand it back tonight, don’t you know? Captain Beatty knows you’ve got it, doesn’t he?” “I don’t think he knows which book I stole. But how do I choose a substitute? Do I turn in Mr. Jefferson? Mr. Thoreau? Which is least valuable? If I pick a substitute and Beatty does know which book I stole, he’ll guess we’ve an entire library here!” Mildred’s mouth twitched. “See what you’re doing? You’ll ruin us! Who’s more important, me or that Bible?” She was beginning to shriek now, sitting there like a wax doll melting in its own heat. He could hear Beatty’s voice. “Sit down, Montag. Watch. Delicately, like the petals of a flower. Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh? Light the third page from the second and so on, chainsmoking, chapter by chapter, all the silly things the words mean, all the false promises, all the second-hand notions and time-worn philosophies.” There sat Beatty, perspiring gently, the floor littered with swarms of black moths that had died in a single storm Mildred stopped screaming as quickly as she started. Montag was not listening. “There’s only one thing to do,” he said. “Some time before tonight when I give the book to Beatty, I’ve got to have a duplicate made.” “You’ll be here for the White Clown tonight, and the ladies coming over?” cried Mildred. Montag stopped at the door, with his back turned. “Millie?” A silence “What?” “Millie? Does the White Clown love you?” No answer. “Millie, does—” He licked his lips. “Does your `family’ love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?” He felt her blinking slowly at the back of his neck. “Why’d you ask a silly question like that?” He felt he wanted to cry, but nothing would happen to his eyes or his mouth. “If you see that dog outside,” said Mildred, “give him a kick for me.” He hesitated, listening at the door. He opened it and stepped out. The rain had stopped and the sun was setting in the clear sky. The street and the lawn and the porch were empty. He let his breath go in a great sigh. He slammed the door. He was on the subway. I’m numb, he thought. When did the numbness really begin in my face? In my body? The night I kicked the pill-bottle in the dark, like kicking a buried mine. The numbness will go away, he thought. It’ll take time, but I’ll do it, or Faber will do it for me. Someone somewhere will give me back the old face and the old hands the way they were. Even the smile, he thought, the old burnt-in smile, that’s gone. I’m lost without it."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "The subway fled past him, cream-tile, jet-black, cream-tile, jet-black, numerals and darkness, more darkness and the total adding itself. Once as a child he had sat upon a yellow dune by the sea in the middle of the blue and hot summer day, trying to fill a sieve with sand, because some cruel cousin had said, “Fill this sieve and you’ll get a dime!” `And the faster he poured, the faster it sifted through with a hot whispering. His hands were tired, the sand was boiling, the sieve was empty. Seated there in the midst of July, without a sound, he felt the tears move down his cheeks. Now as the vacuum-underground rushed him through the dead cellars of town, jolting him, he remembered the terrible logic of that sieve, and he looked down and saw that he was carrying the Bible open. There were people in the suction train but he held the book in his hands and the silly thought came to him, if you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve. But he read and the words fell through, and he thought, in a few hours, there will be Beatty, and here will be me handing this over, so no phrase must escape me, each line must be memorized. I will myself to do it. He clenched the book in his fists. Trumpets blared. “Denham’s Dentrifice.” Shut up, thought Montag. Consider the lilies of the field. “Denham’s Dentifrice.” They toil not- “Denham’s—” Consider the lilies of the field, shut up, shut up. “Dentifrice ! “ He tore the book open and flicked the pages and felt them as if he were blind, he picked at the shape of the individual letters, not blinking. “Denham’s. Spelled : D-E.N “ They toil not, neither do they … A fierce whisper of hot sand through empty sieve. “Denham’s does it!” Consider the lilies, the lilies, the lilies… “Denham’s dental detergent.” “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” It was a plea, a cry so terrible that Montag found himself on his feet, the shocked inhabitants of the loud car staring, moving back from this man with the insane, gorged face, the gibbering, dry mouth, the flapping book in his fist. The people who had been sitting a moment before, tapping their feet to the rhythm of Denham’s Dentifrice, Denham’s Dandy Dental Detergent, Denham’s Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice, one two, one two three, one two, one two three. The people whose mouths had been faintly twitching the words Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice. The train radio vomited upon Montag, in retaliation, a great ton-load of music made of tin, copper, silver, chromium, and brass. The people wcre pounded into submission; they did not run, there was no place to run; the great air-train fell down its shaft in the earth. “Lilies of the field.” “Denham’s.” “Lilies, I said!” The people stared. “Call the guard.” “The man’s off—” “Knoll View!” The train hissed to its stop."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "“Knoll View!” A cry. “Denham’s.” A whisper. Montag’s mouth barely moved. “Lilies…” The train door whistled open. Montag stood. The door gasped, started shut. Only then .did he leap past the other passengers, screaming in his mind, plunge through the slicing door only in time. He ran on the white tiles up through the tunnels, ignoring the escalators, because he wanted to feel his feet-move, arms swing, lungs clench, unclench, feel his throat go raw with air. A voice drifted after him, “Denham’s Denham’s Denham’s,” the train hissed like a snake. The train vanished in its hole. “Who is it?” “Montag out here.” “What do you want?” “Let me in.” “I haven’t done anything l” “I’m alone, dammit ! “ “You swear it?” “I swear!” The front door opened slowly. Faber peered out, looking very old in the light and very fragile and very much afraid. The old man looked as if he had not been out of the house in years. He and the white plaster walls inside were much the same. There was white in the flesh of his mouth and his cheeks and his hair was white and his eyes had faded, with white in the vague blueness there. Then his eyes touched on the book under Montag’s arm and he did not look so old any more and not quite as fragile. Slowly his fear went. “I’m sorry. One has to be careful.” He looked at the book under Montag’s arm and could not stop. “So it’s true.” Montag stepped inside. The door shut. “Sit down.” Faber backed up, as if he feared the book might vanish if he took his eyes from it. Behind him, the door to a bedroom stood open, and in that room a litter of machinery and steel tools was strewn upon a desk-top. Montag had only a glimpse, before Faber, seeing Montag’s attention diverted, turned quickly and shut the bedroom door and stood holding the knob with a trembling hand. His gaze returned unsteadily to Montag, who was now seated with the book in his lap. “The book-where did you-?” “I stole it.” Faber, for the first time, raised his eyes and looked directly into Montag’s face. “You’re brave.” “No,” said Montag. “My wife’s dying. A friend of mine’s already dead. Someone who may have been a friend was burnt less than twenty-four hours ago. You’re the only one I knew might help me. To see. To see. .” Faber’s hands itched on his knees. “May I?” “Sorry.” Montag gave him the book. “It’s been a long time. I’m not a religious man. But it’s been a long time.” Faber turned the pages, stopping here and there to read. “It’s as good as I remember. Lord, how they’ve changed it-in our `parlours’ these days. Christ is one of the `family’ now. I often wonder it God recognizes His own son the way we’ve dressed him up, or is it dressed him down?"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "He’s a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn’t making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshipper absolutely needs.” Faber sniffed the book. “Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.” Faber turned the pages. “Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I’m one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the `guilty,’ but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And when finally they set the structure to burn the books, using the, firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for there were no others grunting or yelling with me, by then. Now, it’s too late.” Faber closed the Bible. “Well—suppose you tell me why you came here?” “Nobody listens any more. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me. I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.” Faber examined Montag’s thin, blue-jowled face. “How did you get shaken up? What knocked the torch out of your hands?” “I don’t know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I’d burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help.” “You’re a hopeless romantic,” said Faber. “It would be funny if it were not serious. It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the `parlour families’ today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it’s not books at all you’re looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn’t know this, of course you still can’t understand what I mean when I say all this. You are intuitively right, that’s what counts. Three things are missing. “Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean?"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more `literary’ you are. That’s my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. “So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth. But when he was held, rootless, in mid-air, by Hercules, he perished easily. If there isn’t something in that legend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I am completely insane. Well, there we have the first thing I said we needed. Quality, texture of information.” “And the second?” “Leisure.” “Oh, but we’ve plenty of off-hours.” “Off-hours, yes. But time to think? If you’re not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where you can’t think of anything else but the danger, then you’re playing some game or sitting in some room where you can’t argue with the fourwall televisor. Why? The televisor is ‘real.’ It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be, right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest, ‘What nonsense!’” “Only the ‘family’ is ‘people.’” “I beg your pardon?” “My wife says books aren’t ‘real.’” “Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, ‘Hold on a moment.’ You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlour? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and scepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimensions, and I being in and part of those incredible parlours. As you see, my parlour is nothing but four plaster walls. And here ” He held out two small rubber plugs."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "“For my ears when I ride the subway-jets.” “Denham’s Dentifrice; they toil not, neither do they spin,” said Montag, eyes shut. “Where do we go from here? Would books help us?” “Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said, quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the inter-action of the first two. And I hardly think a very old man and a fireman turned sour could do much this late in the game…” “I can get books.” “You’re running a risk.” “That’s the good part of dying; when you’ve nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.” “There, you’ve said an interesting thing,” laughed Faber, “without having read it!” “Are things like that in books. But it came off the top of my mind!” “All the better. You didn’t fancy it up for me or anyone, even yourself.” Montag leaned forward. “This afternoon I thought that if it turned out that books were worth while, we might get a press and print some extra copies—” ” We?” “You and I” “Oh, no ! ” Faber sat up. “But let me tell you my plan–” “If you insist on telling me, I must ask you to leave.” “But aren’t you interested?” “Not if you start talking the sort of talk that might get me burnt for my trouble. The only way I could possibly listen to you would be if somehow the fireman structure itself could be burnt. Now if you suggest that we print extra books and arrange to have them hidden in firemen’s houses all over the country, so that seeds of suspicion would be sown among these arsonists, bravo, I’d say!” “Plant the books, turn in an alarm, and see the firemen’s houses bum, is that what you mean?” Faber raised his brows and looked at Montag as if he were seeing a new man. “I was joking.” “If you thought it would be a plan worth trying, I’d have to take your word it would help.” “You can’t guarantee things like that! After all, when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, `Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’ Most of us can’t rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.” Faber got up and began to pace the room. “Well?” asked Montag. “You’re absolutely serious?” “Absolutely.” “It’s an insidious plan, if I do say so myself.” Faber glanced nervously at his bedroom door. “To see the firehouses burn across the land, destroyed as hotbeds of treason. The salamander devours his tail! Ho, God! “ “I’ve a list of firemen’s residences everywhere. With some sort of underground “ “Can’t trust people, that’s the dirty part. You and I and who else will set the fires?” “Aren’t there professors like yourself, former writers, historians, linguists …?” “Dead or ancient.” “The older the better; they’ll go unnoticed. You know dozens, admit it ! “ “Oh, there are many actors alone who haven’t acted Pirandello or Shaw or Shakespeare for years because their plays are too aware of the world. We could use their anger. And we could use the honest rage of those historians who haven’t written a line for forty years. True, we might form classes in thinking and reading.” “Yes! “ “But that would just nibble the edges. The whole culture’s shot through. The skeleton needs melting and re-shaping. Good God, it isn’t as simple as just picking up a book you laid down half a century ago. Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but it’s a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to keep things in line. So few want to be rebels any more. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily. Can you dance faster than the White Clown, shout louder than `Mr. Gimmick’ and the parlour `families’? If you can, you’ll win your way, Montag. In any event, you’re a fool. People are having fun” “Committing suicide! Murdering!” A bomber flight had been moving east all the time they talked, and only now did the two men stop and listen, feeling the great jet sound tremble inside themselves. “Patience, Montag. Let the war turn off the `families.’ Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge.” “There has to be someone ready when it blows up.” “What? Men quoting Milton? Saying, I remember Sophocles? Reminding the survivors that man has his good side, too? They will only gather up their stones to hurl at each other. Montag, go home. Go to bed. Why waste your final hours racing about your cage denying you’re a squirrel?” “Then you don’t care any more?” “I care so much I’m sick.” “And you won’t help me?” “Good night, good night.” Montag’s hands picked up the Bible. He saw what his hands had done and he looked surprised."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "“Would you like to own this?” Faber said, “I’d give my right arm.” Montag stood there and waited for the next thing to happen. His hands, by themselves, like two men working together, began to rip the pages from the book. The hands tore the flyleaf and then the first and then the second page. “Idiot, what’re you doing!” Faber sprang up, as if he had been struck. He fell, against Montag. Montag warded him off and let his hands continue. Six more pages fell to the floor. He picked them up and wadded the paper under Faber’s gaze. “Don’t, oh, don’t ! ” said the old man. “Who can stop me? I’m a fireman. I can bum you!” The old man stood looking at him. “You wouldn’t.” “I could ! “ “The book. Don’t tear it any more.” Faber sank into a chair, his face very white, his mouth trembling. “Don’t make me feel any more tired. What do you want?” “I need you to teach me.” “All right, all right.” Montag put the book down. He began to unwad the crumpled paper and flatten it out as the old man watched tiredly. Faber shook his head as if he were waking up. “Montag, have you some money?” “Some. Four, five hundred dollars. Why?” “Bring it. I know a man who printed our college paper half a century ago. That was the year I came to class at the start of the new semester and found only one student to sign up for Drama from Aeschylus to O’Neill. You see? How like a beautiful statue of ice it was, melting in the sun. I remember the newspapers dying like huge moths. No one wanted them back. No one missed them. And the Government, seeing how advantageous it was to have people reading only about passionate lips and the fist in the stomach, circled the situation with your fire-eaters. So, Montag, there’s this unemployed printer. We might start a few books, and wait on the war to break the pattern and give us the push we need. A few bombs and the `families’ in the walls of all the houses, like harlequin rats, will shut up! In silence, our stage-whisper might carry.” They both stood looking at the book on the table. “I’ve tried to remember,” said Montag. “But, hell, it’s gone when I turn my head. God, how I want something to say to the Captain. He’s read enough so he has all the answers, or seems to have. His voice is like butter. I’m afraid he’ll talk me back the way I was. Only a week ago, pumping a kerosene hose, I thought: God, what fun!” The old man nodded. “Those who don’t build must burn. It’s as old as history and juvenile delinquents.” “So that’s what I am.” “There’s some of it in all of us.” Montag moved towards the front door. “Can you help me in any way tonight, with the Fire Captain?"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "I need an umbrella to keep off the rain. I’m so damned afraid I’ll drown if he gets me again.” The old man said nothing, but glanced once more nervously, at his bedroom. Montag caught the glance. “Well?” The old man took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. He took another, eyes closed, his mouth tight, and at last exhaled. “Montag…” The old man turned at last and said, “Come along. I would actually have let you walk right out of my house. I am a cowardly old fool.” Faber opened the bedroom door and led Montag into a small chamber where stood a table upon which a number of metal tools lay among a welter of microscopic wire-hairs, tiny coils, bobbins, and crystals. “What’s this?” asked Montag. “Proof of my terrible cowardice. I’ve lived alone so many years, throwing images on walls with my imagination. Fiddling with electronics, radio-transmission, has been my hobby. My cowardice is of such a passion, complementing the revolutionary spirit that lives in its shadow, I was forced to design this.” He picked up a small green-metal object no larger than a .22 bullet. “I paid for all this-how? Playing the stock-market, of course, the last refuge in the world for the dangerous intellectual out of a job. Well, I played the market and built all this and I’ve waited. I’ve waited, trembling, half a lifetime for someone to speak to me. I dared speak to no one. That day in the park when we sat together, I knew that some day you might drop by, with fire or friendship, it was hard to guess. I’ve had this little item ready for months. But I almost let you go, I’m that afraid!” “It looks like a Seashell radio.” “And something more! It listens! If you put it in your ear, Montag, I can sit comfortably home, warming my frightened bones, and hear and analyse the firemen’s world, find its weaknesses, without danger. I’m the Queen Bee, safe in the hive. You will be the drone, the travelling ear. Eventually, I could put out ears into all parts of the city, with various men, listening and evaluating. If the drones die, I’m still safe at home, tending my fright with a maximum of comfort and a minimum of chance. See how safe I play it, how contemptible I am?” Montag placed the green bullet in his ear. The old man inserted a similar object in his own ear and moved his lips. “Montag! “ The voice was in Montag’s head. “I hear you! “ The old man laughed. “You’re coming over fine, too!” Faber whispered, but the voice in Montag’s head was clear. “Go to the firehouse when it’s time. I’ll be with you. Let’s listen to this Captain Beatty together. He could be one of us. God knows. I’ll give you things to say. We’ll give him a good show. Do you hate me for this electronic cowardice of mine?"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "Here I am sending you out into the night, while I stay behind the lines with my damned ears listening for you to get your head chopped off.” “We all do what we do,” said Montag. He put the Bible in the old man’s hands. “Here. I’ll chance turning in a substitute. Tomorrow—” “I’ll see the unemployed printer, yes; that much I can do.” “Good night, Professor.” “Not good night. I’ll be with you the rest of the night, a vinegar gnat tickling your ear when you need me. But good night and good luck, anyway.” The door opened and shut. Montag was in the dark street again, looking at the world. You could feel the war getting ready in the sky that night. The way the clouds moved aside and came back, and the way the stars looked, a million of them swimming between the clouds, like the enemy discs, and the feeling that the sky might fall upon the city and turn it to chalk dust, and the moon go up in red fire; that was how the night felt. Montag walked from the subway with the money in his pocket (he had visited the bank which was open all night and every night with robot tellers in attendance) and as he walked he was listening to the Seashell radio in one car… “We have mobilized a million men. Quick victory is ours if the war comes .. ..” Music flooded over the voice quickly and it was gone. “Ten million men mobilized,” Faber’s voice whispered in his other ear. “But say one million. It’s happier.” “Faber?” “Yes?” “I’m not thinking. I’m just doing like I’m told, like always. You said get the money and I got it. I didn’t really think of it myself. When do I start working things out on my own?” “You’ve started already, by saying what you just said. You’ll have to take me on faith.” “I took the others on faith ! “ “Yes, and look where we’re headed. You’ll have to travel blind for a while. Here’s my arm to hold on to.” “I don’t want to change sides and just be told what to do. There’s no reason to change if I do that.” “You’re wise already!” Montag felt his feet moving him on the sidewalk.toward his house. “Keep talking.” “Would you like me to read? I’ll read so you can remember. I go to bed only five hours a night. Nothing to do. So if you like; I’ll read you to sleep nights. They say you retain knowledge even when you’re sleeping, if someone whispers it in your ear.” “Yes.” “Here.” Far away across town in the night, the faintest whisper of a turned page. “The Book of Job.” The moon rose in the sky as Montag walked, his lips moving just a trifle."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "He was eating a light supper at nine in the evening when the front door cried out in the hall and Mildred ran from the parlour like a native fleeing an eruption of Vesuvius. Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles came through the front door and vanished into the volcano’s mouth with martinis in their hands: Montag stopped eating. They were like a monstrous crystal chandelier tinkling in a thousand chimes, he saw their Cheshire Cat smiles burning through the walls of the house, and now they were screaming at each other above the din. Montag found himself at the parlour door with his food still in his mouth. “Doesn’t everyone look nice!” “Nice.” “You look fine, Millie! “ “Fine.” “Everyone looks swell.” “Swell! “Montag stood watching them. “Patience,” whispered Faber. “I shouldn’t be here,” whispered Montag, almost to himself. “I should be on my way back to you with the money!” “Tomorrow’s time enough. Careful!” “Isn’t this show wonderful?” cried Mildred. “Wonderful!” On one wall a woman smiled and drank orange juice simultaneously. How does she do both at once, thought Montag, insanely. In the other walls an X-ray of the same woman revealed the contracting journey of the refreshing beverage on its way to her delightful stomach! Abruptly the room took off on a rocket flight into the clouds, it plunged into a lime-green sea where blue fish ate red and yellow fish. A minute later, Three White Cartoon Clowns chopped off each other’s limbs to the accompaniment of immense incoming tides of laughter. Two minutes more and the room whipped out of town to the jet cars wildly circling an arena, bashing and backing up and bashing each other again. Montag saw a number of bodies fly in the air. “Millie, did you see that?” “I saw it, I saw it! “ Montag reached inside the parlour wall and pulled the main switch. The images drained away, as if the water had been let out from a gigantic crystal bowl of hysterical fish. The three women turned slowly and looked with unconcealed irritation and then dislike at Montag. “When do you suppose the war will start?” he said. “I notice your husbands aren’t here tonight?” “Oh, they come and go, come and go,” said Mrs. Phelps. “In again out again Finnegan, the Army called Pete yesterday. He’ll be back next week. The Army said so. Quick war. Forty-eight hours they said, and everyone home. That’s what the Army said. Quick war. Pete was called yesterday and they said he’d be, back next week. Quick…” The three women fidgeted and looked nervously at the empty mud-coloured walls. “I’m not worried,” said Mrs. Phelps. “I’ll let Pete do all the worrying.” She giggled. “I’ll let old Pete do all the worrying. Not me. I’m not worried.” “Yes,” said Millie. “Let old Pete do the worrying.” “It’s always someone else’s husband dies, they say.” “I’ve heard that, too. I’ve never known any dead man killed in a war."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "Killed jumping off buildings, yes, like Gloria’s husband last week, but from wars? No.” “Not from wars,” said Mrs. Phelps. “Anyway, Pete and I always said, no tears, nothing like that. It’s our third marriage each and we’re independent. Be independent, we always said. He said, if I get killed off, you just go right ahead and don’t cry, but get married again, and don’t think of me.” “That reminds me,” said Mildred. “Did you see that Clara Dove five-minute romance last night in your wall? Well, it was all about this woman who—” Montag said nothing but stood looking at the women’s faces as he had once looked at the faces of saints in a strange church he had entered when he was a child. The faces of those enamelled creatures meant nothing to him, though he talked to them and stood in that church for a long time, trying to be of that religion, trying to know what that religion was, trying to get enough of the raw incense and special dust of the place into his lungs and thus into his blood to feel touched and concerned by the meaning of the colourful men and women with the porcelain eyes and the blood-ruby lips. But there was nothing, nothing; it was a stroll through another store, and his currency strange and unusable there, and his passion cold, even when he touched the wood and plaster and clay. So it was now, in his own parlour, with these women twisting in their chairs under his gaze, lighting cigarettes, blowing smoke, touching their sun-fired hair and examining their blazing fingernails as if they had caught fire from his look. Their faces grew haunted with silence. They leaned forward at the sound of Montag’s swallowing his final bite of food. They listened to his feverish breathing. The three empty walls of the room were like the pale brows of sleeping giants now, empty of dreams. Montag felt that if you touched these three staring brows you would feel a fine salt sweat on your finger-tips. The perspiration gathered with the silence and the sub-audible trembling around and about and in the women who were burning with tension. Any moment they might hiss a long sputtering hiss and explode. Montag moved his lips. “Let’s talk.” The women jerked and stared. “How’re your children, Mrs. Phelps?” he asked. “You know I haven’t any! No one in his right mind, the Good Lord knows; would have children!” said Mrs. Phelps, not quite sure why she was angry with this man. “I wouldn’t say that,” said Mrs. Bowles. “I’ve had two children by Caesarian section. No use going through all that agony for a baby. The world must reproduce, you know, the race must go on. Besides, they sometimes look just like you, and that’s nice. Two Caesarians tamed the trick, yes, sir."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "Oh, my doctor said, Caesarians aren’t necessary; you’ve got the, hips for it, everything’s normal, but I insisted.” “Caesarians or not, children are ruinous; you’re out of your mind,” said Mrs. Phelps. “I plunk the children in school nine days out of ten. I put up with them when they come home three days a month; it’s not bad at all. You heave them into the ‘parlour’ and turn the switch. It’s like washing clothes; stuff laundry in and slam the lid.” Mrs. Bowles tittered. “They’d just as soon kick as kiss me. Thank God, I can kick back! “ The women showed their tongues, laughing. Mildred sat a moment and then, seeing that Montag was still in the doorway, clapped her hands. “Let’s talk politics, to please Guy!” “Sounds fine,” said Mrs. Bowles. “I voted last election, same as everyone, and I laid it on the line for President Noble. I think he’s one of the nicest-looking men who ever became president.” “Oh, but the man they ran against him!” “He wasn’t much, was he? Kind of small and homely and he didn’t shave too close or comb his hair very well.” “What possessed the ‘Outs’ to run him? You just don’t go running a little short man like that against a tall man. Besides -he mumbled. Half the time I couldn’t hear a word he said. And the words I did hear I didn’t understand!” “Fat, too, and didn’t dress to hide it. No wonder the landslide was for Winston Noble. Even their names helped. Compare Winston Noble to Hubert Hoag for ten seconds and you can almost figure the results.” “Damn it!” cried Montag. “What do you know about Hoag and Noble?” “Why, they were right in that parlour wall, not six months ago. One was always picking his nose; it drove me wild.” “Well, Mr. Montag,” said Mrs. Phelps, “do you want us to vote for a man like that?” Mildred beamed. “You just run away from the door, Guy, and don’t make us nervous.” But Montag was gone and back in a moment with a book in his hand. “Guy!” “Damn it all, damn it all, damn it!” “What’ve you got there; isn’t that a book? I thought that all special training these days was done by film.” Mrs. Phelps blinked. “You reading up on fireman theory?” “Theory, hell,” said Montag. “It’s poetry.” “Montag.” A whisper. “Leave me alone! ” Montag felt himself turning in a great circling roar and buzz and hum. “Montag, hold on, don’t…” “Did you hear them, did you hear these monsters talking about monsters? Oh God, the way they jabber about people and their own children and themselves and the way they talk about their husbands and the way they talk about war, dammit, I stand here and I can’t believe it!” “I didn’t say a single word about any war, I’ll have you know,” said Mrs, Phelps. “As for poetry, I hate it,” said Mrs. Bowles."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "“Have you ever read any?” “Montag,” Faber’s voice scraped away at him. “You’ll ruin everything. Shut up, you fool!” “All three women were on their feet. “Sit down!” They sat. “I’m going home,” quavered Mrs. Bowles. “Montag, Montag, please, in the name of God, what are you up to?” pleaded Faber. “Why don’t you just read us one of those poems from your little book,” Mrs. Phelps nodded. “I think that’d he very interesting.” “That’s not right,” wailed Mrs. Bowles. “We can’t do that!” “Well, look at Mr. Montag, he wants to, I know he does. And if we listen nice, Mr. Montag will be happy and then maybe we can go on and do something else.” She glanced nervously at the long emptiness of the walls enclosing them. “Montag, go through with this and I’ll cut off, I’ll leave.” The beetle jabbed his ear. “What good is this, what’ll you prove?” “Scare hell out of them, that’s what, scare the living daylights out!” Mildred looked at the empty air. “Now Guy, just who are you talking to?” A silver needle pierced his brain. “Montag, listen, only one way out, play it as a joke, cover up, pretend you aren’t mad at all. Then-walk to your wall-incinerator, and throw the book in!” Mildred had already anticipated this in a quavery voice. “Ladies, once a year, every fireman’s allowed to bring one book home, from the old days, to show his family how silly it all was, how nervous that sort of thing can make you, how crazy. Guy’s surprise tonight is to read you one sample to show how mixed-up things were, so none of us will ever have to bother our little old heads about that junk again, isn’t that right, darling?” He crushed the book in his fists. “Say `yes.’” His mouth moved like Faber’s. “Yes.” Mildred snatched the book with a laugh. “Here! Read this one. No, I take it back. Here’s that real funny one you read out loud today. Ladies, you won’t understand a word. It goes umpty-tumpty-ump. Go ahead, Guy, that page, dear.” He looked at the opened page. A fly stirred its wings softly in his ear. “Read.” “What’s the title, dear?” “Dover Beach.” His mouth was numb. “Now read in a nice clear voice and go slow.” The room was blazing hot, he was all fire, he was all coldness; they sat in the middle of an empty desert with three chairs and him standing, swaying, and him waiting for Mrs. Phelps to stop straightening her dress hem and Mrs. Bowles to take her fingers away from her hair."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "Then he began to read in a low, stumbling voice that grew firmer as he progressed from line to line, and his voice went out across the desert, into the whiteness, and around the three sitting women there in the great hot emptiness: “`The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "39aqujvo But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.”’ The chairs creaked under the three women. Montag finished it out: “‘Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.’” Mrs. Phelps was crying. The others in the middle of the desert watched her crying grow very loud as her face squeezed itself out of shape. They sat, not touching her, bewildered by her display. She sobbed uncontrollably. Montag himself was stunned and shaken. “Sh, sh,” said Mildred. “You’re all right, Clara, now, Clara, snap out of it! Clara, what’s wrong?” “I-I,”, sobbed Mrs. Phelps, “don’t know, don’t know, I just don’t know, oh oh…” Mrs. Bowles stood up and glared at Montag. “You see? I knew it, that’s what I wanted to prove! I knew it would happen! I’ve always said, poetry and tears, poetry and suicide and crying and awful feelings, poetry and sickness; all that mush! Now I’ve had it proved to me. You’re nasty, Mr. Montag, you’re nasty! “ Faber said, “Now…” Montag felt himself turn and walk to the wall-slot and drop the book in through the brass notch to the waiting flames. “Silly words, silly words, silly awful hurting words,” said Mrs. Bowles. “Why do people want to hurt people? Not enough hurt in the world, you’ve got to tease people with stuff like that ! “ “Clara, now, Clara,” begged Mildred, pulling her arm. “Come on, let’s be cheery, you turn the `family’ on, now. Go ahead. Let’s laugh and be happy, now, stop crying, we’ll have a party!” “No,” said Mrs. Bowles. “I’m trotting right straight home. You want to visit my house and `family,’ well and good. But I won’t come in this fireman’s crazy house again in my lifetime! “ “Go home.” Montag fixed his eyes upon her, quietly. “Go home and think of your first husband divorced and your second husband killed in a jet and your third husband blowing his brains out, go home and think of the dozen abortions you’ve had, go home and think of that and your damn Caesarian sections, too, and your children who hate your guts! Go home and think how it all happened and what did you ever do to stop it? Go home, go home!” he yelled. “Before I knock you down and kick you out of the door!” Doors slammed and the house was empty. Montag stood alone in the winter weather, with the parlour walls the colour of dirty snow. In the bathroom, water ran."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "He heard Mildred shake the sleeping tablets into her hand. “Fool, Montag, fool, fool, oh God you silly fool…” “Shut up!” He pulled the green bullet from his ear and jammed it into his pocket. It sizzled faintly. “… fool … fool …” He searched the house and found the books where Mildred had stacked them behind the refrigerator. Some were missing and he knew that she had started on her own slow process of dispersing the dynamite in her house, stick by stick. But he was not angry now, only exhausted and bewildered with himself. He carried the books into the backyard and hid them in the bushes near the alley fence. For tonight only, he thought, in case she decides to do any more burning. He went back through the house. “Mildred?” He called at the door of the darkened bedroom. There was no sound. Outside, crossing the lawn, on his way to work, he tried not to see how completely dark and deserted Clarisse McClellan’s house was …. On the way downtown he was so completely alone with his terrible error that he felt the necessity for the strange warmness and goodness that came from a familiar and gentle voice speaking in the night. Already, in a few short hours, it seemed that he had known Faber a lifetime. Now he knew that he was two people, that he was above all Montag, who knew nothing, who did not even know himself a fool, but only suspected it. And he knew that he was also the old man who talked to him and talked to him as the train was sucked from one end of the night city to the other on one long sickening gasp of motion. In the days to follow, and in the nights when there was no moon and in the nights when there was a very bright moon shining on the earth, the old man would go on with this talking and this talking, drop by drop, stone by stone, flake by flake. His mind would well over at last and he would not be Montag any more, this the old man told him, assured him, promised him. He would be Montag-plus-Faber, fire plus water, and then, one day, after everything had mixed and simmered and worked away in silence, there would be neither fire nor water, but wine. Out of two separate and opposite things, a third. And one day he would look back upon the fool and know the fool. Even now he could feel the start of the long journey, the leave-taking, the going away from the self he had been. It was good listening to the beetle hum, the sleepy mosquito buzz and delicate filigree murmur of the old man’s voice at first scolding him and then consoling him in the late hour of night as he emerged from the steaming subway toward the firehouse world. “Pity, Montag, pity."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "Don’t haggle and nag them; you were so recently one o f them yourself. They are so confident that they will run on for ever. But they won’t run on. They don’t know that this is all one huge big blazing meteor that makes a pretty fire in space, but that some day it’ll have to hit. They see only the blaze, the pretty fire, as you saw it. “Montag, old men who stay at home, afraid, tending their peanut-brittle bones, have no right to criticize. Yet you almost killed things at the start. Watch it! I’m with you, remember that. I understand how it happened. I must admit that your blind raging invigorated me. God, how young I felt! But now-I want you to feel old, I want a little of my cowardice to be distilled in you tonight. The next few hours, when you see Captain Beatty, tiptoe round him, let me hear him for you, let me feel the situation out. Survival is our ticket. Forget the poor, silly women ….” “I made them unhappier than they have been in years, Ithink,” said Montag. “It shocked me to see Mrs. Phelps cry. Maybe they’re right, maybe it’s best not to face things, to run, have fun. I don’t know. I feel guilty—” “No, you mustn’t! If there were no war, if there was peace in the world, I’d say fine, have fun! But, Montag, you mustn’t go back to being just a fireman. All isn’t well with the world.” Montag perspired. “Montag, you listening?” “My feet,” said Montag. “I can’t move them. I feel so damn silly. My feet won’t move!” “Listen. Easy now,” said the old man gently. “I know, I know. You’re afraid of making mistakes. Don’t be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people’s faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn. Now, pick up your feet, into the firehouse with you! We’re twins, we’re not alone any more, we’re not separated out in different parlours, with no contact between. If you need help when Beatty pries at you, I’ll be sitting right here in your eardrum making notes!” Montag felt his right foot, then his left foot, move. “Old man,” he said, “stay with me.” The Mechanical Hound was gone. Its kennel was empty and the firehouse stood all about in plaster silence and the orange Salamander slept with its kerosene in its belly and the firethrowers crossed upon its flanks and Montag came in through the silence and touched the brass pole and slid up in the dark air, looking back at the deserted kennel, his heart beating, pausing, beating. Faber was a grey moth asleep in his ear, for the moment."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "Beatty stood near the drop-hole waiting, but with his back turned as if he were not waiting. “Well,” he said to the men playing cards, “here comes a very strange beast which in all tongues is called a fool.” He put his hand to one side, palm up, for a gift. Montag put the book in it. Without even glancing at the title, Beatty tossed the book into the trash-basket and lit a cigarette. “`Who are a little wise, the best fools be.’ Welcome back, Montag. I hope you’ll be staying, with us, now that your fever is done and your sickness over. Sit in for a hand of poker?” They sat and the cards were dealt. In Beatty’s sight, Montag felt the guilt of his hands. His fingers were like ferrets that had done some evil and now never rested, always stirred and picked and hid in pockets, moving from under Beatty’s alcohol-flame stare. If Beatty so much as breathed on them, Montag felt that his hands might wither, turn over on their sides, and never be shocked to life again; they would be buried the rest of his life in his coat-sleeves, forgotten. For these were the hands that had acted on their own, no part of him, here was where the conscience first manifested itself to snatch books, dart off with job and Ruth and Willie Shakespeare, and now, in the firehouse, these hands seemed gloved with blood. Twice in half an hour, Montag had to rise from the game and go to the latrine to wash his hands. When he came back he hid his hands under the table. Beatty laughed. “Let’s have your hands in sight, Montag. Not that we don’t trust you, understand, but—” They all laughed. “Well,” said Beatty, “the crisis is past and all is well, the sheep returns to the fold. We’re all sheep who have strayed at times. Truth is truth, to the end of reckoning, we’ve cried. They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts, we’ve shouted to ourselves. `Sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge,’ Sir Philip Sidney said. But on the other hand: `Words are like leaves and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.’ Alexander Pope. What do you think of that?” “I don’t know.” “Careful,” whispered Faber, living in another world, far away. “Or this? ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.’ Pope. Same Essay. Where does that put you?” Montag bit his lip. “I’ll tell you,” said Beatty, smiling at his cards. “That made you for a little while a drunkard. Read a few lines and off you go over the cliff. Bang, you’re ready to blow up the world, chop off heads, knock down women and children, destroy authority. I know, I’ve been through it all.” “I’m all right,” said Montag, nervously. “Stop blushing."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "I’m not needling, really I’m not. Do you know, I had a dream an hour ago. I lay down for a cat-nap and in this dream you and I, Montag, got into a furious debate on books. You towered with rage, yelled quotes at me. I calmly parried every thrust. Power, I said, And you, quoting Dr. Johnson, said `Knowledge is more than equivalent to force!’ And I said, `Well, Dr. Johnson also said, dear boy, that “He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.’” Stick with the fireman, Montag. All else is dreary chaos!” “Don’t listen,” whispered Faber. “He’s trying to confuse. He’s slippery. Watch out!” Beatty chuckled. “And you said, quoting, `Truth will come to light, murder will not be hid long!’ And I cried in good humour, ‘Oh God, he speaks only of his horse!’ And `The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.’ And you yelled, ‘This age thinks better of a gilded fool, than of a threadbare saint in wisdom’s school!’ And I whispered gently, ‘The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.’ And you screamed, ‘Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer!’ And I said, patting your hand, ‘What, do I give you trench mouth?’ And you shrieked, ‘Knowledge is power!’ and ‘A dwarf on a giant’s shoulders of the furthest of the two!’ and I summed my side up with rare serenity in, ‘The folly of mistaking a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself as an oracle, is inborn in us, Mr. Valery once said.’” Montag’s head whirled sickeningly. He felt beaten unmercifully on brow, eyes, nose, lips, chin, on shoulders, on upflailing arms. He wanted to yell, “No! shut up, you’re confusing things, stop it!” Beatty’s graceful fingers thrust out to seize his wrist. “God, what a pulse! I’ve got you going, have I, Montag. Jesus God, your pulse sounds like the day after the war. Everything but sirens and bells! Shall I talk some more? I like your look of panic. Swahili, Indian, English Lit., I speak them all. A kind of excellent dumb discourse, Willie!” “Montag, hold on! ” The moth brushed Montag’s ear. “He’s muddying the waters!” “Oh, you were scared silly,” said Beatty, “for I was doing a terrible thing in using the very books you clung to, to rebut you on every hand, on every point! What traitors books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives. And at the very end of my dream, along I came with the Salamander and said, Going my way? And you got in and we drove back to the firehouse in beatific silence, all -dwindled away to peace.” Beatty let Montag’s wrist go, let the hand slump limply on the table."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "“All’s well that is well in the end.” Silence. Montag sat like a carved white stone. The echo of the final hammer on his skull died slowly away into the black cavern where Faber waited for the echoes to subside. And then when the startled dust had settled down about Montag’s mind, Faber began, softly, “All right, he’s had his say. You must take it in. I’ll say my say, too, in the next few hours. And you’ll take it in. And you’ll try to judge them and make your decision as to which way to jump, or fall. But I want it to be your decision, not mine, and not the Captain’s. But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it’s up to you now to know with which ear you’ll listen.” Montag opened his mouth to answer Faber and was saved this error in the presence of others when the station bell rang. The alarm-voice in the ceiling chanted. There was a tacking-tacking sound as the alarm-report telephone typed out the address across the room. Captain Beatty, his poker cards in one pink hand, walked with exaggerated slowness to the phone and ripped out the address when the report was finished. He glanced perfunctorily at it, and shoved it in his pocket. He came back and sat down. The others looked at him. “It can wait exactly forty seconds while I take all the money away from you,” said Beatty, happily. Montag put his cards down. “Tired, Montag? Going out of this game?” “Yes.” “Hold on. Well, come to think of it, we can finish this hand later. Just leave your cards face down and hustle the equipment. On the double now.” And Beatty rose up again. “Montag, you don’t look well? I’d hate to think you were coming down with another fever…” “I’ll be all right.” “You’ll be fine. This is a special case. Come on, jump for it!” They leaped into the air and clutched the brass pole as if it were the last vantage point above a tidal wave passing below, and then the brass pole, to their dismay slid them down into darkness, into the blast and cough and suction of the gaseous dragon roaring to life!"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "“Hey !” They rounded a corner in thunder and siren, with concussion of tyres, with scream of rubber, with a shift of kerosene bulk in the glittery brass tank, like the food in the stomach of a giant; with Montag’s fingers jolting off the silver rail, swinging into cold space, with the wind tearing his hair back from his head, with the wind whistling in his teeth, and him all the while thinking of the women, the chaff women in his parlour tonight, with the kernels blown out from under them by a neon wind, and his silly damned reading of a book to them. How like trying to put out fires with water-pistols, how senseless and insane. One rage turned in for another. One anger displacing another. When would he stop being entirely mad and be quiet, be very quiet indeed? “Here we go!” Montag looked up. Beatty never drove, but he was driving tonight, slamming the Salamander around corners, leaning forward high on the driver’s throne, his massive black slicker flapping out behind so that he seemed a great black bat flying above the engine, over the brass numbers, taking the full wind. “Here we go to keep the world happy, Montag !” Beatty’s pink, phosphorescent cheeks glimmered in the high darkness, and he was smiling furiously. “Here we are!” The Salamander boomed to a halt, throwing men off in slips and clumsy hops. Montag stood fixing his raw eyes to the cold bright rail under his clenched fingers. I can’t do it, he thought. How can I go at this new assignment, how can I go on burning things? I can’t go in this place. Beatty, smelling of the wind through which he had rushed, was at Montag’s elbow. “All right, Montag?” The men ran like cripples in their clumsy boots, as quietly as spiders. At last Montag raised his eyes and turned. Beatty was watching his face. “Something the matter, Montag?” “Why,” said Montag slowly, “we’ve stopped in front of my house.”"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "39aqujvo PART III BURNING BRIGHT LIGHTS flicked on and house-doors opened all down the street, to watch the carnival set up. Montag and Beatty stared, one with dry satisfaction, the other with disbelief, at the house before them, this main ring in which torches would be juggled and fire eaten. “Well,” said Beatty, “now you did it. Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he’s burnt his damn wings, he wonders why. Didn’t I hint enough when I sent the Hound around your place?” Montag’s face was entirely numb and featureless; he felt his head turn like a stone carving to the dark place next door, set in its bright borders of flowers. Beatty snorted. “Oh, no! You weren’t fooled by that little idiot’s routine, now, were you? Flowers, butterflies, leaves, sunsets, oh, hell! It’s all in her file. I’ll be damned. I’ve hit the bullseye. Look at the sick look on your face. A few grass-blades and the quarters of the moon. What trash. What good did she ever do with all that?” Montag sat on the cold fender of the Dragon, moving his head half an inch to the left, half an inch to the right, left, right, left right, left …. “She saw everything. She didn’t do anything to anyone. She just let them alone.” “Alone, hell ! She chewed around you, didn’t she? One of those damn do-gooders with their shocked, holier-than-thou silences, their one talent making others feel guilty. God damn, they rise like the midnight sun to sweat you in your bed!” The front door opened; Mildred came down the steps, running, one suitcase held with a dream-like clenching rigidity in her fist, as a beetle-taxi hissed to the curb. “Mildred! “ She ran past with her body stiff, her face floured with powder, her mouth gone, without lipstick. “Mildred, you didn’t put in the alarm!” She shoved the valise in the waiting beetle, climbed in, and sat mumbling, “Poor family, poor family, oh everything gone, everything, everything gone now ….” Beatty grabbed Montag’s shoulder as the beetle blasted away and hit seventy miles an hour, far down the street, gone. There was a crash like the falling parts of a dream fashioned out of warped glass, mirrors, and crystal prisms. Montag drifted about as if still another incomprehensible storm had turned him, to see Stoneman and Black wielding axes, shattering windowpanes to provide cross-ventilation. The brush of a death’s-head moth against a cold black screen. “Montag, this is Faber. Do you hear me? What is happening “This is happening to me,” said Montag. “What a dreadful surprise,” said Beatty. “For everyone nowadays knows, absolutely is certain, that nothing will ever happen to me. Others die, I go on. There are no consequences and no responsibilities. Except that there are. But let’s not talk about them, eh? By the time the consequences catch up with you, it’s too late, isn’t it, Montag?” “Montag, can you get away, run?” asked Faber."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Montag walked but did not feel his feet touch the cement and then the night grasses. Beatty flicked his igniter nearby and the small orange flame drew his fascinated gaze. “What is there about fire that’s so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it?” Beatty blew out the flame and lit it again. “It’s perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. Or almost perpetual motion. If you let it go on, it’d burn our lifetimes out. What is fire? It’s a mystery. Scientists give us gobbledegook about friction and molecules. But they don’t really know. Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the furnace with it. Now, Montag, you’re a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical.” Montag stood looking in now at this queer house, made strange by the hour of the night, by murmuring neighbour voices, by littered glass, and there on the floor, their covers torn off and spilled out like swan-feathers, the incredible books that looked so silly and really not worth bothering with, for these were nothing but black type and yellowed paper, and ravelled binding. Mildred, of course. She must have watched him hide the books in the garden and brought them back in. Mildred. Mildred. “I want you to do this job all by your lonesome, Montag. Not with kerosene and a match, but piecework, with a flamethrower. Your house, your clean-up.” “Montag, can’t you run, get away!” “No!” cried Montag helplessly. “The Hound! Because of the Hound!” Faber heard, and Beatty, thinking it was meant for him, heard. “Yes, the Hound’s somewhere about the neighbourhood, so don’t try anything. Ready?” “Ready.” Montag snapped the safety-catch on the flamethrower. “Fire!” A great nuzzling gout of flame leapt out to lap at the books and knock them against the wall. He stepped into the bedroom and fired twice and the twin beds went up in a great simmering whisper, with more heat and passion and light than he would have supposed them to contain. He burnt the bedroom walls and the cosmetics chest because he wanted to change everything, the chairs, the tables, and in the dining-room the silverware and plastic dishes, everything that showed that he had lived here in this empty house with a strange woman who would forget him tomorrow, who had gone and quite forgotten him already, listening to her Seashell radio pour in on her and in on her as she rode across town, alone. And as before, it was good to burn, he felt himself gush out in the fire, snatch, rend, rip in half with flame, and put away the senseless problem. If there was no solution, well then now there was no problem, either. Fire was best for everything!"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "“The books, Montag!” The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers. And then he came to the parlour where the great idiot monsters lay asleep with their white thoughts and their snowy dreams. And he shot a bolt at each of the three blank walls and the vacuum hissed out at him. The emptiness made an even emptier whistle, a senseless scream. He tried to think about the vacuum upon which the nothingness had performed, but he could not. He held his breath so the vacuum could not get into his lungs. He cut off its terrible emptiness, drew back, and gave the entire room a gift of one huge bright yellow flower of burning. The fireproof plastic sheath on everything was cut wide and the house began to shudder with flame. “When you’re quite finished,” said Beatty behind him. “You’re under arrest.” The house fell in red coals and black ash. It bedded itself down in sleepy pink-grey cinders and a smoke plume blew over it, rising and waving slowly back and forth in the sky. It was three-thirty in the morning. The crowd drew back into the houses; the great tents of the circus had slumped into charcoal and rubble and the show was well over. Montag stood with the flamethrower in his limp hands, great islands of perspiration drenching his armpits, his face smeared with soot. The other firemen waited behind him, in the darkness, their faces illuminated faintly by the smouldering foundation. Montag started to speak twice and then finally managed to put his thought together. “Was it my wife turned in the alarm?” Beatty nodded. “But her friends turned in an alarm earlier, that I let ride. One way or the other, you’d have got it. It was pretty silly, quoting poetry around free and easy like that. It was the act of a silly damn snob. Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he’s the Lord of all Creation. You think you can walk on water with your books. Well, the world can get by just fine without them. Look where they got you, in slime up to your lip. If I stir the slime with my little finger, you’ll drown ! “ Montag could not move. A great earthquake had come with fire and levelled the house and Mildred was under there somewhere and his entire life under there and he could not move. The earthquake was still shaking and falling and shivering inside him and he stood there, his knees half-bent under the great load of tiredness and bewilderment and outrage, letting Beatty hit him without raising a hand. “Montag, you idiot, Montag, you damn fool; why did you really do it?” Montag did not hear, he was far away, he was running with his mind, he was gone, leaving this dead soot-covered body to sway in front of another raving fool. “Montag, get out of there! ” said Faber."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Montag listened. Beatty struck him a blow on the head that sent him reeling back. The green bullet in which Faber’s voice whispered and cried, fell to the sidewalk. Beatty snatched it up, grinning. He held it half in, half out of his ear. Montag heard the distant voice calling, “Montag, you all right?” Beatty switched the green bullet off and thrust it in his pocket. “Well—so there’s more here than I thought. I saw you tilt your head, listening. First I thought you had a Seashell. But when you turned clever later, I wondered. We’ll trace this and drop it on your friend.” “No! ” said Montag. He twitched the safety catch on the flamethrower. Beatty glanced instantly at Montag’s fingers and his eyes widened the faintest bit. Montag saw the surprise there and himself glanced to his hands to see what new thing they had done. Thinking back later he could never decide whether the hands or Beatty’s reaction to the hands gave him the final push toward murder. The last rolling thunder of the avalanche stoned down about his ears, not touching him. Beatty grinned his most charming grin. “Well, that’s one way to get an audience. Hold a gun on a man and force him to listen to your speech. Speech away. What’ll it be this time? Why don’t you belch Shakespeare at me, you fumbling snob? `There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, for I am arm’d so strong in honesty that they pass by me as an idle wind, which I respect not!’ How’s that? Go ahead now, you second-hand litterateur, pull the trigger.” He took one step toward Montag. Montag only said, “We never burned right…” “Hand it over, Guy,” said Beatty with a fixed smile. And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling, gibbering mannikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him. There was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a redhot stove, a bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail to cause a terrible liquefaction and a boiling over of yellow foam. Montag shut his eyes, shouted, shouted, and fought to get his hands at his ears to clamp and to cut away the sound. Beatty flopped over and over and over, and at last twisted in on himself like a charred wax doll and lay silent. The other two firemen did not move. Montag kept his sickness down long enough to aim the flamethrower. “Turn around!” They turned, their faces like blanched meat, streaming sweat; he beat their heads, knocking off their helmets and bringing them down on themselves. They fell and lay without moving. The blowing of a single autumn leaf. He turned and the Mechanical Hound was there."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "It was half across the lawn, coming from the shadows, moving with such drifting ease that it was like a single solid cloud of black-grey smoke blown at him in silence. It made a single last leap into the air, coming down at Montag from a good three feet over his head, its spidered legs reaching, the procaine needle snapping out its single angry tooth. Montag caught it with a bloom of fire, a single wondrous blossom that curled in petals of yellow and blue and orange about the metal dog, clad it in a new covering as it slammed into Montag and threw him ten feet back against the bole of a tree, taking the flame-gun with him. He felt it scrabble and seize his leg and stab the needle in for a moment before the fire snapped the Hound up in the air, burst its metal bones at the joints, and blew out its interior in the single flushing of red colour like a skyrocket fastened to the street. Montag lay watching the dead-alive thing fiddle the air and die. Even now it seemed to want to get back at him and finish the injection which was now working through the flesh of his leg. He felt all of the mingled relief and horror at having pulled back only in time to have just his knee slammed by the fender of a car hurtling by at ninety miles an hour. He was afraid to get up, afraid he might not be able to gain his feet at all, with an anaesthetized leg. A numbness in a numbness hollowed into a numbness…. And now…? The street empty, the house burnt like an ancient bit of stage-scenery, the other homes dark, the Hound here, Beatty there, the three other firemen another place, and the Salamander … ? He gazed at the immense engine. That would have to go, too. Well, he thought, let’s see how badly off you are. On your feet now. Easy, easy … there. He stood and he had only one leg. The other was like a chunk of burnt pine-log he was carrying along as a penance for some obscure sin. When he put his weight on it, a shower of silver needles gushed up the length of the calf and went off in the knee. He wept. Come on! Come on, you, you can’t stay here! A few house-lights were going on again down the street, whether from the incidents just passed, or because of the abnormal silence following the fight, Montag did not know. He hobbled around the ruins, seizing at his bad leg when it lagged, talking and whimpering and shouting directions at it and cursing it and pleading with it to work for him now when it was vital. He heard a number of people crying out in the darkness and shouting. He reached the back yard and the alley. Beatty, he thought, you’re not a problem now."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "You always said, don’t face a problem, bum it. Well, now I’ve done both. Goodbye, Captain. And he stumbled along the alley in the dark. A shotgun blast went off in his leg every time he put it down and he thought, you’re a fool, a damn fool, an awful fool, an idiot, an awful idiot, a damn idiot, and a fool, a damn fool; look at the mess and where’s the mop, look at the mess, and what do you do? Pride, damn it, and temper, and you’ve junked it all, at the very start you vomit on everyone and on yourself. But everything at once, but everything one on top of another; Beatty, the women, Mildred, Clarisse, everything. No excuse, though, no excuse. A fool, a damn fool, go give yourself up! No, we’ll save what we can, we’ll do what there is left to do. If we have to burn, let’s take a few more with us. Here! He remembered the books and turned back. Just on the off chance. He found a few books where he had left them, near the garden fence. Mildred, God bless her, had missed a few. Four books still lay hidden where he had put them. Voices were wailing in the night and flashbeams swirled about. Other Salamanders were roaring their engines far away, and police sirens were cutting their way across town with their sirens. Montag took the four remaining books and hopped, jolted, hopped his way down the alley and suddenly fell as if his head had been cut off and only his body lay there. Something inside had jerked him to a halt and flopped him down. He lay where he had fallen and sobbed, his legs folded, his face pressed blindly to the gravel. Beatty wanted to die. In the middle of the crying Montag knew it for the truth. Beatty had wanted to die. He had just stood there, not really trying to save himself, just stood there, joking, needling, thought Montag, and the thought was enough to stifle his sobbing and let him pause for air. How strange, strange, to want to die so much that you let a man walk around armed and then instead of shutting up and staying alive, you go on yelling at people and making fun of them until you get them mad, and then …. At a distance, running feet. Montag sat up. Let’s get out of here. Come on, get up, get up, you just can’t sit! But he was still crying and that had to be finished. It was going away now. He hadn’t wanted to kill anyone, not even Beatty. His flesh gripped him and shrank as if it had been plunged in acid. He gagged. He saw Beatty, a torch, not moving, fluttering out on the grass. He bit at his knuckles. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh God, sorry …."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "He tried to piece it all together, to go back to the normal pattern of life a few short days ago before the sieve and the sand, Denham’s Dentifrice, moth-voices, fireflies, the alarms and excursions, too much for a few short days, too much, indeed, for a lifetime. Feet ran in the far end of the alley. “Get up!” he told himself. “Damn it, get up!” he said to the leg, and stood. The pains were spikes driven in the kneecap and then only darning needles and then only common, ordinary safety pins, and after he had dragged along fifty more hops and jumps, filling his hand with slivers from the board fence, the prickling was like someone blowing a spray of scalding water on that leg. And the leg was at last his own leg again. He had been afraid that running might break the loose ankle. Now, sucking all the night into his open mouth, and blowing it out pale, with all the blackness left heavily inside himself, he set out in a steady jogging pace. He carried the books in his hands. He thought of Faber. Faber was back there in the steaming lump of tar that had no name or identity now. He had burnt Faber, too. He felt so suddenly shocked by this that he felt Faber was really dead, baked like a roach in that small green capsule shoved and lost in the pocket of a man who was now nothing but a frame skeleton strung with asphalt tendons. You must remember, burn them or they’ll burn you, he thought. Right now it’s as simple as that. He searched his pockets, the money was there, and in his other pocket he found the usual Seashell upon which the city was talking to itself in the cold black morning. “Police Alert. Wanted: Fugitive in city. Has committed murder and crimes against the State. Name: Guy Montag. Occupation: Fireman. Last seen …” He ran steadily for six blocks, in the alley, and then the alley opened out on to a wide empty thoroughfare ten lanes wide. It seemed like a boatless river frozen there in the raw light of the high white arc-lamps; you could drown trying to cross it, he felt; it was too wide, it was too open. It was a vast stage without scenery, inviting him to run across, easily seen in the blazing illumination, easily caught, easily shot down. The Seashell hummed in his ear. “… watch for a man running … watch for the running man … watch for a man alone, on foot … watch…” Montag pulled back into the shadows. Directly ahead lay a gas station, a great chunk of porcelain snow shining there, and two silver beetles pulling in to fill up. Now he must be clean and presentable if he wished, to walk, not run, stroll calmly across that wide boulevard."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "It would give him an extra margin of safety if he washed up and combed his hair before he went on his way to get where … ? Yes, he thought, where am I running? Nowhere. There was nowhere to go, no friend to turn to, really. Except Faber. And then he realized that he was indeed, running toward Faber’s house, instinctively. But Faber couldn’t hide him; it would be suicide even to try. But he knew that he would go to see Faber anyway, for a few short minutes. Faber’s would be the place where he might refuel his fast draining belief in his own ability to survive. He just wanted to know that there was a man like Faber in the world. He wanted to see the man alive and not burned back there like a body shelled in another body. And some of the money must be left with Faber, of course, to be spent after Montag ran on his way. Perhaps he could make the open country and live on or near the rivers and near the highways, in the fields and hills. A great whirling whisper made him look to the sky. The police helicopters were rising so far away that it seemed someone had blown the grey head off a dry dandelion flower. Two dozen of them flurried, wavering, indecisive, three miles off, like butterflies puzzled by autumn, and then they were plummeting down to land, one by one, here, there, softly kneading the streets where, turned back to beetles, they shrieked along the boulevards or, as suddenly, leapt back into the sir, continuing their search. And here was the gas station, its attendants busy now with customers. Approaching from the rear, Montag entered the men’s washroom. Through the aluminium wall he heard a radio voice saying, “War has been declared.” The gas was being pumped outside. The men in the beetles were talking and the attendants were talking about the engines, the gas, the money owed. Montag stood trying to make himself feel the shock of the quiet statement from the radio, but nothing would happen. The war would have to wait for him to come to it in his personal file, an hour, two hours from now. He washed his hands and face and towelled himself dry, making little sound. He came out of the washroom and shut the door carefully and walked into the darkness and at last stood again on the edge of the empty boulevard. There it lay, a game for him to win, a vast bowling alley in the cool morning. The boulevard was as clean as the surface of an arena two minutes before the appearance of certain unnamed victims and certain unknown killers. The air over and above the vast concrete river trembled with the warmth of Montag’s body alone; it was incredible how he felt his temperature could cause the whole immediate world to vibrate."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "He was a phosphorescent target; he knew it, he felt it. And now he must begin his little walk. Three blocks away a few headlights glared. Montag drew a deep breath. His lungs were like burning brooms in his chest. His mouth was sucked dry from running. His throat tasted of bloody iron and there was rusted steel in his feet. What about those lights there? Once you started walking you’d have to gauge how fast those beetles could make it down here. Well, how far was it to the other curb? It seemed like a hundred yards. Probably not a hundred, but figure for that anyway, figure that with him going very slowly, at a nice stroll, it might take as much as thirty seconds, forty seconds to walk all the way. The beetles? Once started, they could leave three blocks behind them in about fifteen seconds. So, even if halfway across he started to run … ? He put his right foot out and then his left foot and then his right. He walked on the empty avenue. Even if the street were entirely empty, of course, you couldn’t be sure of a safe crossing, for a car could appear suddenly over the rise four blocks further on and be on and past you before you had taken a dozen breaths. He decided not to count his steps. He looked neither to left nor right. The light from the overhead lamps seemed as bright and revealing as the midday sun and just as hot. He listened to the sound of the car picking up speed two blocks away on his right. Its movable headlights jerked back and forth suddenly, and caught at Montag. Keep going. Montag faltered, got a grip on the books, and forced himself not to freeze. Instinctively he took a few quick, running steps then talked out loud to himself and pulled up to stroll again. He was now half across the street, but the roar from the beetle’s engines whined higher as it put on speed. The police, of course. They see me. But slow now; slow, quiet, don’t turn, don’t look, don’t seem concerned. Walk, that’s it, walls, walk. The beetle was rushing. The beetle was roaring. The beetle raised its speed. The beetle was whining. The beetle was in high thunder. The beetle came skimming. The beetle came in a single whistling trajectory, fired from an invisible rifle. It was up to 120 m.p.h. It was up to 130 at least. Montag clamped his jaws. The heat of the racing headlights burnt his cheeks, it seemed, and jittered his eyelids and flushed the sour sweat out all over his body. He began to shuffle idiotically and talk to himself and then he broke and just ran. He put out his legs as far as they would go and down and then far out again and down and back and out and down and back. God ! God!"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "He dropped a book, broke pace, almost turned, changed his mind, plunged on, yelling in concrete emptiness, the beetle scuttling after its running food, two hundred, one hundred feet away, ninety, eighty, seventy, Montag gasping, flailing his hands, legs up down out, up down out, closer, closer, hooting, calling, his eyes burnt white now as his head jerked about to confront the flashing glare, now the beetle was swallowed in its own light, now it was nothing but a torch hurtling upon him; all sound, all blare. Now-almost on top of him ! He stumbled and fell. I’m done! It’s over! But the falling made a difference. An instant before reaching him the wild beetle cut and swerved out. It was gone. Montag lay flat, his head down. Wisps of laughter trailed back to him with the blue exhaust from the beetle. His right hand was extended above him, flat. Across the extreme tip of his middle finger, he saw now as he lifted that hand, a faint sixteenth of an inch of black tread where tyre had touched in passing. He looked at that black line with disbelief, getting to his feet. That wasn’t the police, he thought. He looked down the boulevard. It was clear now. A carful of children, all ages, God knew, from twelve to sixteen, out 124 FAHRENHEIT 451 whistling, yelling, hurrahing, had seen a man, a very extraordinary sight, a man strolling, a rarity, and simply said, “Let’s get him,” not knowing he was the fugitive Mr. Montag, simply a,number of children out for a long night of roaring five or six hundred miles in a few moonlit hours, their faces icy with wind, and coming home or not coming at dawn, alive or not alive, that made the adventure. They would have killed me, thought Montag, swaying, the air still torn and stirring about him in dust, touching his bruised cheek. For no reason at all in the world they would have killed me. He walked toward the far kerb telling each foot to go and keep going. Somehow he had picked up the spilled books; he didn’t remember bending or touching them. He kept moving them from hand to hand as if they were a poker hand he could not figure. I wonder if they were the ones who killed Clarisse? He stopped and his mind said it again, very loud. I wonder if they were the ones who killed Clarisse! He wanted to run after them yelling. His eyes watered. The thing that had saved him was falling flat. The driver of that car, seeing Montag down, instinctively considered the probability that running over a body at that speed might turn the car upside down and spill them out. If Montag had remained an upright target… ? Montag gasped."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Far down the boulevard, four blocks away, the beetle had slowed, spun about on two wheels, and was now racing back, slanting over on the wrong side of the street, picking up speed. But Montag was gone, hidden in the safety of the dark alley for which he had set out on a long journey, an hour or was it a minute, ago? He stood shivering in the night, looking back out as the beetle ran by and skidded back to the centre of the avenue, whirling laughter in the air all about it, gone. Further on, as Montag moved in darkness, he could see the helicopters falling, falling, like the first flakes of snow in the long winter. to come…. The house was silent. Montag approached from the rear, creeping through a thick night-moistened scent of daffodils and roses and wet grass. He touched the screen door in back, found it open, slipped in, moved across the porch, listening. Mrs. Black, are you asleep in there? he thought. This isn’t good, but your husband did it to others and never asked and never wondered and never worried. And now since you’re a fireman’s wife, it’s your house and your turn, for all the houses your husband burned and the people he hurt without thinking. . The house did not reply. He hid the books in the kitchen and moved from the house again to the alley and looked back and the house was still dark and quiet, sleeping. On his way across town, with the helicopters fluttering like torn bits of paper in the sky, he phoned the alarm at a lonely phone booth outside a store that was closed for the night. Then he stood in the cold night air, waiting and at a distance he heard the fire sirens start up and run, and the Salamanders coming, coming to bum Mr. Black’s house while he was away at work, to make his wife stand shivering in the morning air while the roof let go and dropped in upon the fire. But now, she was still asleep. Good night, Mrs. Black, he thought. - “Faber! “ Another rap, a whisper, and a long waiting. Then, after a minute, a small light flickered inside Faber’s small house. After another pause, the back door opened. They stood looking at each other in the half-light, Faber and Montag, as if each did not believe in the other’s existence. Then Faber moved and put out his hand and grabbed Montag and moved him in and sat him down and went back and stood in the door, listening. The sirens were wailing off in the morning distance. He came in and shut the door. Montag said, “I’ve been a fool all down the line. I can’t stay long. I’m on my way God knows where.” “At least you were a fool about the right things,” said Faber. “I thought you were dead."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "The audio-capsule I gave you—” “Burnt.” “I heard the captain talking to you and suddenly there was nothing. I almost came out looking for you.” “The captain’s dead. He found the audio-capsule, he heard your voice, he was going to trace it. I killed him with the flamethrower.” Faber sat down and did not speak for a time. “My God, how did this happen?” said Montag. “It was only the other night everything was fine and the next thing I know I’m drowning. How many times can a man go down and still be alive? I can’t breathe. There’s Beatty dead, and he was my friend once, and there’s Millie gone, I thought she was my wife, but now I don’t know. And the house all burnt. And my job gone and myself on the run, and I planted a book in a fireman’s house on the way. Good Christ, the things I’ve done in a single week! “ “You did what you had to do. It was coming on for a long time.” “Yes, I believe that, if there’s nothing else I believe. It saved itself up to happen. I could feel it for a long time, I was saving something up, I went around doing one thing and feeling another. God, it was all there. It’s a wonder it didn’t show on me, like fat. And now here I am, messing up your life. They might follow me here.” “I feel alive for the first time in years,” said Faber. “I feel I’m doing what I should have done a lifetime ago. For a little while I’m not afraid. Maybe it’s because I’m doing the right thing at last. Maybe it’s because I’ve done a rash thing and don’t want to look the coward to you. I suppose I’ll have to do even more violent things, exposing myself so I won’t fall down on the job and turn scared again. What are your plans?” “To keep running.” “You know the war’s on?” “I heard.” “God, isn’t it funny?” said the old man. “It seems so remote because we have our own troubles.” “I haven’t had time to think.” Montag drew out a hundred dollars. “I want this to stay with you, use it any way that’ll help when I’m gone.” “But— “ “I might be dead by noon; use this.” Faber nodded. “You’d better head for the river if you can, follow along it, and if you can hit the old railroad lines going out into the country, follow them. Even though practically everything’s airborne these days and most of the tracks are abandoned, the rails are still there, rusting. I’ve heard there are still hobo camps all across the country, here and there; walking camps they call them, and if you keep walking far enough and keep an eye peeled, they say there’s lots of old Harvard degrees on the tracks between here and Los Angeles. Most of them are wanted and hunted in the cities."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "They survive, I guess. There aren’t many of them, and I guess the Government’s never considered them a great enough danger to go in and track them down. You might hole up with them for a time and get in touch with me in St. Louis, I’m leaving on the five a.m. bus this morning, to see a retired printer there, I’m getting out into the open myself, at last. The money will be put to good use. Thanks and God bless you. Do you want to sleep a few minutes?” “I’d better run.” “Let’s check.” He took Montag quickly into the bedroom and lifted a picture frame aside, revealing a television screen the size of a postal card. “I always wanted something very small, something I could talk to, something I could blot out with the palm of my hand, if necessary, nothing that could shout me down, nothing monstrous big. So, you see.” He snapped it on. “Montag,” the TV set said, and lit up. “M-O-N-T-A-G.” The name was spelled out by the voice. “Guy Montag. Still running. Police helicopters are up. A new Mechanical Hound has been brought from another district.. .” Montag and Faber looked at each other. “… Mechanical Hound never fails. Never since its first use in tracking quarry has this incredible invention made a mistake. Tonight, this network is proud to have the opportunity to follow the Hound by camera helicopter as it starts on its way to the target…” Faber poured two glasses of whisky. “We’ll need these.” They drank. “… nose so sensitive the Mechanical Hound can remember and identify ten thousand odour-indexes on ten thousand men without re-setting! “ Faber trembled the least bit and looked about at his house, at the walls, the door, the doorknob, and the chair where Montag now sat. Montag saw the look. They both looked quickly about the house and Montag felt his nostrils dilate and he knew that he was trying to track himself and his nose was suddenly good enough to sense the path he had made in the air of the room and the sweat of his hand hung from the doorknob, invisible, but as numerous as the jewels of a small chandelier, he was everywhere, in and on and about everything, he was a luminous cloud, a ghost that made breathing once more impossible. He saw Faber stop up his own breath for fear of drawing that ghost into his own body, perhaps, being contaminated with the phantom exhalations and odours of a running man. “The Mechanical Hound is now landing by helicopter at the site of the Burning!” And there on the small screen was the burnt house, and the crowd, and something with a sheet over it and out of the sky, fluttering, came the helicopter like a grotesque flower. So they must have their game out, thought Montag. The circus must go on, even with war beginning within the hour…."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "He watched the scene, fascinated, not wanting to move. It seemed so remote and no part of him; it was a play apart and separate, wondrous to watch, not without its strange pleasure. That’s all for me, you thought, that’s all taking place just for me, by God. If he wished, he could linger here, in comfort, and follow the entire hunt on through its swift. phases, down alleys across streets, over empty running avenues, crossing lots and playgrounds, with pauses here or there for the necessary commercials, up other alleys to the burning house of Mr. and Mrs. Black, and so on finally to this house with Faber and himself seated, drinking, while the Electric Hound snuffed down the last trail, silent as a drift of death itself, skidded to a halt outside that window there. Then, if he wished, Montag might rise, walk to the window, keep one eye on the TV screen, open the window, lean out, look back, and see himself dramatized, described, made over, standing there, limned in the bright small television screen from outside, a drama to be watched objectively, knowing that in other parlours he was large as life, in full colour, dimensionally perfect! And if he kept his eye peeled quickly he would see himself, an instant before oblivion, being punctured for the benefit of how many civilian parlour-sitters who had been wakened from sleep a few minutes ago by the frantic sirening of their living-room walls to come watch the big game, the hunt, the one-man carnival. Would he have time for a speech? As the Hound seized him, in view of ten or twenty or thirty million people, mightn’t he sum up his entire life in the last week in one single phrase or a word that would stay with them long after the. Hound had turned, clenching him in its metal-plier jaws, and trotted off in darkness, while the camera remained stationary, watching the creature dwindle in the distance—a splendid fade-out! What could he say in a single word, a few words, that would sear all their faces and wake them up? “There,” whispered Faber. Out of a helicopter glided something that was not machine, not animal, not dead, not alive, glowing with a pale green luminosity. It stood near the smoking ruins of Montag’s house and the men brought his discarded flamethrower to it and put it down under the muzzle of the Hound. There was a whirring, clicking, humming. Montag shook his head and got up and drank the rest of his drink. “It’s time. I’m sorry about this:” “About what? Me? My house? I deserve everything. Run, for God’s sake. Perhaps I can delay them here—” “Wait. There’s no use your being discovered. When I leave, burn the spread of this bed, that I touched. Burn the chair in the living room, in your wall incinerator. Wipe down the furniture with alcohol, wipe the doorknobs. Burn the throwrug in the parlour."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Turn the air-conditioning on full in all the rooms and spray with moth-spray if you have it. Then, turn on your lawn sprinklers as high as they’ll go and hose off the sidewalks. With any luck at all, we can kill the trail in here, anyway..’ Faber shook his hand. “I’ll tend to it. Good luck. If we’re both in good health, next week, the week after, get in touch. General Delivery, St. Louis. I’m sorry there’s no way I can go with you this time, by ear-phone. That was good for both of us. But my equipment was limited. You see, I never thought I would use it. What a silly old man. No thought there. Stupid, stupid. So I haven’t another green bullet, the right kind, to put in your head. Go now!” “One last thing. Quick. A suitcase, get it, fill it with your dirtiest clothes, an old suit, the dirtier the better, a shirt, some old sneakers and socks … .” Faber was gone and back in a minute. They sealed the cardboard valise with clear tape. “To keep the ancient odour of Mr. Faber in, of course,” said Faber sweating at the job. Montag doused the exterior of the valise with whisky. “I don’t want that Hound picking up two odours at once. May I take this whisky. I’ll need it later. Christ I hope this works!” They shook hands again and, going out of the door, they glanced at the TV. The Hound was on its way, followed by hovering helicopter cameras, silently, silently, sniffing the great night wind. It was running down the first alley. “Goodbye ! “ And Montag was out the back door lightly, running with the half-empty valise. Behind him he heard the lawn-sprinkling system jump up, filling the dark air with rain that fell gently and then with a steady pour all about, washing on the sidewalks, and draining into the alley. He carried a few drops of this rain with him on his face. He thought he heard the old man call good-bye, but he-wasn’t certain. He ran very fast away from the house, down toward the river. Montag ran. He could feel the Hound, like autumn, come cold and dry and swift, like a wind that didn’t stir grass, that didn’t jar windows or disturb leaf-shadows on the white sidewalks as it passed. The Hound did not touch the world. It carried its silence with it, so you could feel the silence building up a pressure behind you all across town. Montag felt the pressure rising, and ran. He stopped for breath, on his way to the river, to peer through dimly lit windows of wakened houses, and saw the silhouettes of people inside watching their parlour walls and there on the walls the Mechanical Hound, a breath of neon vapour, spidered along, here and gone, here and gone! Now at Elm Terrace, Lincoln, Oak, Park, and up the alley toward Faber’s house."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Go past, thought Montag, don’t stop, go on, don’t turn in! On the parlour wall, Faber’s house, with its sprinkler system pulsing in the night air. The Hound paused, quivering. No! Montag held to the window sill. This way! Here! The procaine needle flicked out and in, out and in. A single clear drop of the stuff of dreams fell from the needle as it vanished in the Hound’s muzzle. Montag held his breath, like a doubled fist, in his chest. The Mechanical Hound turned and plunged away from Faber’s house down the alley again. Montag snapped his gaze to the sky. The helicopters were closer, a great blowing of insects to a single light source. With an effort, Montag reminded himself again that this was no fictional episode to be watched on his run to the river; it was in actuality his own chess-game he was witnessing, move by move. He shouted to give himself the necessary push away from this last house window, and the fascinating seance going on in there! Hell! and he was away and gone! The alley, a street, the alley, a street, and the smell of the river. Leg out, leg down, leg out and down. Twenty million Montags running, soon, if the cameras caught him. Twenty million Montags running, running like an ancient flickery Keystone Comedy, cops, robbers, chasers and the chased, hunters and hunted, he had seen it a thousand times. Behind him now twenty million silently baying Hounds ricocheted across parlours, three-cushion shooting from right wall to centre wall to left wall, gone, right wall, centre wall, left wall, gone ! Montag jammed his Seashell to his ear. “Police suggest entire population in the Elm Terrace area do as follows: Everyone in every house in every street open a front or rear door or look from the windows. The fugitive cannot escape if everyone in the next minute looks from his house. Ready! “ Of course! Why hadn’t they done it before! Why, in all the years, hadn’t this game been tried! Everyone up, everyone out! He couldn’t be missed! The only man running alone in the night city, the only man proving his legs! “At the count of ten now! One! Two!” He felt the city rise. Three . He felt the city turn to its thousands of doors. Faster! Leg up, leg down ! “Four ! “ The people sleepwalking in their hallways. “Five! “ He felt their hands on the doorknobs! The smell of the river was cool and like a solid rain. His throat was burnt rust and his eyes were wept dry with running. He yelled as if this yell would jet him on, fling him the last hundred yards. “Six, seven, eight ! “ The doorknobs turned on five thousand doors. “Nine!” He ran out away from the last row of houses, on a slope leading down to a solid moving blackness. “Ten!” The doors opened."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "He imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into yards, into alleys, and into the sky, faces hid by curtains, pale, night-frightened faces, like grey animals peering from electric caves, faces with grey colourless eyes, grey tongues and grey thoughts looking out through the numb flesh of the face. But he was at the river. He touched it, just to be sure it was real. He waded in and stripped in darkness to the skin, splashed his body, arms, legs, and head with raw liquor; drank it and snuffed some up his nose. Then he dressed in Faber’s old clothes and shoes. He tossed his own clothing into the river and watched it swept away. Then, holding the suitcase, he walked out in the river until there was no bottom and he was swept away in the dark. He was three hundred yards downstream when the Hound reached the river. Overhead the great racketing fans of the helicopters hovered. A storm of light fell upon the river and Montag dived under the great illumination as if the sun had broken the clouds. He felt the river pull him further on its way, into darkness. Then the lights switched back to the land, the helicopters swerved over the city again, as if they had picked up another trail. They were gone. The Hound was gone. Now there was only the cold river and Montag floating in a sudden peacefulness, away from the city and the lights and the chase, away from everything. He felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors. He felt as if he had left the great seance and all the murmuring ghosts. He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new. The black land slid by and he was going into the country among the hills: For the first time in a dozen years the stars were coming out above him, in great processions of wheeling fire. He saw a great juggernaut of stars form in the sky and threaten to roll over and crush him. He floated on his back when the valise filled and sank; the river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapours for supper. The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last, the leisure, to consider this month, this year, and a lifetime of years. He listened to his heart slow. His thoughts stopped rushing with his blood. He saw the moon low in the sky now. The moon there, and the light of the moon caused by what? By the sun, of course. And what lights the sun? Its own fire. And the sun goes on, day after day, burning and burning. The sun and time. The sun and time and burning. Burning. The river bobbled him along gently. Burning."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "The sun and every clock on the earth. It all came together and became a single thing in his mind. After a long time of floating on the land and a short time of floating in the river he knew why he must never burn again in his life. The sun burned every day. It burned Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen, and the sun burnt Time, that meant.that everything burned! One of them had to stop burning. The sun wouldn’t, certainly. So it looked as if it had to be Montag and the people he had worked with until a few short hours ago. Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in people’s heads, any way at all so long as it was safe, free from moths, silver-fish, rust and dry-rot, and men with matches. The world was full of burning of all types and sizes. Now the guild of the asbestos-weaver must open shop very soon. He felt his heel bump land, touch pebbles and rocks, scrape sand. The river had moved him toward shore. He looked in at the great black creature without eyes or light, without shape, with only a size that went a thousand miles without wanting to stop, with its grass hills and forests that were waiting for him. He hesitated to leave the comforting flow of the water. He expected the Hound there. Suddenly the trees might blow under a great wind of helicopters. But there was only the normal autumn wind high up, going by like another river. Why wasn’t the Hound running? Why had the search veered inland? Montag listened. Nothing. Nothing. Millie, he thought. All this country here. Listen to it! Nothing and nothing. So much silence, Millie, I wonder how you’d take it? Would you shout Shut up, shut up! Millie, Millie. And he was sad. Millie was not here and the Hound was not here, but the dry smell of hay blowing from some distant field put Montag on the land. He remembered a farm he had visited when he was very young, one of the rare times he had discovered that somewhere behind the seven veils of unreality, beyond the walls of parlours and beyond the tin moat of the city, cows chewed grass and pigs sat in warm ponds at noon and dogs barked after white sheep on a hill. Now, the dry smell of hay, the motion of the waters, made him think of sleeping in fresh hay in a lonely barn away from the loud highways, behind a quiet farmhouse, and under an ancient windmill that whirred like the sound of the passing years overhead."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.19", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "He lay in the high barn loft all night, listening to distant animals and insects and trees, the little motions and stirrings. During the night, he thought, below the loft, he would hear a sound like feet moving, perhaps. He would tense and sit up. The sound would move away, He would lie back and look out of the loft window, very late in the night, and see the lights go out in the farmhouse itself, until a very young and beautiful woman would sit in an unlit window, braiding her hair. It would be hard to see her, but her face would be like the face of the girl so long ago in his past now, so very long ago, the girl who had known the weather and never been burned by the fireflies, the girl who had known what dandelions meant rubbed off on your chin. Then, she would be gone from the warm window and appear again upstairs in her moon-whitened room. And then, to the sound of death, the sound of the jets cutting the sky into two black pieces beyond the horizon, he would lie in the loft, hidden and safe, watching those strange new stars over the rim of the earth, fleeing from the soft colour of dawn. In the morning he would not have needed sleep, for all the warm odours and sights of a complete country night would have rested and slept him while his eyes were wide and his mouth, when he thought to test it, was half a smile. And there at the bottom of the hayloft stair, waiting for him, would be the incredible thing. He would step carefully down, in the pink light of early morning, so fully aware of the world that he would be afraid, and stand over the small miracle and at last bend to touch it. A cool glass of fresh milk, and a few apples and pears laid at the foot of the steps. This was all he wanted now. Some sign that the immense world would accept him and give him the long time needed to think all the things that must be thought. A glass of milk, an apple, a pear. He stepped from the river. The land rushed at him, a tidal wave. He was crushed by darkness and the look of the country and the million odours on a wind that iced his body. He fell back under the breaking curve of darkness and sound and smell, his ears roaring. He whirled. The stars poured over his sight like flaming meteors. He wanted to plunge in the river again and let it idle him safely on down somewhere. This dark land rising was like that day in his childhood, swimming, when from nowhere the largest wave in the history of remembering slammed him down in salt mud and green darkness, water burning mouth and nose, retching his stomach, screaming! Too much water! Too much land!"}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.20", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Out of the black wall before him, a whisper. A shape. In the shape, two eyes. The night looking at him. The forest, seeing him. The Hound! After all the running and rushing and sweating it out and half-drowning, to come this far, work this hard, and think yourself safe and sigh with relief and come out on the land at last only to find … The Hound! Montag gave one last agonized shout as if this were too much for any man. The shape exploded away. The eyes vanished. The leafpiles flew up in a dry shower. Montag was alone in the wilderness. A deer. He smelled the heavy musk-like perfume mingled with blood and the gummed exhalation of the animal’s breath, all cardamon and moss and ragweed odour in this huge night where the trees ran at him, pulled away, ran, pulled away, to the pulse of the heart behind his eyes. There must have been a billion leaves on the land; he waded in them, a dry river smelling of hot cloves and warm dust. And the other smells! There was a smell like a cut potato from all the land, raw and cold and white from having the moon on it most of the night. There was a smell like pickles from a bottle and a smell like parsley on the table at home. There was a faint yellow odour like mustard from a jar. There was a smell like carnations from the yard next door. He put down his hand and felt a weed rise up like a child brushing him. His fingers smelled of liquorice. He stood breathing, and the more he breathed the land in, the more he was filled up with all the details of the land. He was not empty. There was more than enough here to fill him. There would always be more than enough. He walked in the shallow tide of leaves, stumbling. And in the middle of the strangeness, a familiarity. His foot hit something that rang dully. He moved his hand on the ground, a yard this way, a yard that. The railroad track. The track that came out of the city and rusted across the land, through forests and woods, deserted now, by the river. Here was the path to wherever he was going. Here was the single familiar thing, the magic charm he might need a little while, to touch, to feel beneath his feet, as he moved on into the bramble bushes and the lakes of smelling and feeling and touching, among the whispers and the blowing down of leaves. He walked on the track. And he was surprised to learn how certain he suddenly was of a single fact he could not prove. Once, long ago, Clarisse had walked here, where he was walking now."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.21", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Half an hour later, cold, and moving carefully on the tracks, fully aware of his entire body, his face, his mouth, his eyes stuffed with blackness, his ears stuffed with sound, his legs prickled with burrs and nettles, he saw the fire ahead. The fire was gone, then back again, like a winking eye. He stopped, afraid he might blow the fire out with a single breath. But the fire was there and he approached warily, from a long way off. It took the better part of fifteen minutes before he drew very close indeed to it, and then he stood looking at it from cover. That small motion, the white and red colour, a strange fire because it meant a different thing to him. It was not burning; it was warming! He saw many hands held to its warmth, hands without arms, hidden in darkness. Above the hands, motionless faces that were only moved and tossed and flickered with firelight. He hadn’t known fire could look this way. He had never thought in his life that it could give as well as take. Even its smell was different. How long he stood he did not know, but there was a foolish and yet delicious sense of knowing himself as an animal come from the forest, drawn by the fire. He was a thing of brush and liquid eye, of fur and muzzle and hoof, he was a thing of horn and blood that would smell like autumn if you bled it out on the ground. He stood a long long time, listening to the warm crackle of the flames. There was a silence gathered all about that fire and the silence was in the men’s faces, and time was there, time enough to sit by this rusting track under the trees, and look at the world and turn it over with the eyes, as if it were held to the centre of the bonfire, a piece of steel these men were all shaping. It was not only the fire that was different. It was the silence. Montag moved toward this special silence that was concerned with all of the world. And then the voices began and they were talking, and he could hear nothing of what the voices said, but the sound rose and fell quietly and the voices were turning the world over and looking at it; the voices knew the land and the trees and the city which lay down the track by the river. The voices talked of everything, there was nothing they could not talk about, he knew from the very cadence and motion and continual stir of curiosity and wonder in them. And then one of the men looked up and saw him, for the first or perhaps the seventh time, and a voice called to Montag: “All right, you can come out now ! “ Montag stepped back into the shadows. “It’s all right,” the voice said."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.22", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "“You’re welcome here.” Montag walked slowly toward the fire and the five old men sitting there dressed in dark blue denim pants and jackets and dark blue suits. He did not know what to say to them. “Sit down,” said the man who seemed to be the leader of the small group. “Have some coffee?” He watched the dark steaming mixture pour into a collapsible tin cup, which was handed him straight off. He sipped it gingerly and felt them looking at him with curiosity. His lips were scalded, but that was good. The faces around him were bearded, but the beards were clean, neat, and their hands were clean. They had stood up as if to welcome a guest, and now they sat down again. Montag sipped. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks very much.” “You’re welcome, Montag. My name’s Granger.” He held out a small bottle of colourless fluid. “Drink this, too. It’ll change the chemical index of your perspiration. Half an hour from now you’ll smell like two other people. With the Hound after you, the best thing is Bottoms up.” Montag drank the bitter fluid. “You’ll stink like a bobcat, but that’s all right,” said Granger. “You know my name;” said Montag. Granger nodded to a portable battery TV set by the fire. “We’ve watched the chase. Figured you’d wind up south along the river. When we heard you plunging around out in the forest like a drunken elk, we didn’t hide as we usually do. We figured you were in the river, when the helicopter cameras swung back in over the city. Something funny there. The chase is still running. The other way, though.” “The other way?” “Let’s have a look.” Granger snapped the portable viewer on. The picture was a nightmare, condensed, easily passed from hand to hand, in the forest, all whirring colour and flight. A voice cried: “The chase continues north in the city! Police helicopters are converging on Avenue 87 and Elm Grove Park!” Granger nodded. “They’re faking. You threw them off at the river. They can’t admit it. They know they can hold their audience only so long. The show’s got to have a snap ending, quick! If they started searching the whole damn river it might take all night. So they’re sniffing for a scape-goat to end things with a bang. Watch. They’ll catch Montag in the next five minutes! “ “But how—” “Watch.” The camera, hovering in the belly of a helicopter, now swung down at an empty street. “See that?” whispered Granger. “It’ll be you; right up at the end of that street is our victim. See how our camera is coming in? Building the scene. Suspense. Long shot. Right now, some poor fellow is out for a walk. A rarity. An odd one."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.23", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Don’t think the police don’t know the habits of queer ducks like that, men who walk mornings for the hell of it, or for reasons of insomnia Anyway, the police have had him charted for months, years. Never know when that sort of information might be handy. And today, it turns out, it’s very usable indeed. It saves face. Oh, God, look there!” The men at the fire bent forward. On the screen, a man turned a corner. The Mechanical Hound rushed forward into the viewer, suddenly. The helicopter light shot down a dozen brilliant pillars that built a cage all about the man. A voice cried, “There’s Montag ! The search is done!” The innocent man stood bewildered, a cigarette burning in his hand. He stared at the Hound, not knowing what it was. He probably never knew. He glanced up at the sky and the wailing sirens. The cameras rushed down. The Hound leapt up into the air with a rhythm and a sense of timing that was incredibly beautiful. Its needle shot out. It was suspended for a moment in their gaze, as if to give the vast audience time to appreciate everything, the raw look of the victim’s face, the empty street, the steel animal a bullet nosing the target. “Montag, don’t move!” said a voice from the sky. The camera fell upon the victim, even as did the Hound. Both reached him simultaneously. The victim was seized by Hound and camera in a great spidering, clenching grip. He screamed. He screamed. He screamed! Blackout. Silence. Darkness. Montag cried out in the silence and turned away. Silence. And then, after a time of the men sitting around the fire, their faces expressionless, an announcer on the dark screen said, “The search is over, Montag is dead; a crime against society has been avenged.” Darkness. “We now take you to the Sky Room of the Hotel Lux for a half-hour of Just-Before-Dawn, a programme of-” Granger turned it off. “They didn’t show the man’s face in focus. Did you notice? Even your best friends couldn’t tell if it was you. They scrambled it just enough to let the imagination take over. Hell,” he whispered. “Hell.” Montag said nothing but now, looking back, sat with his eyes fixed to the blank screen, trembling. Granger touched Montag’s arm. “Welcome back from the dead.” Montag nodded. Granger went on. “You might as well know all of us, now. This is Fred Clement, former occupant of the Thomas Hardy chair at Cambridge in the years before it became an Atomic Engineering School. This other is Dr. Simmons from U.C.L.A., a specialist in Ortega y Gasset; Professor West here did quite a bit for ethics, an ancient study now, for Columbia University quite some years ago. Reverend Padover here gave a few lectures thirty years ago and lost his flock between one Sunday and the next for his views. He’s been bumming with us some time now."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.24", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Myself: I wrote a book called The Fingers in the Glove; the Proper Relationship between the Individual and Society, and here I am! Welcome, Montag! “ “I don’t belong with you,” said Montag, at last, slowly. “I’ve been an idiot all the way.” “We’re used to that. We all made the right kind of mistakes, or we wouldn’t be here. When we were separate individuals, all we had was rage. I struck a fireman when he came to burn my library years ago. I’ve been running ever since. You want to join us, Montag?” “Yes.” “What have you to offer?” “Nothing. I thought I had part of the Book of Ecclesiastes and maybe a little of Revelation, but I haven’t even that now.” “The Book of Ecclesiastes would be fine. Where was it?” “Here,” Montag touched his head. “Ah,” Granger smiled and nodded. “What’s wrong? Isn’t that all right?” said Montag. “Better than all right; perfect!” Granger turned to the Reverend. “Do we have a Book of Ecclesiastes?” “One. A man named Harris of Youngstown.” “Montag.” Granger took Montag’s shoulder firmly. “Walk carefully. Guard your health. If anything should happen to Harris, you are the Book of Ecclesiastes. See how important you’ve become in the last minute!” “But I’ve forgotten!” “No, nothing’s ever lost. We have ways to shake down your clinkers for you.” “But I’ve tried to remember!” “Don’t try. It’ll come when we need it. All of us have photographic memories, but spend a lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there. Simmons here has worked on it for twenty years and now we’ve got the method down to where we can recall anything that’s been read once. Would you like, some day, Montag, to read Plato’s Republic?” “Of course!” “I am Plato’s Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Mr. Simmons is Marcus.” “How do you do?” said Mr. Simmons. “Hello,” said Montag. “I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver’s Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” Everyone laughed quietly. “It can’t be,” said Montag. “It is,” replied Granger, smiling. ” We’re book-burners, too. We read the books and burnt them, afraid they’d be found. Micro-filming didn’t pay off; we were always travelling, we didn’t want to bury the film and come back later. Always the chance of discovery. Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it. We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law, Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli, or Christ, it’s here. And the hour is late."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.25", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "And the war’s begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colours. What do you think, Montag?” “I think I was blind trying to do things my way, planting books in firemen’s houses and sending in alarms.” “You did what you had to do. Carried out on a national scale, it might have worked beautifully. But our way is simpler and, we think, better. All we want to do is keep the knowledge we think we will need, intact and safe. We’re not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good. We are model citizens, in our own special way; we walk the old tracks, we lie in the hills at night, and the city people let us be. We’re stopped and searched occasionally, but there’s nothing on our persons to incriminate us. The organization is flexible, very loose, and fragmentary. Some of us have had plastic surgery on our faces and fingerprints. Right now we have a horrible job; we’re waiting for the war to begin and, as quickly, end. It’s not pleasant, but then we’re not in control, we’re the odd minority crying in the wilderness. When the war’s over, perhaps we can be of some use in the world.” “Do you really think they’ll listen then?” “If not, we’ll just have to wait. We’ll pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth, and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people. A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can’t last.” “How many of you are there?” “Thousands on the roads, the abandoned railtracks, tonight, bums on the outside, libraries inside. It wasn’t planned, at first. Each man had a book he wanted to remember, and did. Then, over a period of twenty years or so, we met each other, travelling, and got the loose network together and set out a plan. The most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves was that we were not important, we mustn’t be pedants; we were not to feel superior to anyone else in the world. We’re nothing more than dust-jackets for books, of no significance otherwise. Some of us live in small towns. Chapter One of Thoreau’s Walden in Green River, Chapter Two in Willow Farm, Maine. Why, there’s one town in Maryland, only twenty-seven people, no bomb’ll ever touch that town, is the complete essays of a man named Bertrand Russell. Pick up that town, almost, and flip the pages, so many pages to a person."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.26", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "And when the war’s over, some day, some year, the books can be written again, the people will be called in, one by one, to recite what they know and we’ll set it up in type until another Dark Age, when we might have to do the whole damn thing over again. But that’s the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing.” “What do we do tonight?” asked Montag. “Wait,” said Granger. “And move downstream a little way, just in case.” He began throwing dust and dirt on the fire. The other men helped, and Montag helped, and there, in the wilderness, the men all moved their hands, putting out the fire together. They stood by the river in the starlight. Montag saw the luminous dial of his waterproof. Five. Five o’clock in the morning. Another year ticked by in a single hour, and dawn waiting beyond the far bank of the river. “Why do you trust me?” said Montag. A man moved in the darkness. “The look of you’s enough. You haven’t seen yourself in a mirror lately. Beyond that, the city has never cared so much about us to bother with an elaborate chase like this to find us. A few crackpots with verses in their heads can’t touch them, and they know it and we know it; everyone knows it. So long as the vast population doesn’t wander about quoting the Magna Charta and the Constitution, it’s all right. The firemen were enough to check that, now and then. No, the cities don’t bother us. And you look like hell.” They moved along the bank of the river, going south. Montag tried to see the men’s faces, the old faces he remembered from the firelight, lined and tired. He was looking for a brightness, a resolve, a triumph over tomorrow that hardly seemed to be there. Perhaps he had expected their faces to burn and glitter with the knowledge they carried, to glow as lanterns glow, with the light in them. But all the light had come from the camp fire, and these men had seemed no different from any others who had run a long race, searched a long search, seen good things destroyed, and now, very late, were gathering to wait for the end of the party and the blowing out of the lamps. They weren’t at all certain that the things they carried in their heads might make every future dawn glow with a purer light, they were sure of nothing save that the books were on file behind their quiet eyes, the books were waiting, with their pages uncut, for the customers who might come by in later years, some with clean and some with dirty fingers. Montag squinted from one face to another as they walked. “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” someone said."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.27", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "And they all laughed quietly, moving downstream. There was a shriek and the jets from the city were gone overhead long before the men looked up. Montag stared back at the city, far down the river, only a faint glow now. “My wife’s back there.” “I’m sorry to hear that. The cities won’t do well in the next few days,” said Granger. “It’s strange, I don’t miss her, it’s strange I don’t feel much of anything,” said Montag. “Even if she dies, I realized a moment ago, I don’t think I’ll feel sad. It isn’t right. Something must be wrong with me.” “Listen,” said Granger, taking his arm, and walking with him, holding aside the bushes to let him pass. “When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor. He was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world, and he helped clean up the slum in our town; and he made toys for us and he did a million things in his lifetime; he was always busy with his hands. And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the back yard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think, what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.” Montag walked in silence. “Millie, Millie,” he whispered. “Millie.” “What?” “My wife, my wife. Poor Millie, poor Millie. I can’t remember anything. I think of her hands but I don’t see them doing anything at all. They just hang there at her sides or they lie there on her lap or there’s a cigarette in them, but that’s all.” Montag turned and glanced back. What did you give to the city, Montag? Ashes. What did the others give to each other? Nothingness. Granger stood looking back with Montag. “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.28", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” Granger moved his hand. “My grandfather showed me some V-2 rocket films once, fifty years ago. Have you ever seen the atom-bomb mushroom from two hundred miles up? It’s a pinprick, it’s nothing. With the wilderness all around it. “My grandfather ran off the V-2 rocket film a dozen times and then hoped that some day our cities would open up and let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to remind people that we’re allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big. When we forget how close the wilderness is in the night, my grandpa said, some day it will come in and get us, for we will have forgotten how terrible and real it can be. You see?” Granger turned to Montag. “Grandfather’s been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the convolutions of my brain you’d find the big ridges of his thumbprint. He touched me. As I said earlier, he was a sculptor. ‘I hate a Roman named Status Quo!’ he said to me. ‘Stuff your eyes with wonder,’ he said, ‘live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,’ he said, ‘shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.’” “Look!” cried Montag. And the war began and ended in that instant. Later, the men around Montag could not say if they had really seen anything. Perhaps the merest flourish of light and motion in the sky. Perhaps the bombs were there, and the jets, ten miles, five miles, one mile up, for the merest instant, like grain thrown over the heavens by a great sowing hand, and the bombs drifting with dreadful swiftness, yet sudden slowness, down upon the morning city they had left behind. The bombardment was to all intents and purposes finished, once the jets had sighted their target, alerted their bombardiers at five thousand miles an hour; as quick as the whisper of a scythe the war was finished."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.29", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Once the bomb-release was yanked it was over. Now, a full three seconds, all of the time in history, before the bombs struck, the enemy ships themselves were gone half around the visible world, like bullets in which a savage islander might not believe because they were invisible; yet the heart is suddenly shattered, the body falls in separate motions and the blood is astonished to be freed on the air; the brain squanders its few precious memories and, puzzled, dies. This was not to be believed. It was merely a gesture. Montag saw the flirt of a great metal fist over the far city and he knew the scream of the jets that would follow, would say, after the deed, disintegrate, leave no stone on another, perish. Die. Montag held the bombs in the sky for a single moment, with his mind and his hands reaching helplessly up at them. “Run!” he cried to Faber. To Clarisse, “Run!” To Mildred, “Get out, get out of there! ” But Clarisse, he remembered, was dead. And Faber was out; there in the deep valleys of the country somewhere the five a.m. bus was on its way from one desolation to another. Though the desolation had not yet arrived, was still in the air, it was certain as man could make it. Before the bus had run another fifty yards on the highway, its destination would be meaningless, and its point of departure changed from metropolis to junkyard. And Mildred … Get out, run! He saw her in her hotel room somewhere now in the halfsecond remaining with the bombs a yard, a foot, an inch from her building. He saw her leaning toward the great shimmering walls of colour and motion where the family talked and talked and talked to her, where the family prattled and chatted and said her name and smiled at her and said nothing of the bomb that was an inch, now a half-inch, now a quarter-inch from the top of the hotel. Leaning into the wall as if all of the hunger of looking would find the secret of her sleepless unease there. Mildred, leaning anxiously, nervously, as if to plunge, drop, fall into that swarming immensity of colour to drown in its bright happiness. The first bomb struck. “Mildred! “ Perhaps, who would ever know? Perhaps the great broadcasting stations with their beams of colour and light and talk and chatter went first into oblivion."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.30", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Montag, falling flat, going down, saw or felt, or imagined he saw or felt the walls go dark in Millie’s face, heard her screaming, because in the millionth part of time left, she saw her own face reflected there, in a mirror instead of a crystal ball, and it was such a wildly empty face, all by itself in the room, touching nothing, starved and eating of itself, that at last she recognized it as her own and looked quickly up at the ceiling as it and the entire structure of the hotel blasted down upon her, carrying her with a million pounds of brick, metal, plaster, and wood, to meet other people in the hives below, all on their quick way down to the cellar where the explosion rid itself of them in its own unreasonable way. I remember. Montag clung to the earth. I remember. Chicago. Chicago, a long time ago. Millie and I. That’s where we met! I remember now. Chicago. A long time ago. The concussion knocked the air across and down the river, turned the men over like dominoes in a line, blew the water in lifting sprays, and blew the dust and made the trees above them mourn with a great wind passing away south. Montag crushed himself down, squeezing himself small, eyes tight. He blinked once. And in that instant saw the city, instead of the bombs, in the air. They had displaced each other. For another of those impossible instants the city stood, rebuilt and unrecognizable, taller than it had ever hoped or strived to be, taller than man had built it, erected at last in gouts of shattered concrete and sparkles of torn metal into a mural hung like a reversed avalanche, a million colours, a million oddities, a door where a window should be, a top for a bottom, a side for a back, and then the city rolled over and fell down dead. Montag, lying there, eyes gritted shut with dust, a fine wet cement of dust in his now shut mouth, gasping and crying, now thought again, I remember, I remember, I remember something else. What is it? Yes, yes, part of the Ecclesiastes and Revelation. Part of that book, part of it, quick now, quick, before it gets away, before the shock wears off, before the wind dies. Book of Ecclesiastes. Here. He said it over to himself silently, lying flat to the trembling earth, he said the words of it many times and they were perfect without trying and there was no Denham’s Dentifrice anywhere, it was just the Preacher by himself, standing there in his mind, looking at him …. “There,” said a voice. The men lay gasping like fish laid out on the grass."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.31", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "They held to the earth as children hold to familiar things, no matter how cold or dead, no matter what has happened or will happen, their fingers were clawed into the dirt, and they were all shouting to keep their eardrums from bursting, to keep their sanity from bursting, mouths open, Montag shouting with them, a protest against the wind that ripped their faces and tore at their lips, making their noses bleed. Montag watched the great dust settle and the great silence move down upon their world. And lying there it seemed that he saw every single grain of dust and every blade of grass and that he heard every cry and shout and whisper going up in the world now. Silence fell down in the sifting dust, and all the leisure they might need to look around, to gather the reality of this day into their senses. Montag looked at the river. We’ll go on the river. He looked at the old railroad tracks. Or we’ll go that way. Or we’ll walk on the highways now, and we’ll have time to put things into ourselves. And some day, after it sets in us a long time, it’ll come out of our hands and our mouths. And a lot of it will be wrong, but just enough of it will be right. We’ll just start walking today and see the world and the way the world walks around and talks, the way it really looks. I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it’ll all gather together inside and it’ll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it’s finally me, where it’s in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so it’ll never run off. I’ll hold on to the world tight some day. I’ve got one finger on it now; that’s a beginning. The wind died. The other men lay a while, on the dawn edge of sleep, not yet ready to rise up and begin the day’s obligations, its fires and foods, its thousand details of putting foot after foot and hand after hand. They lay blinking their dusty eyelids. You could hear them breathing fast, then slower, then slow …. Montag sat up. He did not move any further, however. The other men did likewise. The sun was touching the black horizon with a faint red tip. The air was cold and smelled of a coming rain. Silently, Granger arose, felt his arms, and legs, swearing, swearing incessantly under his breath, tears dripping from his face. He shuffled down to the river to look upstream. “It’s flat,” he said, a long time later. “City looks like a heap of baking-powder."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.32", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "It’s gone.” And a long time after that. “I wonder how many knew it was coming? I wonder how many were surprised?” And across the world, thought Montag, how many other cities dead? And here in our country, how many? A hundred, a thousand? Someone struck a match and touched it to a piece of dry paper taken from their pocket, and shoved this under a bit of grass and leaves, and after a while added tiny twigs which were wet and sputtered but finally caught, and the fire grew larger in the early morning as the sun came up and the men slowly turned from looking up river and were drawn to the fire, awkwardly, with nothing to say, and the sun coloured the backs of their necks as they bent down. Granger unfolded an oilskin with some bacon in it. “We’ll have a bite. Then we’ll turn around and walk upstream. They’ll be needing us up that way.” Someone produced a small frying-pan and the bacon went into it and the frying-pan was set on the fire. After a moment the bacon began to flutter and dance in the pan and the sputter of it filled the morning air with its aroma. The men watched this ritual silently. Granger looked into the fire. “Phoenix.” “What?” “There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we’ll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation.” He took the pan off the fire and let the bacon cool and they ate it, slowly, thoughtfully. “Now, let’s get on upstream,” said Granger. “And hold on to one thought: You’re not important. You’re not anything. Some day the load we’re carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn’t use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We’re going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, We’re remembering. That’s where we’ll win out in the long run."}
{"ID": "1954 Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 -- Fahrenheit 451 -- 41bd94c5bf3c38fd175459091b94772e -- Anna’s Archive.33", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "And some day we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest goddam steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we’re going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them.” They finished eating and put out the fire. The day was brightening all about them as if a pink lamp had been given more wick. In the trees, the birds that had flown away now came back and settled down. Montag began walking and after a moment found that the others had fallen in behind him, going north. He was surprised, and moved aside to let Granger pass, but Granger looked at him and nodded him on. Montag went ahead. He looked at the river and the sky and the rusting track going back down to where the farms lay, where the barns stood full of hay, where a lot of people had walked by in the night on their way from the city. Later, in a month or six months, and certainly not more than a year, he would walk along here again, alone, and keep right on going until he caught up with the people. But now there was a long morning’s walk until noon, and if the men were silent it was because there was everything to think about and much to remember. Perhaps later in the morning, when the sun was up and had warmed them, they would begin to talk, or just say the things they remembered, to be sure they were there, to be absolutely certain that things were safe in them. Montag felt the slow stir of words, the slow simmer. And when it came to his turn, what could he say, what could he offer on a day like this, to make the trip a little easier? To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. Yes, all that. But what else. What else? Something, something … And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. Yes, thought Montag, that’s the one I’ll save for noon. For noon… When we reach the city."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_ack_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In preparing this novel, I have drawn on the work of many eminent paleontologists, particularly Robert Bakker, John Horner, John Ostrom, and Gregory Paul. I have also made use of the efforts of the new generation of illustrators, including Kenneth Carpenter, Margaret Colbert, Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas, John Gurche, Mark Hallett, Douglas Henderson, and William Stout, whose reconstructions incorporate the new perception of how dinosaurs behaved. Certain ideas presented here about paleo-DNA, the genetic material of extinct animals, were first articulated by Charles Pellegrino, based on the research by George O. Poinar, Jr., and Roberta Hess, who formed the Extinct DNA Study Group at Berkeley. Some discussions of chaos theory derive in part from the commentaries of Ivar Ekeland and James Gleick. The computer programs of Bob Gross inspired some of the graphics. The work of the late Heinz Pagels provoked Ian Malcolm. However, this book is entirely fiction, and the views expressed here are my own, as are whatever factual errors exist in the text."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_adc_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park Books by Michael Crichton The Andromeda Strain The Terminal Man The Great Train Robbery Eaters of the Dead Congo Sphere Travels Jurassic Park Rising Sun The Lost World Disclosure Airframe Timeline"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_ata_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Crichton’s novels include The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, Congo, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure, and The Lost World. He was also the creator of the television series ER. Crichton died in 2008."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c01_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park ALMOST PARADISE Mike Bowman whistled cheerfully as he drove the Land Rover through the Cabo Blanco Biological Reserve, on the west coast of Costa Rica. It was a beautiful morning in July, and the road before him was spectacular: hugging the edge of a cliff, overlooking the jungle and the blue Pacific. According to the guidebooks, Cabo Blanco was unspoiled wilderness, almost a paradise. Seeing it now made Bowman feel as if the vacation was back on track. Bowman, a thirty-six-year-old real estate developer from Dallas, had come to Costa Rica with his wife and daughter for a two-week holiday. The trip had actually been his wife’s idea; for weeks Ellen had filled his ear about the wonderful national parks of Costa Rica, and how good it would be for Tina to see them. Then, when they arrived, it turned out Ellen had an appointment to see a plastic surgeon in San José. That was the first Mike Bowman had heard about the excellent and inexpensive plastic surgery available in Costa Rica, and all the luxurious private clinics in San José. Of course they’d had a huge fight. Mike felt she’d lied to him, and she had. And he put his foot down about this plastic surgery business. Anyway, it was ridiculous, Ellen was only thirty, and she was a beautiful woman. Hell, she’d been Homecoming Queen her senior year at Rice, and that was not even ten years earlier. But Ellen tended to be insecure, and worried. And it seemed as if in recent years she had mostly worried about losing her looks. That, and everything else. The Land Rover bounced in a pothole, splashing mud. Seated beside him, Ellen said, “Mike, are you sure this is the right road? We haven’t seen any other people for hours.” “There was another car fifteen minutes ago,” he reminded her. “Remember, the blue one?” “Going the other way …” “Darling, you wanted a deserted beach,” he said, “and that’s what you’re going to get.” Ellen shook her head doubtfully. “I hope you’re right.” “Yeah, Dad, I hope you’re right,” said Christina, from the backseat. She was eight years old. “Trust me, I’m right.” He drove in silence a moment. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Look at that view. It’s beautiful.” “It’s okay,” Tina said. Ellen got out a compact and looked at herself in the mirror, pressing under her eyes. She sighed, and put the compact away. The road began to descend, and Mike Bowman concentrated on driving. Suddenly a small black shape flashed across the road and Tina shrieked, “Look! Look!” Then it was gone, into the jungle. “What was it?” Ellen asked. “A monkey?” “Maybe a squirrel monkey,” Bowman said. “Can I count it?” Tina said, taking her pencil out. She was keeping a list of all the animals she had seen on her trip, as a project for school. “I don’t know,” Mike said doubtfully. Tina consulted the pictures in the guidebook."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c01_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I don’t think it was a squirrel monkey,” she said. “I think it was just another howler.” They had seen several howler monkeys already on their trip. “Hey,” she said, more brightly. “According to this book, ‘the beaches of Cabo Blanco are frequented by a variety of wildlife, including howler and white-faced monkeys, three-toed sloths, and coatimundis.’ You think we’ll see a three-toed sloth, Dad?” “I bet we do.” “Really?” “Just look in the mirror.” “Very funny, Dad.” The road sloped downward through the jungle, toward the ocean. Mike Bowman felt like a hero when they finally reached the beach: a two-mile crescent of white sand, utterly deserted. He parked the Land Rover in the shade of the palm trees that fringed the beach, and got out the box lunches. Ellen changed into her bathing suit, saying, “Honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to get this weight off.” “You look great, hon.” Actually, he felt that she was too thin, but he had learned not to mention that. Tina was already running down the beach. “Don’t forget you need your sunscreen,” Ellen called. “Later,” Tina shouted, over her shoulder. “I’m going to see if there’s a sloth.” Ellen Bowman looked around at the beach, and the trees. “You think she’s all right?” “Honey, there’s nobody here for miles,” Mike said. “What about snakes?” “Oh, for God’s sake,” Mike Bowman said. “There’s no snakes on a beach.” “Well, there might be.…” “Honey,” he said firmly. “Snakes are cold-blooded. They’re reptiles. They can’t control their body temperature. It’s ninety degrees on that sand. If a snake came out, it’d be cooked. Believe me. There’s no snakes on the beach.” He watched his daughter scampering down the beach, a dark spot on the white sand. “Let her go. Let her have a good time.” He put his arm around his wife’s waist. Tina ran until she was exhausted, and then she threw herself down on the sand and gleefully rolled to the water’s edge. The ocean was warm, and there was hardly any surf at all. She sat for a while, catching her breath, and then she looked back toward her parents and the car, to see how far she had come. Her mother waved, beckoning her to return. Tina waved back cheerfully, pretending she didn’t understand. Tina didn’t want to put sunscreen on. And she didn’t want to go back and hear her mother talk about losing weight. She wanted to stay right here, and maybe see a sloth. Tina had seen a sloth two days earlier at the zoo in San José. It looked like a Muppets character, and it seemed harmless. In any case, it couldn’t move fast; she could easily outrun it. Now her mother was calling to her, and Tina decided to move out of the sun, back from the water, to the shade of the palm trees."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c01_r1.htm.txt", "text": "In this part of the beach, the palm trees overhung a gnarled tangle of mangrove roots, which blocked any attempt to penetrate inland. Tina sat in the sand and kicked the dried mangrove leaves. She noticed many bird tracks in the sand. Costa Rica was famous for its birds. The guidebooks said there were three times as many birds in Costa Rica as in all of America and Canada. In the sand, some of the three-toed bird tracks were small, and so faint they could hardly be seen. Other tracks were large, and cut deeper in the sand. Tina was looking idly at the tracks when she heard a chirping, followed by a rustling in the mangrove thicket. Did sloths make a chirping sound? Tina didn’t think so, but she wasn’t sure. The chirping was probably some ocean bird. She waited quietly, not moving, hearing the rustling again, and finally she saw the source of the sounds. A few yards away, a lizard emerged from the mangrove roots and peered at her. Tina held her breath. A new animal for her list! The lizard stood up on its hind legs, balancing on its thick tail, and stared at her. Standing like that, it was almost a foot tall, dark green with brown stripes along its back. Its tiny front legs ended in little lizard fingers that wiggled in the air. The lizard cocked its head as it looked at her. Tina thought it was cute. Sort of like a big salamander. She raised her hand and wiggled her fingers back. The lizard wasn’t frightened. It came toward her, walking upright on its hind legs. It was hardly bigger than a chicken, and like a chicken it bobbed its head as it walked. Tina thought it would make a wonderful pet. She noticed that the lizard left three-toed tracks that looked exactly like bird tracks. The lizard came closer to Tina. She kept her body still, not wanting to frighten the little animal. She was amazed that it would come so close, but she remembered that this was a national park. All the animals in the park would know that they were protected. This lizard was probably tame. Maybe it even expected her to give it some food. Unfortunately she didn’t have any. Slowly, Tina extended her hand, palm open, to show she didn’t have any food. The lizard paused, cocked his head, and chirped. “Sorry,” Tina said. “I just don’t have anything.” And then, without warning, the lizard jumped up onto her outstretched hand. Tina could feel its little toes pinching the skin of her palm, and she felt the surprising weight of the animal’s body pressing her arm down. And then the lizard scrambled up her arm, toward her face. “I just wish I could see her,” Ellen Bowman said, squinting in the sunlight. “That’s all. Just see her.” “I’m sure she’s fine,” Mike said, picking through the box lunch packed by the hotel."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c01_r1.htm.txt", "text": "There was unappetizing grilled chicken, and some kind of a meat-filled pastry. Not that Ellen would eat any of it. “You don’t think she’d leave the beach?” Ellen said. “No, hon, I don’t.” “I feel so isolated here,” Ellen said. “I thought that’s what you wanted,” Mike Bowman said. “I did.” “Well, then, what’s the problem?” “I just wish I could see her, is all,” Ellen said. Then, from down the beach, carried by the wind, they heard their daughter’s voice. She was screaming."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park PUNTARENAS “I think she is quite comfortable now,” Dr. Cruz said, lowering the plastic flap of the oxygen tent around Tina as she slept. Mike Bowman sat beside the bed, close to his daughter. Mike thought Dr. Cruz was probably pretty capable; he spoke excellent English, the result of training at medical centers in London and Baltimore. Dr. Cruz radiated competence, and the Clínica Santa María, the modern hospital in Puntarenas, was spotless and efficient. But, even so, Mike Bowman felt nervous. There was no getting around the fact that his only daughter was desperately ill, and they were far from home. When Mike had first reached Tina, she was screaming hysterically. Her whole left arm was bloody, covered with a profusion of small bites, each the size of a thumbprint. And there were flecks of sticky foam on her arm, like a foamy saliva. He carried her back down the beach. Almost immediately her arm began to redden and swell. Mike would not soon forget the frantic drive back to civilization, the four-wheel-drive Land Rover slipping and sliding up the muddy track into the hills, while his daughter screamed in fear and pain, and her arm grew more bloated and red. Long before they reached the park boundaries, the swelling had spread to her neck, and then Tina began to have trouble breathing.… “She’ll be all right now?” Ellen said, staring through the plastic oxygen tent. “I believe so,” Dr. Cruz said. “I have given her another dose of steroids, and her breathing is much easier. And you can see the edema in her arm is greatly reduced.” Mike Bowman said, “About those bites …” “We have no identification yet,” the doctor said. “I myself haven’t seen bites like that before. But you’ll notice they are disappearing. It’s already quite difficult to make them out. Fortunately I have taken photographs for reference. And I have washed her arm to collect some samples of the sticky saliva—one for analysis here, a second to send to the labs in San José, and the third we will keep frozen in case it is needed. Do you have the picture she made?” “Yes,” Mike Bowman said. He handed the doctor the sketch that Tina had drawn, in response to questions from the admitting officials. “This is the animal that bit her?” Dr. Cruz said, looking at the picture. “Yes,” Mike Bowman said. “She said it was a green lizard, the size of a chicken or a crow.” “I don’t know of such a lizard,” the doctor said. “She has drawn it standing on its hind legs.…” “That’s right,” Mike Bowman said. “She said it walked on its hind legs.” Dr. Cruz frowned. He stared at the picture a while longer. “I am not an expert. I’ve asked for Dr. Guitierrez to visit us here. He is a senior researcher at the Reserva Biológica de Carara, which is across the bay."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Perhaps he can identify the animal for us.” “Isn’t there someone from Cabo Blanco?” Bowman asked. “That’s where she was bitten.” “Unfortunately not,” Dr. Cruz said. “Cabo Blanco has no permanent staff, and no researcher has worked there for some time. You were probably the first people to walk on that beach in several months. But I am sure you will find Dr. Guitierrez to be knowledgeable.” Dr. Guitierrez turned out to be a bearded man wearing khaki shorts and shirt. The surprise was that he was American. He was introduced to the Bowmans, saying in a soft Southern accent, “Mr. and Mrs. Bowman, how you doing, nice to meet you,” and then explaining that he was a field biologist from Yale who had worked in Costa Rica for the last five years. Marty Guitierrez examined Tina thoroughly, lifting her arm gently, peering closely at each of the bites with a penlight, then measuring them with a small pocket ruler. After a while, Guitierrez stepped away, nodding to himself as if he had understood something. He then inspected the Polaroids, and asked several questions about the saliva, which Cruz told him was still being tested in the lab. Finally he turned to Mike Bowman and his wife, waiting tensely. “I think Tina’s going to be fine. I just want to be clear about a few details,” he said, making notes in a precise hand. “Your daughter says she was bitten by a green lizard, approximately one foot high, which walked upright onto the beach from the mangrove swamp?” “That’s right, yes.” “And the lizard made some kind of a vocalization?” “Tina said it chirped, or squeaked.” “Like a mouse, would you say?” “Yes.” “Well, then,” Dr. Guitierrez said, “I know this lizard.” He explained that, of the six thousand species of lizards in the world, no more than a dozen species walked upright. Of those species, only four were found in Latin America. And judging by the coloration, the lizard could be only one of the four. “I am sure this lizard was a Basiliscus amoratus, a striped basilisk lizard, found here in Costa Rica and also in Honduras. Standing on their hind legs, they are sometimes as tall as a foot.” “Are they poisonous?” “No, Mrs. Bowman. Not at all.” Guitierrez explained that the swelling in Tina’s arm was an allergic reaction. “According to the literature, fourteen percent of people are strongly allergic to reptiles,” he said, “and your daughter seems to be one of them.” “She was screaming, she said it was so painful.” “Probably it was,” Guitierrez said. “Reptile saliva contains serotonin, which causes tremendous pain.” He turned to Cruz. “Her blood pressure came down with antihistamines?” “Yes,” Cruz said. “Promptly.” “Serotonin,” Guitierrez said. “No question.” Still, Ellen Bowman remained uneasy. “But why would a lizard bite her in the first place?” “Lizard bites are very common,” Guitierrez said. “Animal handlers in zoos get bitten all the time."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And just the other day I heard that a lizard had bitten an infant in her crib in Amaloya, about sixty miles from where you were. So bites do occur. I’m not sure why your daughter had so many bites. What was she doing at the time?” “Nothing. She said she was sitting pretty still, because she didn’t want to frighten it away.” “Sitting pretty still,” Guitierrez said, frowning. He shook his head. “Well. I don’t think we can say exactly what happened. Wild animals are unpredictable.” “And what about the foamy saliva on her arm?” Ellen said. “I keep thinking about rabies.…” “No, no,” Dr. Guitierrez said. “A reptile can’t carry rabies, Mrs. Bowman. Your daughter has suffered an allergic reaction to the bite of a basilisk lizard. Nothing more serious.” Mike Bowman then showed Guitierrez the picture that Tina had drawn. Guitierrez nodded. “I would accept this as a picture of a basilisk lizard,” he said. “A few details are wrong, of course. The neck is much too long, and she has drawn the hind legs with only three toes instead of five. The tail is too thick, and raised too high. But otherwise this is a perfectly serviceable lizard of the kind we are talking about.” “But Tina specifically said the neck was long,” Ellen Bowman insisted. “And she said there were three toes on the foot.” “Tina’s pretty observant,” Mike Bowman said. “I’m sure she is,” Guitierrez said, smiling. “But I still think your daughter was bitten by a common basilisk amoratus, and had a severe herpetological reaction. Normal time course with medication is twelve hours. She should be just fine in the morning.” In the modern laboratory in the basement of the Clínica Santa María, word was received that Dr. Guitierrez had identified the animal that had bitten the American child as a harmless basilisk lizard. Immediately the analysis of the saliva was halted, even though a preliminary fractionation showed several extremely high molecular weight proteins of unknown biological activity. But the night technician was busy, and he placed the saliva samples on the holding shelf of the refrigerator. The next morning, the day clerk checked the holding shelf against the names of discharged patients. Seeing that BOWMAN, CHRISTINA L. was scheduled for discharge that morning, the clerk threw out the saliva samples. At the last moment, he noticed that one sample had the red tag which meant that it was to be forwarded to the university lab in San José. He retrieved the test tube from the wastebasket, and sent it on its way. “Go on. Say thank you to Dr. Cruz,” Ellen Bowman said, and pushed Tina forward. “Thank you, Dr. Cruz,” Tina said. “I feel much better now.” She reached up and shook the doctor’s hand. Then she said, “You have a different shirt.” For a moment Dr. Cruz looked perplexed; then he smiled. “That’s right, Tina."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "When I work all night at the hospital, in the morning I change my shirt.” “But not your tie?” “No. Just my shirt.” Ellen Bowman said, “Mike told you she’s observant.” “She certainly is.” Dr. Cruz smiled and shook the little girl’s hand gravely. “Enjoy the rest of your holiday in Costa Rica, Tina.” “I will.” The Bowman family had started to leave when Dr. Cruz said, “Oh, Tina, do you remember the lizard that bit you?” “Uh-huh.” “You remember its feet?” “Uh-huh.” “Did it have any toes?” “Yes.” “How many toes did it have?” “Three,” she said. “How do you know that?” “Because I looked,” she said. “Anyway, all the birds on the beach made marks in the sand with three toes, like this.” She held up her hand, middle three fingers spread wide. “And the lizard made those kind of marks in the sand, too.” “The lizard made marks like a bird?” “Uh-huh,” Tina said. “He walked like a bird, too. He jerked his head like this, up and down.” She took a few steps, bobbing her head. After the Bowmans had departed, Dr. Cruz decided to report this conversation to Guitierrez, at the biological station. “I must admit the girl’s story is puzzling,” Guitierrez said. “I have been doing some checking myself. I am no longer certain she was bitten by a basilisk. Not certain at all.” “Then what could it be?” “Well,” Guitierrez said, “let’s not speculate prematurely. By the way, have you heard of any other lizard bites at the hospital?” “No, why?” “Let me know, my friend, if you do.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c03_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park THE BEACH Marty Guitierrez sat on the beach and watched the afternoon sun fall lower in the sky, until it sparkled harshly on the water of the bay, and its rays reached beneath the palm trees, to where he sat among the mangroves, on the beach of Cabo Blanco. As best he could determine, he was sitting near the spot where the American girl had been, two days before. Although it was true enough, as he had told the Bowmans, that lizard bites were common, Guitierrez had never heard of a basilisk lizard biting anyone. And he had certainly never heard of anyone being hospitalized for a lizard bite. Then, too, the bite radius on Tina’s arm appeared slightly too large for a basilisk. When he got back to the Carara station, he had checked the small research library there, but found no reference to basilisk lizard bites. Next he checked International BioSciences Services, a computer database in America. But he found no references to basilisk bites, or hospitalization for lizard bites. He then called the medical officer in Amaloya, who confirmed that a nine-day-old infant, sleeping in its crib, had been bitten on the foot by an animal the grandmother—the only person actually to see it—claimed was a lizard. Subsequently the foot had become swollen and the infant had nearly died. The grandmother described the lizard as green with brown stripes. It had bitten the child several times before the woman frightened it away. “Strange,” Guitierrez had said. “No, like all the others,” the medical officer replied, adding that he had heard of other biting incidents: A child in Vásquez, the next village up the coast, had been bitten while sleeping. And another in Puerta Sotrero. All these incidents had occurred in the last two months. All had involved sleeping children and infants. Such a new and distinctive pattern led Guitierrez to suspect the presence of a previously unknown species of lizard. This was particularly likely to happen in Costa Rica. Only seventy-five miles wide at its narrowest point, the country was smaller than the state of Maine. Yet, within its limited space, Costa Rica had a remarkable diversity of biological habitats: seacoasts on both the Atlantic and the Pacific; four separate mountain ranges, including twelve-thousand-foot peaks and active volcanoes; rain forests, cloud forests, temperate zones, swampy marshes, and arid deserts. Such ecological diversity sustained an astonishing diversity of plant and animal life. Costa Rica had three times as many species of birds as all of North America. More than a thousand species of orchids. More than five thousand species of insects. New species were being discovered all the time at a pace that had increased in recent years, for a sad reason. Costa Rica was becoming deforested, and as jungle species lost their habitats, they moved to other areas, and sometimes changed behavior as well. So a new species was perfectly possible."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c03_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But along with the excitement of a new species was the worrisome possibility of new diseases. Lizards carried viral diseases, including several that could be transmitted to man. The most serious was central saurian encephalitis, or CSE, which caused a form of sleeping sickness in human beings and horses. Guitierrez felt it was important to find this new lizard, if only to test it for disease. Sitting on the beach, he watched the sun drop lower, and sighed. Perhaps Tina Bowman had seen a new animal, and perhaps not. Certainly Guitierrez had not. Earlier that morning, he had taken the air pistol, loaded the clip with ligamine darts, and set out for the beach with high hopes. But the day was wasted. Soon he would have to begin the drive back up the hill from the beach; he did not want to drive that road in darkness. Guitierrez got to his feet and started back up the beach. Farther along, he saw the dark shape of a howler monkey, ambling along the edge of the mangrove swamp. Guitierrez moved away, stepping out toward the water. If there was one howler, there would probably be others in the trees overhead, and howlers tended to urinate on intruders. But this particular howler monkey seemed to be alone, and walking slowly, and pausing frequently to sit on its haunches. The monkey had something in its mouth. As Guitierrez came closer, he saw it was eating a lizard. The tail and the hind legs drooped from the monkey’s jaws. Even from a distance, Guitierrez could see the brown stripes against the green. Guitierrez dropped to the ground and aimed the pistol. The howler monkey, accustomed to living in a protected reserve, stared curiously. He did not run away, even when the first dart whined harmlessly past him. When the second dart struck deep in the thigh, the howler shrieked in anger and surprise, dropping the remains of its meal as it fled into the jungle. Guitierrez got to his feet and walked forward. He wasn’t worried about the monkey; the tranquilizer dose was too small to give it anything but a few minutes of dizziness. Already he was thinking of what to do with his new find. Guitierrez himself would write the preliminary report, but the remains would have to be sent back to the United States for final positive identification, of course. To whom should he send it? The acknowledged expert was Edward H. Simpson, emeritus professor of zoology at Columbia University, in New York. An elegant older man with swept-back white hair, Simpson was the world’s leading authority on lizard taxonomy. Probably, Marty thought, he would send his lizard to Dr. Simpson."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park NEW YORK Dr. Richard Stone, head of the Tropical Diseases Laboratory of Columbia University Medical Center, often remarked that the name conjured up a grander place than it actually was. In the early twentieth century, when the laboratory occupied the entire fourth floor of the Biomedical Research Building, crews of technicians worked to eliminate the scourges of yellow fever, malaria, and cholera. But medical successes—and research laboratories in Nairobi and Sao Paulo—had left the TDL a much less important place than it once was. Now a fraction of its former size, it employed only two full-time technicians, and they were primarily concerned with diagnosing illnesses of New Yorkers who had traveled abroad. The lab’s comfortable routine was unprepared for what it received that morning. “Oh, very nice,” the technician in the Tropical Diseases Laboratory said, as she read the customs label. “Partially masticated fragment of unidentified Costa Rican lizard.” She wrinkled her nose. “This one’s all yours, Dr. Stone.” Richard Stone crossed the lab to inspect the new arrival. “Is this the material from Ed Simpson’s lab?” “Yes,” she said. “But I don’t know why they’d send a lizard to us.” “His secretary called,” Stone said. “Simpson’s on a field trip in Borneo for the summer, and because there’s a question of communicable disease with this lizard, she asked our lab to take a look at it. Let’s see what we’ve got.” The white plastic cylinder was the size of a half-gallon milk container. It had locking metal latches and a screw top. It was labeled “International Biological Specimen Container” and plastered with stickers and warnings in four languages. The warnings were intended to keep the cylinder from being opened by suspicious customs officials. Apparently the warnings had worked; as Richard Stone swung the big light over, he could see the seals were still intact. Stone turned on the air handlers and pulled on plastic gloves and a face mask. After all, the lab had recently identified specimens contaminated with Venezuelan equine fever, Japanese B encephalitis, Kyasanur Forest virus, Langat virus, and Mayaro. Then he unscrewed the top. There was the hiss of escaping gas, and white smoke boiled out. The cylinder turned frosty cold. Inside he found a plastic zip-lock sandwich bag, containing something green. Stone spread a surgical drape on the table and shook out the contents of the bag. A piece of frozen flesh struck the table with a dull thud. “Huh,” the technician said. “Looks eaten.” “Yes, it does,” Stone said. “What do they want with us?” The technician consulted the enclosed documents. “Lizard is biting local children. They have a question about identification of the species, and a concern about diseases transmitted from the bite.” She produced a child’s picture of a lizard, signed TINA at the top. “One of the kids drew a picture of the lizard.” Stone glanced at the picture. “Obviously we can’t verify the species,” Stone said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“But we can check diseases easily enough, if we can get any blood out of this fragment. What are they calling this animal?” “ ‘Basiliscus amoratus with three-toed genetic anomaly,’ ” she said, reading. “Okay,” Stone said. “Let’s get started. While you’re waiting for it to thaw, do an X ray and take Polaroids for the record. Once we have blood, start running antibody sets until we get some matches. Let me know if there’s a problem.” Before lunchtime, the lab had its answer: the lizard blood showed no significant reactivity to any viral or bacterial antigen. They had run toxicity profiles as well, and they had found only one positive match: the blood was mildly reactive to the venom of the Indian king cobra. But such cross-reactivity was common among reptile species, and Dr. Stone did not think it noteworthy to include in the fax his technician sent to Dr. Martin Guitierrez that same evening. There was never any question about identifying the lizard; that would await the return of Dr. Simpson. He was not due back for several weeks, and his secretary asked if the TDL would please store the lizard fragment in the meantime. Dr. Stone put it back in the zip-lock bag and stuck it in the freezer. Martin Guitierrez read the fax from the Columbia Medical Center/ Tropical Diseases Laboratory. It was brief: SUBJECT: Basiliscus amoratus with genetic anomaly (forwarded from Dr. Simpson’s office) MATERIALS: posterior segment, ? partially eaten animal PROCEDURES PERFORMED: X ray, microscopic, immunological RTX for viral, parasitic, bacterial disease. FINDINGS: No histologic or immunologic evidence for any communicable disease in man in this Basiliscus amoratus sample. (signed) Richard A. Stone, M.D., director Guitierrez made two assumptions based on the memo. First, that his identification of the lizard as a basilisk had been confirmed by scientists at Columbia University. And second, that the absence of communicable disease meant the recent episodes of sporadic lizard bites implied no serious health hazards for Costa Rica. On the contrary, he felt his original views were correct: that a lizard species had been driven from the forest into a new habitat, and was coming into contact with village people. Guitierrez was certain that in a few more weeks the lizards would settle down and the biting episodes would end. The tropical rain fell in great drenching sheets, hammering the corrugated roof of the clinic in Bahía Anasco. It was nearly midnight; power had been lost in the storm, and the midwife Elena Morales was working by flashlight when she heard a squeaking, chirping sound. Thinking that it was a rat, she quickly put a compress on the forehead of the mother and went into the next room to check on the newborn baby. As her hand touched the doorknob, she heard the chirping again, and she relaxed. Evidently it was just a bird, flying in the window to get out of the rain."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Costa Ricans said that when a bird came to visit a newborn child, it brought good luck. Elena opened the door. The infant lay in a wicker bassinet, swaddled in a light blanket, only its face exposed. Around the rim of the bassinet, three dark green lizards crouched like gargoyles. When they saw Elena, they cocked their heads and stared curiously at her, but did not flee. In the light of her flashlight Elena saw the blood dripping from their snouts. Softly chirping, one lizard bent down and, with a quick shake of its head, tore a ragged chunk of flesh from the baby. Elena rushed forward, screaming, and the lizards fled into the darkness. But long before she reached the bassinet, she could see what had happened to the infant’s face, and she knew the child must be dead. The lizards scattered into the rainy night, chirping and squealing, leaving behind only bloody three-toed tracks, like birds."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park THE SHAPE OF THE DATA Later, when she was calmer, Elena Morales decided not to report the lizard attack. Despite the horror she had seen, she began to worry that she might be criticized for leaving the baby unguarded. So she told the mother that the baby had asphyxiated, and she reported the death on the forms she sent to San José as SIDS: sudden infant death syndrome. This was a syndrome of unexplained death among very young children; it was unremarkable, and her report went unchallenged. The university lab in San José that analyzed the saliva sample from Tina Bowman’s arm made several remarkable discoveries. There was, as expected, a great deal of serotonin. But among the salivary proteins was a real monster: molecular mass of 1,980,000, one of the largest proteins known. Biological activity was still under study, but it seemed to be a neurotoxic poison related to cobra venom, although more primitive in structure. The lab also detected trace quantities of the gamma-amino methionine hydrolase. Because this enzyme was a marker for genetic engineering, and not found in wild animals, technicians assumed it was a lab contaminant and did not report it when they called Dr. Cruz, the referring physician in Puntarenas. The lizard fragment rested in the freezer at Columbia University, awaiting the return of Dr. Simpson, who was not expected for at least a month. And so things might have remained, had not a technician named Alice Levin walked into the Tropical Diseases Laboratory, seen Tina Bowman’s picture, and said, “Oh, whose kid drew the dinosaur?” “What?” Richard Stone said, turning slowly toward her. “The dinosaur. Isn’t that what it is? My kid draws them all the time.” “This is a lizard,” Stone said. “From Costa Rica. Some girl down there drew a picture of it.” “No,” Alice Levin said, shaking her head. “Look at it. It’s very clear. Big head, long neck, stands on its hind legs, thick tail. It’s a dinosaur.” “It can’t be. It was only a foot tall.” “So? There were little dinosaurs back then,” Alice said. “Believe me, I know. I have two boys, I’m an expert. The smallest dinosaurs were under a foot. Teenysaurus or something, I don’t know. Those names are impossible. You’ll never learn those names if you’re over the age of ten.” “You don’t understand,” Richard Stone said. “This is a picture of a contemporary animal. They sent us a fragment of the animal. It’s in the freezer now.” Stone went and got it, and shook it out of the baggie. Alice Levin looked at the frozen piece of leg and tail, and shrugged. She didn’t touch it. “I don’t know,” she said. “But that looks like a dinosaur to me.” Stone shook his head. “Impossible.” “Why?” Alice Levin said. “It could be a leftover or a remnant or whatever they call them.” Stone continued to shake his head."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Alice was uninformed; she was just a technician who worked in the bacteriology lab down the hall. And she had an active imagination. Stone remembered the time when she thought she was being followed by one of the surgical orderlies.… “You know,” Alice Levin said, “if this is a dinosaur, Richard, it could be a big deal.” “It’s not a dinosaur.” “Has anybody checked it?” “No,” Stone said. “Well, take it to the Museum of Natural History or something,” Alice Levin said. “You really should.” “I’d be embarrassed.” “You want me to do it for you?” she said. “No,” Richard Stone said. “I don’t.” “You’re not going to do anything?” “Nothing at all.” He put the baggie back in the freezer and slammed the door. “It’s not a dinosaur, it’s a lizard. And whatever it is, it can wait until Dr. Simpson gets back from Borneo to identify it. That’s final, Alice. This lizard’s not going anywhere.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park THE SHORE OF THE INLANDSEA Alan Grant crouched down, his nose inches from the ground. The temperature was over a hundred degrees. His knees ached, despite the rug-layer’s pads he wore. His lungs burned from the harsh alkaline dust. Sweat dripped off his forehead onto the ground. But Grant was oblivious to the discomfort. His entire attention was focused on the six-inch square of earth in front of him. Working patiently with a dental pick and an artist’s camel brush, he exposed the tiny L-shaped fragment of jawbone. It was only an inch long, and no thicker than his little finger. The teeth were a row of small points, and had the characteristic medial angling. Bits of bone flaked away as he dug. Grant paused for a moment to paint the bone with rubber cement before continuing to expose it. There was no question that this was the jawbone from an infant carnivorous dinosaur. Its owner had died seventy-nine million years ago, at the age of about two months. With any luck, Grant might find the rest of the skeleton as well. If so, it would be the first complete skeleton of a baby carnivore— “Hey, Alan!” Alan Grant looked up, blinking in the sunlight. He pulled down his sunglasses, and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. He was crouched on an eroded hillside in the badlands outside Snakewater, Montana. Beneath the great blue bowl of sky, blunted hills, exposed outcroppings of crumbling limestone, stretched for miles in every direction. There was not a tree, or a bush. Nothing but barren rock, hot sun, and whining wind. Visitors found the badlands depressingly bleak, but when Grant looked at this landscape, he saw something else entirely. This barren land was what remained of another, very different world, which had vanished eighty million years ago. In his mind’s eye, Grant saw himself back in the warm, swampy bayou that formed the shoreline of a great inland sea. This inland sea was a thousand miles wide, extending all the way from the newly upthrust Rocky Mountains to the sharp, craggy peaks of the Appalachians. All of the American West was under water. At that time, there were thin clouds in the sky overhead, darkened by the smoke of nearby volcanoes. The atmosphere was denser, richer in carbon dioxide. Plants grew rapidly along the shoreline. There were no fish in these waters, but there were clams and snails. Pterosaurs swooped down to scoop algae from the surface. A few carnivorous dinosaurs prowled the swampy shores of the lake, moving among the palm trees. And offshore was a small island, about two acres in size. Ringed with dense vegetation, this island formed a protected sanctuary where herds of herbivorous duckbilled dinosaurs laid their eggs in communal nests, and raised their squeaking young. Over the millions of years that followed, the pale green alkaline lake grew shallower, and finally vanished. The exposed land buckled and cracked under the heat."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And the offshore island with its dinosaur eggs became the eroded hillside in northern Montana which Alan Grant was now excavating. “Hey, Alan!” He stood, a barrel-chested, bearded man of forty. He heard the chugging of the portable generator, and the distant clatter of the jack-hammer cutting into the dense rock on the next hill. He saw the kids working around the jackhammer, moving away the big pieces of rock after checking them for fossils. At the foot of the hill, he saw the six tipis of his camp, the flapping mess tent, and the trailer that served as their field laboratory. And he saw Ellie waving to him, from the shadow of the field laboratory. “Visitor!” she called, and pointed to the east. Grant saw the cloud of dust, and the blue Ford sedan bouncing over the rutted road toward them. He glanced at his watch: right on time. On the other hill, the kids looked up with interest. They didn’t get many visitors in Snakewater, and there had been a lot of speculation about what a lawyer from the Environmental Protection Agency would want to see Alan Grant about. But Grant knew that paleontology, the study of extinct life, had in recent years taken on an unexpected relevance to the modern world. The modern world was changing fast, and urgent questions about the weather, deforestation, global warming, or the ozone layer often seemed answerable, at least in part, with information from the past. Information that paleontologists could provide. He had been called as an expert witness twice in the past few years. Grant started down the hill to meet the car. The visitor coughed in the white dust as he slammed the car door. “Bob Morris, EPA,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m with the San Francisco office.” Grant introduced himself and said, “You look hot. Want a beer?” “Jesus, yeah.” Morris was in his late twenties, wearing a tie, and pants from a business suit. He carried a briefcase. His wing-tip shoes crunched on the rocks as they walked toward the trailer. “When I first came over the hill, I thought this was an Indian reservation,” Morris said, pointing to the tipis. “No,” Grant said. “Just the best way to live out here.” Grant explained that in 1978, the first year of the excavations, they had come out in North Slope octahedral tents, the most advanced available. But the tents always blew over in the wind. They tried other kinds of tents, with the same result. Finally they started putting up tipis, which were larger inside, more comfortable, and more stable in wind. “These’re Blackfoot tipis, built around four poles,” Grant said. “Sioux tipis are built around three. But this used to be Blackfoot territory, so we thought …” “Uh-huh,” Morris said. “Very fitting.” He squinted at the desolate landscape and shook his head. “How long you been out here?” “About sixty cases,” Grant said. When Morris looked surprised, he explained, “We measure time in beer."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "We start in June with a hundred cases. We’ve gone through about sixty so far.” “Sixty-three, to be exact,” Ellie Sattler said, as they reached the trailer. Grant was amused to see Morris gaping at her. Ellie was wearing cut-off jeans and a workshirt tied at her midriff. She was twenty-four and darkly tanned. Her blond hair was pulled back. “Ellie keeps us going,” Grant said, introducing her. “She’s very good at what she does.” “What does she do?” Morris asked. “Paleobotany,” Ellie said. “And I also do the standard field preps.” She opened the door and they went inside. The air conditioning in the trailer only brought the temperature down to eighty-five degrees, but it seemed cool after the midday heat. The trailer had a series of long wooden tables, with tiny bone specimens neatly laid out, tagged and labeled. Farther along were ceramic dishes and crocks. There was a strong odor of vinegar. Morris glanced at the bones. “I thought dinosaurs were big,” he said. “They were,” Ellie said. “But everything you see here comes from babies. Snakewater is important primarily because of the number of dinosaur nesting sites here. Until we started this work, there were hardly any infant dinosaurs known. Only one nest had ever been found, in the Gobi Desert. We’ve discovered a dozen different hadrosaur nests, complete with eggs and bones of infants.” While Grant went to the refrigerator, she showed Morris the acetic acid baths, which were used to dissolve away the limestone from the delicate bones. “They look like chicken bones,” Morris said, peering into the ceramic dishes. “Yes,” she said. “They’re very bird-like.” “And what about those?” Morris said, pointing through the trailer window to piles of large bones outside, wrapped in heavy plastic. “Rejects,” Ellie said. “Bones too fragmentary when we took them out of the ground. In the old days we’d just discard them, but nowadays we send them for genetic testing.” “Genetic testing?” Morris said. “Here you go,” Grant said, thrusting a beer into his hand. He gave another to Ellie. She chugged hers, throwing her long neck back. Morris stared. “We’re pretty informal here,” Grant said. “Want to step into my office?” “Sure,” Morris said. Grant led him to the end of the trailer, where there was a torn couch, a sagging chair, and a battered end table. Grant dropped onto the couch, which creaked and exhaled a cloud of chalky dust. He leaned back, thumped his boots up on the end table, and gestured for Morris to sit in the chair. “Make yourself comfortable.” Grant was a professor of paleontology at the University of Denver, and one of the foremost researchers in his field, but he had never been comfortable with social niceties. He saw himself as an outdoor man, and he knew that all the important work in paleontology was done outdoors, with your hands. Grant had little patience for the academics, for the museum curators, for what he called Teacup Dinosaur Hunters."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And he took some pains to distance himself in dress and behavior from the Teacup Dinosaur Hunters, even delivering his lectures in jeans and sneakers. Grant watched as Morris primly brushed off the seat of the chair before he sat down. Morris opened his briefcase, rummaged through his papers, and glanced back at Ellie, who was lifting bones with tweezers from the acid bath at the other end of the trailer, paying no attention to them. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here.” Grant nodded. “It’s a long way to come, Mr. Morris.” “Well,” Morris said, “to get right to the point, the EPA is concerned about the activities of the Hammond Foundation. You receive some funding from them.” “Thirty thousand dollars a year,” Grant said, nodding. “For the last five years.” “What do you know about the foundation?” Morris said. Grant shrugged. “The Hammond Foundation is a respected source of academic grants. They fund research all over the world, including several dinosaur researchers. I know they support Bob Kerry out of the Tyrrell in Alberta, and John Weller in Alaska. Probably more.” “Do you know why the Hammond Foundation supports so much dinosaur research?” Morris asked. “Of course. It’s because old John Hammond is a dinosaur nut.” “You’ve met Hammond?” Grant shrugged. “Once or twice. He comes here for brief visits. He’s quite elderly, you know. And eccentric, the way rich people sometimes are. But always very enthusiastic. Why?” “Well,” Morris said, “the Hammond Foundation is actually a rather mysterious organization.” He pulled out a Xeroxed world map, marked with red dots, and passed it to Grant. “These are the digs the foundation financed last year. Notice anything odd about them? Montana, Alaska, Canada, Sweden … They’re all sites in the north. There’s nothing below the forty-fifth parallel.” Morris pulled out more maps. “It’s the same, year after year. Dinosaur projects to the south, in Utah or Colorado or Mexico, never get funded. The Hammond Foundation only supports cold-weather digs. We’d like to know why.” Grant shuffled through the maps quickly. If it was true that the foundation only supported cold-weather digs, then it was strange behavior, because some of the best dinosaur researchers were working in hot climates, and— “And there are other puzzles,” Morris said. “For example, what is the relationship of dinosaurs to amber?” “Amber?” “Yes. It’s the hard yellow resin of dried tree sap—” “I know what it is,” Grant said. “But why are you asking?” “Because,” Morris said, “over the last five years, Hammond has purchased enormous quantities of amber in America, Europe, and Asia, including many pieces of museum-quality jewelry. The foundation has spent seventeen million dollars on amber. They now possess the largest privately held stock of this material in the world.” “I don’t get it,” Grant said. “Neither does anybody else,” Morris said. “As far as we can tell, it doesn’t make any sense at all. Amber is easily synthesized. It has no commercial or defense value."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "There’s no reason to stockpile it. But Hammond has done just that, over many years.” “Amber,” Grant said, shaking his head. “And what about his island in Costa Rica?” Morris continued. “Ten years ago, the Hammond Foundation leased an island from the government of Costa Rica. Supposedly to set up a biological preserve.” “I don’t know anything about that,” Grant said, frowning. “I haven’t been able to find out much,” Morris said. “The island is a hundred miles off the west coast. It’s very rugged, and it’s in an area of ocean where the combinations of wind and current make it almost perpetually covered in fog. They used to call it Cloud Island. Isla Nublar. Apparently the Costa Ricans were amazed that anybody would want it.” Morris searched in his briefcase. “The reason I mention it,” he said, “is that, according to the records, you were paid a consultant’s fee in connection with this island.” “I was?” Grant said. Morris passed a sheet of paper to Grant. It was the Xerox of a check issued in March 1984 from InGen Inc., Farallon Road, Palo Alto, California. Made out to Alan Grant in the amount of twelve thousand dollars. At the lower corner, the check was marked CONSULTANT SERVICES/COSTA RICA/JUVENILE HYPERSPACE. “Oh, sure,” Grant said. “I remember that. It was weird as hell, but I remember it. And it didn’t have anything to do with an island.” Alan Grant had found the first clutch of dinosaur eggs in Montana in 1979, and many more in the next two years, but he hadn’t gotten around to publishing his findings until 1983. His paper, with its report of a herd of ten thousand duckbilled dinosaurs living along the shore of a vast inland sea, building communal nests of eggs in the mud, raising their infant dinosaurs in the herd, made Grant a celebrity overnight. The notion of maternal instincts in giant dinosaurs—and the drawings of cute babies poking their snouts out of the eggs—had appeal around the world. Grant was besieged with requests for interviews, lectures, books. Characteristically, he turned them all down, wanting only to continue his excavations. But it was during those frantic days of the mid-1980s that he was approached by the InGen corporation with a request for consulting services. “Had you heard of InGen before?” Morris asked. “No.” “How did they contact you?” “Telephone call. It was a man named Gennaro or Gennino, something like that.” Morris nodded. “Donald Gennaro,” he said. “He’s the legal counsel for InGen.” “Anyway, he wanted to know about eating habits of dinosaurs. And he offered me a fee to draw up a paper for him.” Grant drank his beer, set the can on the floor. “Gennaro was particularly interested in young dinosaurs. Infants and juveniles. What they ate. I guess he thought I would know about that.” “Did you?” “Not really, no. I told him that. We had found lots of skeletal material, but we had very little dietary data."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But Gennaro said he knew we hadn’t published everything, and he wanted whatever we had. And he offered a very large fee. Fifty thousand dollars.” Morris took out a tape recorder and set it on the endtable. “You mind?” “No, go ahead.” “So Gennaro telephoned you in 1984. What happened then?” “Well,” Grant said. “You see our operation here. Fifty thousand would support two full summers of digging. I told him I’d do what I could.” “So you agreed to prepare a paper for him.” “Yes.” “On the dietary habits of juvenile dinosaurs?” “Yes.” “You met Gennaro?” “No. Just on the phone.” “Did Gennaro say why he wanted this information?” “Yes,” Grant said. “He was planning a museum for children, and he wanted to feature baby dinosaurs. He said he was hiring a number of academic consultants, and named them. There were paleontologists like me, and a mathematician from Texas named Ian Malcolm, and a couple of ecologists. A systems analyst. Good group.” Morris nodded, making notes. “So you accepted the consultancy?” “Yes. I agreed to send him a summary of our work: what we knew about the habits of the duckbilled hadrosaurs we’d found.” “What kind of information did you send?” Morris asked. “Everything: nesting behavior, territorial ranges, feeding behavior, social behavior. Everything.” “And how did Gennaro respond?” “He kept calling and calling. Sometimes in the middle of the night. Would the dinosaurs eat this? Would they eat that? Should the exhibit include this? I could never understand why he was so worked up. I mean, I think dinosaurs are important, too, but not that important. They’ve been dead sixty-five million years. You’d think his calls could wait until morning.” “I see,” Morris said. “And the fifty thousand dollars?” Grant shook his head. “I got tired of Gennaro and called the whole thing off. We settled up for twelve thousand. That must have been about the middle of ’85.” Morris made a note. “And InGen? Any other contact with them?” “Not since 1985.” “And when did the Hammond Foundation begin to fund your research?” “I’d have to look,” Grant said. “But it was around then. Mid-eighties.” “And you know Hammond as just a rich dinosaur enthusiast.” “Yes.” Morris made another note. “Look,” Grant said. “If the EPA is so concerned about John Hammond and what he’s doing—the dinosaur sites in the north, the amber purchases, the island in Costa Rica—why don’t you just ask him about it?” “At the moment, we can’t,” Morris said. “Why not?” Grant said. “Because we don’t have any evidence of wrongdoing,” Morris said. “But personally, I think it’s clear John Hammond is evading the law.” “I was first contacted,” Morris explained, “by the Office of Technology Transfer. The OTT monitors shipments of American technology which might have military significance. They called to say that InGen had two areas of possible illegal technology transfer. First, InGen shipped three Cray XMPs to Costa Rica."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "InGen characterized it as a transfer within corporate divisions, and said they weren’t for resale. But OTT couldn’t imagine why the hell somebody’d need that power in Costa Rica.” “Three Crays,” Grant said. “Is that a kind of computer?” Morris nodded. “Very powerful supercomputers. To put it in perspective, three Crays represent more computing power than any other privately held company in America. And InGen sent the machines to Costa Rica. You have to wonder why.” “I give up. Why?” Grant said. “Nobody knows. And the Hoods are even more worrisome,” Morris continued. “Hoods are automated gene sequencers—machines that work out the genetic code by themselves. They’re so new that they haven’t been put on the restricted lists yet. But any genetic engineering lab is likely to have one, if it can afford the half-million-dollar price tag.” He flipped through his notes. “Well, it seems InGen shipped twenty-four Hood sequencers to their island in Costa Rica. “Again, they said it was a transfer within divisions and not an export,” Morris said. “There wasn’t much that OTT could do. They’re not officially concerned with use. But InGen was obviously setting up one of the most powerful genetic engineering facilities in the world in an obscure Central American country. A country with no regulations. That kind of thing has happened before.” There had already been cases of American bioengineering companies moving to another country so they would not be hampered by regulations and rules. The most flagrant, Morris explained, was the Biosyn rabies case. In 1986, Genetic Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino tested a bioengineered rabies vaccine on a farm in Chile. They didn’t inform the government of Chile, or the farm workers involved. They simply released the vaccine. The vaccine consisted of a live rabies virus, genetically modified to be nonvirulent. But the virulence hadn’t been tested; Biosyn didn’t know whether the virus could still cause rabies or not. Even worse, the virus had been modified. Ordinarily you couldn’t contract rabies unless you were bitten by an animal. But Biosyn modified the rabies virus to cross the pulmonary alveoli; you could get an infection just inhaling it. Biosyn staffers brought this live rabies virus down to Chile in a carry-on bag on a commercial airline flight. Morris often wondered what would have happened if the capsule had broken open during the flight. Everybody on the plane might have been infected with rabies. It was outrageous. It was irresponsible. It was criminally negligent. But no action was taken against Biosyn. The Chilean farmers who unwittingly risked their lives were ignorant peasants; the government of Chile had an economic crisis to worry about; and the American authorities had no jurisdiction. So Lewis Dodgson, the geneticist responsible for the test, was still working at Biosyn. Biosyn was still as reckless as ever. And other American companies were hurrying to set up facilities in foreign countries that lacked sophistication about genetic research."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Countries that perceived genetic engineering to be like any other high-tech development, and thus welcomed it to their lands, unaware of the dangers posed. “So that’s why we began our investigation of InGen,” Morris said. “About three weeks ago.” “And what have you actually found?” Grant said. “Not much,” Morris admitted. “When I go back to San Francisco, we’ll probably have to close the investigation. And I think I’m about finished here.” He started packing up his briefcase. “By the way, what does ‘juvenile hyperspace’ mean?” “That’s just a fancy label for my report,” Grant said. “ ‘Hyperspace’ is a term for multidimensional space—like three-dimensional tic-tac-toe. If you were to take all the behaviors of an animal, its eating and movement and sleeping, you could plot the animal within the multidimensional space. Some paleontologists refer to the behavior of an animal as occurring in an ecological hyperspace. ‘Juvenile hyperspace’ would just refer to the behavior of juvenile dinosaurs—if you wanted to be as pretentious as possible.” At the far end of the trailer, the phone rang. Ellie answered it. She said, “He’s in a meeting right now. Can he call you back?” Morris snapped his briefcase shut and stood. “Thanks for your help and the beer,” he said. “No problem,” Grant said. Grant walked with Morris down the trailer to the door at the far end. Morris said, “Did Hammond ever ask for any physical materials from your site? Bones, or eggs, or anything like that?” “No,” Grant said. “Dr. Sattler mentioned you do some genetic work here.…” “Well, not exactly,” Grant said. “When we remove fossils that are broken or for some other reason not suitable for museum preservation, we send the bones out to a lab that grinds them up and tries to extract proteins for us. The proteins are then identified and the report is sent back to us.” “Which lab is that?” Morris asked. “Medical Biologic Services in Salt Lake.” “How’d you choose them?” “Competitive bids.” “The lab has nothing to do with InGen?” Morris asked. “Not that I know,” Grant said. They came to the door of the trailer. Grant opened it, and felt the rush of hot air from outside. Morris paused to put on his sunglasses. “One last thing,” Morris said. “Suppose InGen wasn’t really making a museum exhibit. Is there anything else they could have done with the information in the report you gave them?” Grant laughed. “Sure. They could feed a baby hadrosaur.” Morris laughed, too. “A baby hadrosaur. That’d be something to see. How big were they?” “About so,” Grant said, holding his hands six inches apart. “Squirrel-size.” “And how long before they become full-grown?” “Three years,” Grant said. “Give or take.” Morris held out his hand. “Well, thanks again for your help.” “Take it easy driving back,” Grant said. He watched for a moment as Morris walked back toward his car, and then closed the trailer door. Grant said, “What did you think?” Ellie shrugged."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Naïve.” “You like the part where John Hammond is the evil arch-villain?” Grant laughed. “John Hammond’s about as sinister as Walt Disney. By the way, who called?” “Oh,” Ellie said, “it was a woman named Alice Levin. She works at Columbia Medical Center. You know her?” Grant shook his head. “No.” “Well, it was something about identifying some remains. She wants you to call her back right away.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park SKELETON Ellie Sattler brushed a strand of blond hair back from her face and turned her attention to the acid baths. She had six in a row, at molar strengths from 5 to 30 percent. She had to keep an eye on the stronger solutions, because they would eat through the limestone and begin to erode the bones. And infant-dinosaur bones were so fragile. She marveled that they had been preserved at all, after eighty million years. She listened idly as Grant said, “Miss Levin? This is Alan Grant. What’s this about a … You have what? A what?” He began to laugh. “Oh, I doubt that very much, Miss Levin.… No, I really don’t have time, I’m sorry.… Well, I’d take a look at it, but I can pretty much guarantee it’s a basilisk lizard. But … yes, you can do that. All right. Send it now.” Grant hung up, and shook his head. “These people.” Ellie said, “What’s it about?” “Some lizard she’s trying to identify,” Grant said. “She’s going to fax me an X ray.” He walked over to the fax and waited as the transmission came through. “Incidentally, I’ve got a new find for you. A good one.” “Yes?” Grant nodded. “Found it just before the kid showed up. On South Hill, horizon four. Infant velociraptor: jaw and complete dentition, so there’s no question about identity. And the site looks undisturbed. We might even get a full skeleton.” “That’s fantastic,” Ellie said. “How young?” “Young,” Grant said. “Two, maybe four months at most.” “And it’s definitely a velociraptor?” “Definitely,” Grant said. “Maybe our luck has finally turned.” For the last two years at Snakewater, the team had excavated only duckbilled hadrosaurs. They already had evidence for vast herds of these grazing dinosaurs, roaming the Cretaceous plains in groups of ten or twenty thousand, as buffalo would later roam. But increasingly the question that faced them was: where were the predators? They expected predators to be rare, of course. Studies of predator/prey populations in the game parks of Africa and India suggested that, roughly speaking, there was one predatory carnivore for every four hundred herbivores. That meant a herd of ten thousand duckbills would support only twenty-five tyrannosaurs. So it was unlikely that they would find the remains of a large predator. But where were the smaller predators? Snakewater had dozens of nesting sites—in some places, the ground was literally covered with fragments of dinosaur eggshells—and many small dinosaurs ate eggs. Animals like Dromaeosaurus, Oviraptor, Velociraptor, and Coelurus—predators three to six feet tall—must have been found here in abundance. But they had discovered none so far. Perhaps this velociraptor skeleton did mean their luck had changed. And an infant! Ellie knew that one of Grant’s dreams was to study infant-rearing behavior in carnivorous dinosaurs, as he had already studied the behavior of herbivores. Perhaps this was the first step toward that dream. “You must be pretty excited,” Ellie said. Grant didn’t answer."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I said, you must be excited,” Ellie repeated. “My God,” Grant said. He was staring at the fax. Ellie looked over Grant’s shoulder at the X ray, and breathed out slowly. “You think it’s an amassicus?” “Yes,” Grant said. “Or a triassicus. The skeleton is so light.” “But it’s no lizard,” she said. “No,” Grant said. “This is not a lizard. No three-toed lizard has walked on this planet for two hundred million years.” Ellie’s first thought was that she was looking at a hoax—an ingenious, skillful hoax, but a hoax nonetheless. Every biologist knew that the threat of a hoax was omnipresent. The most famous hoax, the Piltdown man, had gone undetected for forty years, and its perpetrator was still unknown. More recently, the distinguished astronomer Fred Hoyle had claimed that a fossil winged dinosaur, Archaeopteryx, on display in the British Museum, was a fraud. (It was later shown to be genuine.) The essence of a successful hoax was that it presented scientists with what they expected to see. And, to Ellie’s eye, the X ray image of the lizard was exactly correct. The three-toed foot was well balanced, with the medial claw smallest. The bony remnants of the fourth and fifth toes were located up near the metatarsal joint. The tibia was strong, and considerably longer than the femur. At the hip, the acetabulum was complete. The tail showed forty-five vertebrae. It was a young Procompsognathus. “Could this X ray be faked?” “I don’t know,” Grant said. “But it’s almost impossible to fake an X ray. And Procompsognathus is an obscure animal. Even people familiar with dinosaurs have never heard of it.” Ellie read the note. “Specimen acquired on the beach of Cabo Blanco, July 16…. Apparently a howler monkey was eating the animal, and this was all that was recovered. Oh … and it says the lizard attacked a little girl.” “I doubt that,” Grant said. “But perhaps. Procompsognathus was so small and light we assume it must be a scavenger, only feeding off dead creatures. And you can tell the size”—he measured quickly—“it’s about twenty centimeters to the hips, which means the full animal would be about a foot tall. About as big as a chicken. Even a child would look pretty fearsome to it. It might bite an infant, but not a child.” Ellie frowned at the X ray image. “You think this could really be a legitimate rediscovery?” she said. “Like the coelacanth?” “Maybe,” Grant said. The coelacanth was a five-foot-long fish thought to have died out sixty-five million years ago, until a specimen was pulled from the ocean in 1938. But there were other examples. The Australian mountain pygmy possum was known only from fossils until a live one was found in a garbage can in Melbourne. And a ten-thousand-year-old fossil fruit bat from New Guinea was described by a zoologist who not long afterward received a living specimen in the mail. “But could it be real?” she persisted."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“What about the age?” Grant nodded. “The age is a problem.” Most rediscovered animals were rather recent additions to the fossil record: ten or twenty thousand years old. Some were a few million years old; in the case of the coelacanth, sixty-five million years old. But the specimen they were looking at was much, much older than that. Dinosaurs had died out in the Cretaceous period, sixty-five million years ago. They had flourished as the dominant life-form on the planet in the Jurassic, 190 million years ago. And they had first appeared in the Triassic, roughly 220 million years ago. It was during the early Triassic period that Procompsognathus had lived—a time so distant that our planet didn’t even look the same. All the continents were joined together in a single landmass, called Pangaea, which extended from the North to the South Pole—a vast continent of ferns and forests, with a few large deserts. The Atlantic Ocean was a narrow lake between what would become Africa and Florida. The air was denser. The land was warmer. There were hundreds of active volcanoes. And it was in this environment that Procompsognathus lived. “Well,” Ellie said. “We know animals have survived. Crocodiles are basically Triassic animals living in the present. Sharks are Triassic. So we know it has happened before.” Grant nodded. “And the thing is,” he said, “how else do we explain it? It’s either a fake—which I doubt—or else it’s a rediscovery. What else could it be?” The phone rang. “Alice Levin again,” Grant said. “Let’s see if she’ll send us the actual specimen.” He answered it and looked at Ellie, surprised. “Yes, I’ll hold for Mr. Hammond. Yes. Of course.” “Hammond? What does he want?” Ellie said. Grant shook his head, and then said into the phone, “Yes, Mr. Hammond. Yes, it’s good to hear your voice, too.… Yes …” He looked at Ellie. “Oh, you did? Oh yes? Is that right?” He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Still as eccentric as ever. You’ve got to hear this.” Grant pushed the speaker button, and Ellie heard a raspy old-man’s voice speaking rapidly: “—hell of an annoyance from some EPA fellow, seems to have gone off half cocked, all on his own, running around the country talking to people, stirring up things. I don’t suppose anybody’s come to see you way out there?” “As a matter of fact,” Grant said, “somebody did come to see me.” Hammond snorted. “I was afraid of that. Smart-ass kid named Morris?” “Yes, his name was Morris,” Grant said. “He’s going to see all our consultants,” Hammond said. “He went to see Ian Malcolm the other day—you know, the mathematician in Texas? That’s the first I knew of it. We’re having one hell of a time getting a handle on this thing, it’s typical of the way government operates, there isn’t any complaint, there isn’t any charge, just harassment from some kid who’s unsupervised and is running around at the taxpayers’ expense."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Did he bother you? Disrupt your work?” “No, no, he didn’t bother me.” “Well, that’s too bad, in a way,” Hammond said, “because I’d try and get an injunction to stop him if he had. As it is, I had our lawyers call over at EPA to find out what the hell their problem is. The head of the office claims he didn’t know there was any investigation! You figure that one out. Damned bureaucracy is all it is. Hell, I think this kid’s trying to get down to Costa Rica, poke around, get onto our island. You know we have an island down there?” “No,” Grant said, looking at Ellie, “I didn’t know.” “Oh yes, we bought it and started our operation oh, four or five years ago now. I forget exactly. Called Isla Nublar—big island, hundred miles offshore. Going to be a biological preserve. Wonderful place. Tropical jungle. You know, you ought to see it, Dr. Grant.” “Sounds interesting,” Grant said, “but actually—” “It’s almost finished now, you know,” Hammond said. “I’ve sent you some material about it. Did you get my material?” “No, but we’re pretty far from—” “Maybe it’ll come today. Look it over. The island’s just beautiful. It’s got everything. We’ve been in construction now thirty months. You can imagine. Big park. Opens in September next year. You really ought to go see it.” “It sounds wonderful, but—” “As a matter of fact,” Hammond said, “I’m going to insist you see it, Dr. Grant. I know you’d find it right up your alley. You’d find it fascinating.” “I’m in the middle of—” Grant said. “Say, I’ll tell you what,” Hammond said, as if the idea had just occurred to him. “I’m having some of the people who consulted for us go down there this weekend. Spend a few days and look it over. At our expense, of course. It’d be terrific if you’d give us your opinion.” “I couldn’t possibly,” Grant said. “Oh, just for a weekend,” Hammond said, with the irritating, cheery persistence of an old man. “That’s all I’m talking about, Dr. Grant. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your work. I know how important that work is. Believe me, I know that. Never interrupt your work. But you could hop on down there this weekend, and be back on Monday.” “No, I couldn’t,” Grant said. “I’ve just found a new skeleton and—” “Yes, fine, but I still think you should come—” Hammond said, not really listening. “And we’ve just received some evidence for a very puzzling and remarkable find, which seems to be a living procompsognathid.” “A what?” Hammond said, slowing down. “I didn’t quite get that. You said a living procompsognathid?” “That’s right,” Grant said. “It’s a biological specimen, a partial fragment of an animal collected from Central America. A living animal.” “You don’t say,” Hammond said. “A living animal? How extraordinary.” “Yes,” Grant said. “We think so, too."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt", "text": "So, you see, this isn’t the time for me to be leaving—” “Central America, did you say?” “Yes.” “Where in Central America is it from, do you know?” “A beach called Cabo Blanco, I don’t know exactly where—” “I see.” Hammond cleared his throat. “And when did this, ah, specimen arrive in your hands?” “Just today.” “Today, I see. Today. I see. Yes.” Hammond cleared his throat again. Grant looked at Ellie and mouthed, What’s going on? Ellie shook her head. Sounds upset. Grant mouthed, See if Morris is still here. She went to the window and looked out, but Morris’s car was gone. She turned back. On the speaker, Hammond coughed. “Ah, Dr. Grant. Have you told anybody about it yet?” “No.” “Good, that’s good. Well. Yes. I’ll tell you frankly, Dr. Grant, I’m having a little problem about this island. This EPA thing is coming at just the wrong time.” “How’s that?” Grant said. “Well, we’ve had our problems and some delays.… Let’s just say that I’m under a little pressure here, and I’d like you to look at this island for me. Give me your opinion. I’ll be paying you the usual weekend consultant rate of twenty thousand a day. That’d be sixty thousand for three days. And if you can spare Dr. Sattler, she’ll go at the same rate. We need a botanist. What do you say?” Ellie looked at Grant as he said, “Well, Mr. Hammond, that much money would fully finance our expeditions for the next two summers.” “Good, good,” Hammond said blandly. He seemed distracted now, his thoughts elsewhere. “I want this to be easy.… Now, I’m sending the corporate jet to pick you up at that private airfield east of Choteau. You know the one I mean? It’s only about two hours’ drive from where you are. You be there at five p.m. tomorrow and I’ll be waiting for you. Take you right down. Can you and Dr. Sattler make that plane?” “I guess we can.” “Good. Pack lightly. You don’t need passports. I’m looking forward to it. See you tomorrow,” Hammond said, and he hung up."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c08_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park COWAN, SWAIN AND ROSS Midday sun streamed into the San Francisco law offices of Cowan, Swain and Ross, giving the room a cheerfulness that Donald Gennaro did not feel. He listened on the phone and looked at his boss, Daniel Ross, cold as an undertaker in his dark pinstripe suit. “I understand, John,” Gennaro said. “And Grant agreed to come? Good, good … yes, that sounds fine to me. My congratulations, John.” He hung up the phone and turned to Ross. “We can’t trust Hammond any more. He’s under too much pressure. The EPA’s investigating him, he’s behind schedule on his Costa Rican resort, and the investors are getting nervous. There have been too many rumors of problems down there. Too many workmen have died. And now this business about a living procompsit-whatever on the mainland …” “What does that mean?” Ross said. “Maybe nothing,” Gennaro said. “But Hamachi is one of our principal investors. I got a report last week from Hamachi’s representative in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. According to the report, some new kind of lizard is biting children on the coast.” Ross blinked. “New lizard?” “Yes,” Gennaro said. “We can’t screw around with this. We’ve got to inspect that island right away. I’ve asked Hammond to arrange independent site inspections every week for the next three weeks.” “And what does Hammond say?” “He insists nothing is wrong on the island. Claims he has all these security precautions.” “But you don’t believe him,” Ross said. “No,” Gennaro said. “I don’t.” Donald Gennaro had come to Cowan, Swain from a background in investment banking. Cowan, Swain’s high-tech clients frequently needed capitalization, and Gennaro helped them find the money. One of his first assignments, back in 1982, had been to accompany John Hammond while the old man, then nearly seventy, put together the funding to start the InGen corporation. They eventually raised almost a billion dollars, and Gennaro remembered it as a wild ride. “Hammond’s a dreamer,” Gennaro said. “A potentially dangerous dreamer,” Ross said. “We should never have gotten involved. What is our financial position?” “The firm,” Gennaro said, “owns five percent.” “General or limited?” “General.” Ross shook his head. “We should never have done that.” “It seemed wise at the time,” Gennaro said. “Hell, it was eight years ago. We took it in lieu of some fees. And, if you remember, Hammond’s plan was extremely speculative. He was really pushing the envelope. Nobody really thought he could pull it off.” “But apparently he has,” Ross said. “In any case, I agree that an inspection is overdue. What about your site experts?” “I’m starting with experts Hammond already hired as consultants, early in the project.” Gennaro tossed a list onto Ross’s desk. “First group is a paleontologist, a paleobotanist, and a mathematician. They go down this weekend. I’ll go with them.” “Will they tell you the truth?” Ross said. “I think so."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c08_r1.htm.txt", "text": "None of them had much to do with the island, and one of them—the mathematician, Ian Malcolm—was openly hostile to the project from the start. Insisted it would never work, could never work.” “And who else?” “Just a technical person: the computer system analyst. Review the park’s computers and fix some bugs. He should be there by Friday morning.” “Fine,” Ross said. “You’re making the arrangements?” “Hammond asked to place the calls himself. I think he wants to pretend that he’s not in trouble, that it’s just a social invitation. Showing off his island.” “All right,” Ross said. “But just make sure it happens. Stay on top of it. I want this Costa Rican situation resolved within a week.” Ross got up, and walked out of the room. Gennaro dialed, heard the whining hiss of a radiophone. Then he heard a voice say, “Grant here.” “Hi, Dr. Grant, this is Donald Gennaro. I’m the general counsel for InGen. We talked a few years back, I don’t know if you remember—” “I remember,” Grant said. “Well,” Gennaro said. “I just got off the phone with John Hammond, who tells me the good news that you’re coming down to our island in Costa Rica …” “Yes,” Grant said. “I guess we’re going down there tomorrow.” “Well, I just want to extend my thanks to you for doing this on short notice. Everybody at InGen appreciates it. We’ve asked Ian Malcolm, who like you was one of the early consultants, to come down as well. He’s the mathematician at UT in Austin?” “John Hammond mentioned that,” Grant said. “Well, good,” Gennaro said. “And I’ll be coming, too, as a matter of fact. By the way, this specimen you have found of a pro … procom … what is it?” “Procompsognathus,” Grant said. “Yes. Do you have the specimen with you, Dr. Grant? The actual specimen?” “No,” Grant said. “I’ve only seen an X ray. The specimen is in New York. A woman from Columbia University called me.” “Well, I wonder if you could give me the details on that,” Gennaro said. “Then I can run down that specimen for Mr. Hammond, who’s very excited about it. I’m sure you want to see the actual specimen, too. Perhaps I can even get it delivered to the island while you’re all down there,” Gennaro said. Grant gave him the information. “Well, that’s fine, Dr. Grant,” Gennaro said. “My regards to Dr. Sattler. I look forward to meeting you and him tomorrow.” And Gennaro hung up."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park PLANS “This just came,” Ellie said the next day, walking to the back of the trailer with a thick manila envelope. “One of the kids brought it back from town. It’s from Hammond.” Grant noticed the blue-and-white InGen logo as he tore open the envelope. Inside there was no cover letter, just a bound stack of paper. Pulling it out, he discovered it was blueprints. They were reduced, forming a thick book. The cover was marked: ISLA NUBLAR RESORT GUEST FACILITIES (FULL SET: SAFARI LODGE). “What the hell is this?” he said. As he flipped open the book, a sheet of paper fell out. Dear Alan and Ellie: As you can imagine we don’t have much in the way of formal promotional materials yet. But this should give you some idea of the Isla Nublar project. I think it’s very exciting! Looking forward to discussing this with you! Hope you can join us! Regards,John “I don’t get it,” Grant said. He flipped through the sheets. “These are architectural plans.” He turned to the top sheet: VISITOR CENTER/LODGE ISLA NUBLAR RESORT CLIENT InGen Inc., Palo Alto, Calif. ARCHITECTS Dunning, Murphy & Associates, NewYork. Richard Murphy, design partner;Theodore Chen, senior designer;Sheldon James, administrative partner. ENGINEERS Harlow, Whitney & Fields, Boston,structural; A. T. Misikawa, Osaka,mechanical. LANDSCAPING Shepperton Rogers, London;A. Ashikiga, H. Ieyasu, Kanazawa. ELECTRICAL N.V. Kobayashi, Tokyo. A. R.Makasawa, senior consultant. COMPUTER C/C Integrated Computer Systems, Inc.,Cambridge, Mass. Dennis Nedry,project supervisor. Grant turned to the plans themselves. They were stamped INDUSTRIAL SECRETS DO NOT COPY and CONFIDENTIAL WORK PRODUCT—NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION. Each sheet was numbered, and at the top: “These plans represent the confidential creations of InGen Inc. You must have signed document 112/4A or you risk prosecution.” “Looks pretty paranoid to me,” he said. “Maybe there’s a reason,” Ellie said. The next page was a topographical map. It showed Isla Nublar as an inverted teardrop, bulging at the north, tapering at the south. The island was eight miles long, and the map divided it into several large sections. The northern section was marked VISITOR AREA and it contained structures marked “Visitor Arrivals,” “Visitor Center/Administration,” “Power/Desalinization/Support,” “Hammond Res.,” and “Safari Lodge.” Grant could see the outline of a swimming pool, the rectangles of tennis courts, and the round squiggles that represented planting and shrubbery. “Looks like a resort, all right,” Ellie said. There followed detail sheets for the Safari Lodge itself. In the elevation sketches, the lodge looked dramatic: a long low building with a series of pyramid shapes on the roof. But there was little about the other buildings in the visitor area. And the rest of the island was even more mysterious. As far as Grant could tell, it was mostly open space. A network of roads, tunnels, and outlying buildings, and a long thin lake that appeared to be man-made, with concrete dams and barriers. But, for the most part, the island was divided into big curving areas with very little development at all."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Each area was marked by codes: /P/PROC/V/2A, /D/TRIC/L/5(4A+1), /LN/OTHN/C/4(3A+1), and /VV/HADR/X/11(6A+3+3DB). “Is there an explanation for the codes?” she said. Grant flipped the pages rapidly, but he couldn’t find one. “Maybe they took it out,” she said. “I’m telling you,” Grant said. “Paranoid.” He looked at the big curving divisions, separated from one another by the network of roads. There were only six divisions on the whole island. And each division was separated from the road by a concrete moat. Outside each moat was a fence with a little lightning sign alongside it. That mystified them until they were finally able to figure out it meant the fences were electrified. “That’s odd,” she said. “Electrified fences at a resort?” “Miles of them,” Grant said. “Electrified fences and moats, together. And usually with a road alongside them as well.” “Just like a zoo,” Ellie said. They went back to the topographical map and looked closely at the contour lines. The roads had been placed oddly. The main road ran north-south, right through the central hills of the island, including one section of road that seemed to be literally cut into the side of a cliff, above a river. It began to look as if there had been a deliberate effort to leave these open areas as big enclosures, separated from the roads by moats and electric fences. And the roads were raised up above ground level, so you could see over the fences.… “You know,” Ellie said, “some of these dimensions are enormous. Look at this. This concrete moat is thirty feet wide. That’s like a military fortification.” “So are these buildings,” Grant said. He had noticed that each open division had a few buildings, usually located in out-of-the-way corners. But the buildings were all concrete, with thick walls. In sideview elevations they looked like concrete bunkers with small windows. Like the Nazi pillboxes from old war movies. At that moment, they heard a muffled explosion, and Grant put the papers aside. “Back to work,” he said. “Fire!” There was a slight vibration, and then yellow contour lines traced across the computer screen. This time the resolution was perfect, and Alan Grant had a glimpse of the skeleton, beautifully defined, the long neck arched back. It was unquestionably an infant velociraptor, and it looked in perfect— The screen went blank. “I hate computers,” Grant said, squinting in the sun. “What happened now?” “Lost the integrator input,” one of the kids said. “Just a minute.” The kid bent to look at the tangle of wires going into the back of the battery-powered portable computer. They had set the computer up on a beer carton on top of Hill Four, not far from the device they called Thumper. Grant sat down on the side of the hill and looked at his watch. He said to Ellie, “We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.” One of the kids overheard. “Aw, Alan.” “Look,” Grant said, “I’ve got a plane to catch."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And I want the fossil protected before I go.” Once you began to expose a fossil, you had to continue, or risk losing it. Visitors imagined the landscape of the badlands to be unchanging, but in fact it was continuously eroding, literally right before your eyes; all day long you could hear the clatter of pebbles rolling down the crumbling hillside. And there was always the risk of a rainstorm; even a brief shower would wash away a delicate fossil. Thus Grant’s partially exposed skeleton was at risk, and it had to be protected until he returned. Fossil protection ordinarily consisted of a tarp over the site, and a trench around the perimeter to control water runoff. The question was how large a trench the velociraptor fossil required. To decide that, they were using computer-assisted sonic tomography, or CAST. This was a new procedure, in which Thumper fired a soft lead slug into the ground, setting up shock waves that were read by the computer and assembled into a kind of X ray image of the hillside. They had been using it all summer with varying results. Thumper was twenty feet away now, a big silver box on wheels, with an umbrella on top. It looked like an ice-cream vendor’s pushcart, parked incongruously on the badlands. Thumper had two youthful attendants loading the next soft lead pellet. So far, the CAST program merely located the extent of finds, helping Grant’s team to dig more efficiently. But the kids claimed that within a few years it would be possible to generate an image so detailed that excavation would be redundant. You could get a perfect image of the bones, in three dimensions, and it promised a whole new era of archaeology without excavation. But none of that had happened yet. And the equipment that worked flawlessly in the university laboratory proved pitifully delicate and fickle in the field. “How much longer?” Grant said. “We got it now, Alan. It’s not bad.” Grant went to look at the computer screen. He saw the complete skeleton, traced in bright yellow. It was indeed a young specimen. The outstanding characteristic of Velociraptor—the single-toed claw, which in a full-grown animal was a curved, six-inch-long weapon capable of ripping open its prey—was in this infant no larger than the thorn on a rosebush. It was hardly visible at all on the screen. And Velociraptor was a lightly built dinosaur in any case, an animal as fine-boned as a bird, and presumably as intelligent. Here the skeleton appeared in perfect order, except that the head and neck were bent back, toward the posterior. Such neck flexion was so common in fossils that some scientists had formulated a theory to explain it, suggesting that the dinosaurs had become extinct because they had been poisoned by the evolving alkaloids in plants. The twisted neck was thought to signify the death agony of the dinosaurs."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Grant had finally put that one to rest, by demonstrating that many species of birds and reptiles underwent a postmortem contraction of posterior neck ligaments, which bent the head backward in a characteristic way. It had nothing to do with the cause of death; it had to do with the way a carcass dried in the sun. Grant saw that this particular skeleton had also been twisted laterally, so that the right leg and foot were raised up above the backbone. “It looks kind of distorted,” one of the kids said. “But I don’t think it’s the computer.” “No,” Grant said. “It’s just time. Lots and lots of time.” Grant knew that people could not imagine geological time. Human life was lived on another scale of time entirely. An apple turned brown in a few minutes. Silverware turned black in a few days. A compost heap decayed in a season. A child grew up in a decade. None of these everyday human experiences prepared people to be able to imagine the meaning of eighty million years—the length of time that had passed since this little animal had died. In the classroom, Grant had tried different comparisons. If you imagined the human lifespan of sixty years was compressed to a day, then eighty million years would still be 3,652 years—older than the pyramids. The velociraptor had been dead a long time. “Doesn’t look very fearsome,” one of the kids said. “He wasn’t,” Grant said. “At least, not until he grew up.” Probably this baby had scavenged, feeding off carcasses slain by the adults, after the big animals had gorged themselves, and lay basking in the sun. Carnivores could eat as much as 25 percent of their body weight in a single meal, and it made them sleepy afterward. The babies would chitter and scramble over the indulgent, somnolent bodies of the adults, and nip little bites from the dead animal. The babies were probably cute little animals. But an adult velociraptor was another matter entirely. Pound for pound, a velociraptor was the most rapacious dinosaur that ever lived. Although relatively small—about two hundred pounds, the size of a leopard—velociraptors were quick, intelligent, and vicious, able to attack with sharp jaws, powerful clawed forearms, and the devastating single claw on the foot. Velociraptors hunted in packs, and Grant thought it must have been a sight to see a dozen of these animals racing at full speed, leaping onto the back of a much larger dinosaur, tearing at the neck and slashing at the ribs and belly.… “We’re running out of time,” Ellie said, bringing him back. Grant gave instructions for the trench. From the computer image, they knew the skeleton lay in a relatively confined area; a ditch around a two-meter square would be sufficient. Meanwhile, Ellie lashed down the tarp that covered the side of the hill. Grant helped her pound in the final stakes. “How did the baby die?” one of the kids asked. “I doubt we’ll know,” Grant replied."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Infant mortality in the wild is high. In African parks, it runs seventy percent among some carnivores. It could have been anything—disease, separation from the group, anything. Or even attack by an adult. We know these animals hunted in packs, but we don’t know anything about their social behavior in a group.” The students nodded. They had all studied animal behavior, and they knew, for example, that when a new male took over a lion pride, the first thing he did was kill all the cubs. The reason was apparently genetic: the male had evolved to disseminate his genes as widely as possible, and by killing the cubs he brought all the females into heat, so that he could impregnate them. It also prevented the females from wasting their time nurturing the offspring of another male. Perhaps the velociraptor hunting pack was also ruled by a dominant male. They knew so little about dinosaurs, Grant thought. After 150 years of research and excavation all around the world, they still knew almost nothing about what the dinosaurs had really been like. “We’ve got to go,” Ellie said, “if we’re going to get to Choteau by five.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park HAMMOND Gennaro’s secretary bustled in with a new suitcase. It still had the sales tags on it. “You know, Mr. Gennaro,” she said severely, “when you forget to pack it makes me think you don’t really want to go on this trip.” “Maybe you’re right,” Gennaro said. “I’m missing my kid’s birthday.” Saturday was Amanda’s birthday, and Elizabeth had invited twenty screaming four-year-olds to share it, as well as Cappy the Clown and a magician. His wife hadn’t been happy to hear that Gennaro was going out of town. Neither had Amanda. “Well, I did the best I could on short notice,” his secretary said. “There’s running shoes your size, and khaki shorts and shirts, and a shaving kit. A pair of jeans and a sweatshirt if it gets cold. The car is downstairs to take you to the airport. You have to leave now to make the flight.” She left. Gennaro walked down the hallway, tearing the sales tags off the suitcase. As he passed the all-glass conference room, Dan Ross left the table and came outside. “Have a good trip,” Ross said. “But let’s be very clear about one thing. I don’t know how bad this situation actually is, Donald. But if there’s a problem on that island, burn it to the ground.” “Jesus, Dan … We’re talking about a big investment.” “Don’t hesitate. Don’t think about it. Just do it. Hear me?” Gennaro nodded. “I hear you,” he said. “But Hammond—” “Screw Hammond,” Ross said. “My boy, my boy,” the familiar raspy voice said. “How have you been, my boy?” “Very well, sir,” Gennaro replied. He leaned back in the padded leather chair of the Gulfstream II jet as it flew east, toward the Rocky Mountains. “You never call me any more,” Hammond said reproachfully. “I’ve missed you, Donald. How is your lovely wife?” “She’s fine. Elizabeth’s fine. We have a little girl now.” “Wonderful, wonderful. Children are such a delight. She’d get a kick out of our new park in Costa Rica.” Gennaro had forgotten how short Hammond was; as he sat in the chair, his feet didn’t touch the carpeting; he swung his legs as he talked. There was a childlike quality to the man, even though Hammond must now be … what? Seventy-five? Seventy-six? Something like that. He looked older than Gennaro remembered, but then, Gennaro hadn’t seen him for almost five years. Hammond was flamboyant, a born showman, and back in 1983 he had had an elephant that he carried around with him in a little cage. The elephant was nine inches high and a foot long, and perfectly formed, except his tusks were stunted. Hammond took the elephant with him to fund-raising meetings."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Gennaro usually carried it into the room, the cage covered with a little blanket, like a tea cozy, and Hammond would give his usual speech about the prospects for developing what he called “consumer biologicals.” Then, at the dramatic moment, Hammond would whip away the blanket to reveal the elephant. And he would ask for money. The elephant was always a rousing success; its tiny body, hardly bigger than a cat’s, promised untold wonders to come from the laboratory of Norman Atherton, the Stanford geneticist who was Hammond’s partner in the new venture. But as Hammond talked about the elephant, he left a great deal unsaid. For example, Hammond was starting a genetics company, but the tiny elephant hadn’t been made by any genetic procedure; Atherton had simply taken a dwarf-elephant embryo and raised it in an artificial womb with hormonal modifications. That in itself was quite an achievement, but nothing like what Hammond hinted had been done. Also, Atherton hadn’t been able to duplicate his miniature elephant, and he’d tried. For one thing, everybody who saw the elephant wanted one. Then, too, the elephant was prone to colds, particularly during winter. The sneezes coming through the little trunk filled Hammond with dread. And sometimes the elephant would get his tusks stuck between the bars of the cage and snort irritably as he tried to get free; sometimes he got infections around the tusk line. Hammond always fretted that his elephant would die before Atherton could grow a replacement. Hammond also concealed from prospective investors the fact that the elephant’s behavior had changed substantially in the process of miniaturization. The little creature might look like an elephant, but he acted like a vicious rodent, quick-moving and mean-tempered. Hammond discouraged people from petting the elephant, to avoid nipped fingers. And although Hammond spoke confidently of seven billion dollars in annual revenues by 1993, his project was intensely speculative. Hammond had vision and enthusiasm, but there was no certainty that his plan would work at all. Particularly since Norman Atherton, the brains behind the project, had terminal cancer—which was a final point Hammond neglected to mention. Even so, with Gennaro’s help, Hammond got his money. Between September of 1983 and November of 1985, John Alfred Hammond and his “Pachyderm Portfolio” raised $870 million in venture capital to finance his proposed corporation, International Genetic Technologies, Inc. And they could have raised more, except Hammond insisted on absolute secrecy, and he offered no return on capital for at least five years. That scared a lot of investors off. In the end, they’d had to take mostly Japanese consortia. The Japanese were the only investors who had the patience. Sitting in the leather chair of the jet, Gennaro thought about how evasive Hammond was. The old man was now ignoring the fact that Gennaro’s law firm had forced this trip on him. Instead, Hammond behaved as if they were engaged in a purely social outing."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“It’s too bad you didn’t bring your family with you, Donald,” he said. Gennaro shrugged. “It’s my daughter’s birthday. Twenty kids already scheduled. The cake and the clown. You know how it is.” “Oh, I understand,” Hammond said. “Kids set their hearts on things.” “Anyway, is the park ready for visitors?” Gennaro asked. “Well, not officially,” Hammond said. “But the hotel is built, so there is a place to stay.…” “And the animals?” “Of course, the animals are all there. All in their spaces.” Gennaro said, “I remember in the original proposal you were hoping for a total of twelve.…” “Oh, we’re far beyond that. We have two hundred and thirty-eight animals, Donald.” “Two hundred and thirty-eight?” The old man giggled, pleased at Gennaro’s reaction. “You can’t imagine it. We have herds of them.” “Two hundred and thirty-eight … How many species?” “Fifteen different species, Donald.” “That’s incredible,” Gennaro said. “That’s fantastic. And what about all the other things you wanted? The facilities? The computers?” “All of it, all of it,” Hammond said. “Everything on that island is state-of-the-art. You’ll see for yourself, Donald. It’s perfectly wonderful. That’s why this … concern … is so misplaced. There’s absolutely no problem with the island.” Gennaro said, “Then there should be absolutely no problem with an inspection.” “And there isn’t,” Hammond said. “But it slows things down. Everything has to stop for the official visit.…” “You’ve had delays anyway. You’ve postponed the opening.” “Oh, that.” Hammond tugged at the red-silk handkerchief in the breast pocket of his sportcoat. “It was bound to happen. Bound to happen.” “Why?” Gennaro asked. “Well, Donald,” Hammond said, “to explain that, you have to go back to the initial concept of the resort. The concept of the most advanced amusement park in the world, combining the latest electronic and biological technologies. I’m not talking about rides. Everybody has rides. Coney Island has rides. And these days everybody has animatronic environments. The haunted house, the pirate den, the wild west, the earthquake—everyone has those things. So we set out to make biological attractions. Living attractions. Attractions so astonishing they would capture the imagination of the entire world.” Gennaro had to smile. It was almost the same speech, word for word, that he had used on the investors, so many years ago. “And we can never forget the ultimate object of the project in Costa Rica—to make money,” Hammond said, staring out the windows of the jet. “Lots and lots of money.” “I remember,” Gennaro said. “And the secret to making money in a park,” Hammond said, “is to limit your personnel costs. The food handlers, ticket takers, cleanup crews, repair teams. To make a park that runs with minimal staff. That was why we invested in all the computer technology—we automated wherever we could.” “I remember.…” “But the plain fact is,” Hammond said, “when you put together all the animals and all the computer systems, you run into snags."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Who ever got a major computer system up and running on schedule? Nobody I know.” “So you’ve just had normal start-up delays?” “Yes, that’s right,” Hammond said. “Normal delays.” “I heard there were accidents during construction,” Gennaro said. “Some workmen died.…” “Yes, there were several accidents,” Hammond said. “And a total of three deaths. Two workers died building the cliff road. One other died as a result of an earth-mover accident in January. But we haven’t had any accidents for months now.” He put his hand on the younger man’s arm. “Donald,” he said, “believe me when I tell you that everything on the island is going forward as planned. Everything on that island is perfectly fine.” The intercom clicked. The pilot said, “Seat belts, please. We’re landing in Choteau.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c11_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park CHOTEAU Dry plains stretched away toward distant black buttes. The afternoon wind blew dust and tumbleweed across the cracked concrete. Grant stood with Ellie near the Jeep and waited while the sleek Grumman jet circled for a landing. “I hate to wait on the money men,” Grant grumbled. Ellie shrugged. “Goes with the job.” Although many fields of science, such as physics and chemistry, had become federally funded, paleontology remained strongly dependent on private patrons. Quite apart from his own curiosity about the island in Costa Rica, Grant understood that, if John Hammond asked for his help, he would give it. That was how patronage worked—how it had always worked. The little jet landed and rolled quickly toward them. Ellie shouldered her bag. The jet came to a stop and a stewardess in a blue uniform opened the door. Inside, he was surprised at how cramped it was, despite the luxurious appointments. Grant had to hunch over as he went to shake Hammond’s hand. “Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler,” Hammond said. “It’s good of you to join us. Allow me to introduce my associate, Donald Gennaro.” Gennaro was a stocky, muscular man in his mid-thirties wearing an Armani suit and wire-frame glasses. Grant disliked him on sight. He shook hands quickly. When Ellie shook hands, Gennaro said in surprise, “You’re a woman.” “These things happen,” she said, and Grant thought: She doesn’t like him, either. Hammond turned to Gennaro. “You know, of course, what Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler do. They are paleontologists. They dig up dinosaurs.” And then he began to laugh, as if he found the idea very funny. “Take your seats, please,” the stewardess said, closing the door. Immediately the plane began to move. “You’ll have to excuse us,” Hammond said, “but we are in a bit of a rush. Donald thinks it’s important we get right down there.” The pilot announced fours hours’ flying time to Dallas, where they would refuel, and then go on to Costa Rica, arriving the following morning. “And how long will we be in Costa Rica?” Grant asked. “Well, that really depends,” Gennaro said. “We have a few things to clear up.” “Take my word for it,” Hammond said, turning to Grant. “We’ll be down there no more than forty-eight hours.” Grant buckled his seat belt. “This island of yours that we’re going to—I haven’t heard anything about it before. Is it some kind of secret?” “In a way,” Hammond said. “We have been very, very careful about making sure nobody knows about it, until the day we finally open that island to a surprised and delighted public.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY The Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino, California, had never called an emergency meeting of its board of directors. The ten directors now sitting in the conference room were irritable and impatient. It was 8:00 p.m. They had been talking among themselves for the last ten minutes, but slowly had fallen silent. Shuffling papers. Looking pointedly at their watches. “What are we waiting for?” one asked. “One more,” Lewis Dodgson said. “We need one more.” He glanced at his watch. Ron Meyer’s office had said he was coming up on the six o’clock plane from San Diego. He should be here by now, even allowing for traffic from the airport. “You need a quorum?” another director asked. “Yes,” Dodgson said. “We do.” That shut them up for a moment. A quorum meant that they were going to be asked to make an important decision. And God knows they were, although Dodgson would have preferred not to call a meeting at all. But Steingarten, the head of Biosyn, was adamant. “You’ll have to get their agreement for this one, Lew,” he had said. Depending on who you talked to, Lewis Dodgson was famous as the most aggressive geneticist of his generation, or the most reckless. Thirty-four, balding, hawk-faced, and intense, he had been dismissed by Johns Hopkins as a graduate student, for planning gene therapy on human patients without obtaining the proper FDA protocols. Hired by Biosyn, he had conducted the controversial rabies vaccine test in Chile. Now he was the head of product development at Biosyn, which supposedly consisted of “reverse engineering”: taking a competitor’s product, tearing it apart, learning how it worked, and then making your own version. In practice, it involved industrial espionage, much of it directed toward the InGen corporation. In the 1980s, a few genetic engineering companies began to ask, “What is the biological equivalent of a Sony Walkman?” These companies weren’t interested in pharmaceuticals or health; they were interested in entertainment, sports, leisure activities, cosmetics, and pets. The perceived demand for “consumer biologicals” in the 1990s was high. InGen and Biosyn were both at work in this field. Biosyn had already achieved some success, engineering a new, pale trout under contract to the Department of Fish and Game of the State of Idaho. This trout was easier to spot in streams, and was said to represent a step forward in angling. (At least, it eliminated complaints to the Fish and Game Department that there were no trout in the streams.) The fact that the pale trout sometimes died of sunburn, and that its flesh was soggy and tasteless, was not discussed. Biosyn was still working on that, and— The door opened and Ron Meyer entered the room, slipped into a seat. Dodgson now had his quorum. He immediately stood. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we’re here tonight to consider a target of opportunity: InGen.” Dodgson quickly reviewed the background. InGen’s start-up in 1983, with Japanese investors. The purchase of three Cray XMP supercomputers."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The purchase of Isla Nublar in Costa Rica. The stockpiling of amber. The unusual donations to zoos around the world, from the New York Zoological Society to the Ranthapur Wildlife Park in India. “Despite all these clues,” Dodgson said, “we still had no idea where InGen might be going. The company seemed obviously focused on animals; and they had hired researchers with an interest in the past—paleobiologists, DNA phylogeneticists, and so on. “Then, in 1987, InGen bought an obscure company called Milli-pore Plastic Products in Nashville, Tennessee. This was an agribusiness company that had recently patented a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell. This plastic could be shaped into an egg and used to grow chick embryos. Starting the following year, InGen took the entire output of this millipore plastic for its own use.” “Dr. Dodgson, this is all very interesting—” “At the same time,” Dodgson continued, “construction was begun on Isla Nublar. This involved massive earthworks, including a shallow lake two miles long, in the center of the island. Plans for resort faculties were let out with a high degree of confidentiality, but it appears that InGen has built a private zoo of large dimensions on the island.” One of the directors leaned forward and said, “Dr. Dodgson. So what?” “It’s not an ordinary zoo,” Dodgson said. “This zoo is unique in the world. It seems that InGen has done something quite extraordinary. They have managed to clone extinct animals from the past.” “What animals?” “Animals that hatch from eggs, and that require a lot of room in a zoo.” “What animals?” “Dinosaurs,” Dodgson said. “They are cloning dinosaurs.” The consternation that followed was entirely misplaced, in Dodgson’s view. The trouble with money men was that they didn’t keep up: they had invested in a field, but they didn’t know what was possible. In fact, there had been discussion of cloning dinosaurs in the technical literature as far back as 1982. With each passing year, the manipulation of DNA had grown easier. Genetic material had already been extracted from Egyptian mummies, and from the hide of a quagga, a zebra-like African animal that had become extinct in the 1880s. By 1985, it seemed possible that quagga DNA might be reconstituted, and a new animal grown. If so, it would be the first creature brought back from extinction solely by reconstruction of its DNA. If that was possible, what else was also possible? The mastodon? The saber-toothed tiger? The dodo? Or even a dinosaur? Of course, no dinosaur DNA was known to exist anywhere in the world. But by grinding up large quantities of dinosaur bones it might be possible to extract fragments of DNA. Formerly it was thought that fossilization eliminated all DNA. Now that was recognized as untrue. If enough DNA fragments were recovered, it might be possible to clone a living animal. Back in 1982, the technical problems had seemed daunting. But there was no theoretical barrier."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It was merely difficult, expensive, and unlikely to work. Yet it was certainly possible, if anyone cared to try. InGen had apparently decided to try. “What they have done,” Dodgson said, “is build the greatest single tourist attraction in the history of the world. As you know, zoos are extremely popular. Last year, more Americans visited zoos than all professional baseball and football games combined. And the Japanese love zoos—there are fifty zoos in Japan, and more being built. And for this zoo, InGen can charge whatever they want. Two thousand dollars a day, ten thousand dollars a day … And then there is the merchandising. The picture books, T-shirts, video games, caps, stuffed toys, comic books, and pets.” “Pets?” “Of course. If InGen can make full-size dinosaurs, they can also make pygmy dinosaurs as household pets. What child won’t want a little dinosaur as a pet? A little patented animal for their very own. InGen will sell millions of them. And InGen will engineer them so that these pet dinosaurs can only eat InGen pet food.…” “Jesus,” somebody said. “Exactly,” Dodgson said. “The zoo is the centerpiece of an enormous enterprise.” “You said these dinosaurs will be patented?” “Yes. Genetically engineered animals can now be patented. The Supreme Court ruled on that in favor of Harvard in 1987. InGen will own its dinosaurs, and no one else can legally make them.” “What prevents us from creating our own dinosaurs?” some-one said. “Nothing, except that they have a five-year start. It’ll be almost impossible to catch up before the end of the century.” He paused. “Of course, if we could obtain examples of their dinosaurs, we could reverse engineer them and make our own, with enough modifications in the DNA to evade their patents.” “Can we obtain examples of their dinosaurs?” Dodgson paused. “I believe we can, yes.” Somebody cleared his throat. “There wouldn’t be anything illegal about it.…” “Oh no,” Dodgson said quickly. “Nothing illegal. I’m talking about a legitimate source of their DNA. A disgruntled employee, or some trash improperly disposed of, something like that.” “Do you have a legitimate source, Dr. Dodgson?” “I do,” Dodgson said. “But I’m afraid there is some urgency to the decision, because InGen is experiencing a small crisis, and my source will have to act within the next twenty-four hours.” A long silence descended over the room. The men looked at the secretary, taking notes, and the tape recorder on the table in front of her. “I don’t see the need for a formal resolution on this,” Dodgson said. “Just a sense of the room, as to whether you feel I should proceed.…” Slowly the heads nodded. Nobody spoke. Nobody went on record. They just nodded silently. “Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” Dodgson said. “I’ll take it from here.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c13_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park AIRPORT Lewis Dodgson entered the coffee shop in the departure building of the San Francisco airport and looked around quickly. His man was already there, waiting at the counter. Dodgson sat down next to him and placed the briefcase on the floor between them. “You’re late, pal,” the man said. He looked at the straw hat Dodgson was wearing and laughed. “What is this supposed to be, a disguise?” “You never know,” Dodgson said, suppressing his anger. For six months, Dodgson had patiently cultivated this man, who had grown more obnoxious and arrogant with each meeting. But there was nothing Dodgson could do about that—both men knew exactly what the stakes were. Bioengineered DNA was, weight for weight, the most valuable material in the world. A single microscopic bacterium, too small to see with the naked eye, but containing the genes for a heart-attack enzyme, streptokinase, or for “ice-minus,” which prevented frost damage to crops, might be worth five billion dollars to the right buyer. And that fact of life had created a bizarre new world of industrial espionage. Dodgson was especially skilled at it. In 1987, he convinced a disgruntled geneticist to quit Cetus for Biosyn, and take five strains of engineered bacteria with her. The geneticist simply put a drop of each on the fingernails of one hand, and walked out the door. But InGen presented a tougher challenge. Dodgson wanted more than bacterial DNA; he wanted frozen embryos, and he knew InGen guarded its embryos with the most elaborate security measures. To obtain them, he needed an InGen employee who had access to the embryos, who was willing to steal them, and who could defeat the security. Such a person was not easy to find. Dodgson had finally located a susceptible InGen employee earlier in the year. Although this particular person had no access to genetic material, Dodgson kept up the contact, meeting the man monthly at Carlos and Charlie’s in Silicon Valley, helping him in small ways. And now that InGen was inviting contractors and advisers to visit the island, it was the moment that Dodgson had been waiting for—because it meant his man would have access to embryos. “Let’s get down to it,” the man said. “I’ve got ten minutes before my flight.” “You want to go over it again?” Dodgson said. “Hell no, Dr. Dodgson,” the man said. “I want to see the damn money.” Dodgson flipped the latch on the briefcase and opened it a few inches. The man glanced down casually. “That’s all of it?” “That’s half of it. Seven hundred fifty thousand dollars.” “Okay, Fine.” The man turned away, drank his coffee. “That’s fine, Dr. Dodgson.” Dodgson quickly locked the briefcase. “That’s for all fifteen species, you remember.” “I remember. Fifteen species, frozen embryos. And how am I going to transport them?” Dodgson handed the man a large can of Gillette Foamy shaving cream. “That’s it?” “That’s it.” “They may check my luggage.…” Dodgson shrugged."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c13_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Press the top,” he said. The man pressed it, and white shaving cream puffed into his hand. “Not bad.” He wiped the foam on the edge of his plate. “Not bad.” “The can’s a little heavier than usual, is all.” Dodgson’s technical team had been assembling it around the clock for the last two days. Quickly he showed him how it worked. “How much coolant gas is inside?” “Enough for thirty-six hours. The embryos have to be back in San José by then.” “That’s up to your guy in the boat,” the man said. “Better make sure he has a portable cooler on board.” “I’ll do that,” Dodgson said. “And let’s just review the bidding.…” “The deal is the same,” Dodgson said. “Fifty thousand on delivery of each embryo. If they’re viable, an additional fifty thousand each.” “That’s fine. Just make sure you have the boat waiting at the east dock of the island, Friday night. Not the north dock, where the big supply boats arrive. The east dock. It’s a small utility dock. You got that?” “I got it,” Dodgson said. “When will you be back in San José?” “Probably Sunday.” The man pushed away from the counter. Dodgson fretted. “You’re sure you know how to work the—” “I know,” the man said. “Believe me, I know.” “Also,” Dodgson said, “we think the island maintains constant radio contact with InGen corporate headquarters in California, so—” “Look, I’ve got it covered,” the man said. “Just relax, and get the money ready I want it all Sunday morning, in San José airport, in cash.” “It’ll be waiting for you,” Dodgson said. “Don’t worry.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park MALCOLM Shortly before midnight, he stepped on the plane at the Dallas airport, a tall, thin, balding man of thirty-five, dressed entirely in black: black shirt, black trousers, black socks, black sneakers. “Ah, Dr. Malcolm,” Hammond said, smiling with forced graciousness. Malcolm grinned. “Hello, John. Yes, I am afraid your old nemesis is here.” Malcolm shook hands with everyone, saying quickly, “Ian Malcolm, how do you do? I do maths.” He struck Grant as being more amused by the outing than anything else. Certainly Grant recognized his name. Ian Malcolm was one of the most famous of the new generation of mathematicians who were openly interested in “how the real world works.” These scholars broke with the cloistered tradition of mathematics in several important ways. For one thing, they used computers constantly, a practice traditional mathematicians frowned on. For another, they worked almost exclusively with nonlinear equations, in the emerging field called chaos theory. For a third, they appeared to care that their mathematics described something that actually existed in the real world. And finally, as if to emphasize their emergence from academia into the world, they dressed and spoke with what one senior mathematician called “a deplorable excess of personality.” In fact, they often behaved like rock stars. Malcolm sat in one of the padded chairs. The stewardess asked him if he wanted a drink. He said, “Diet Coke, shaken not stirred.” Humid Dallas air drifted through the open door. Ellie said, “Isn’t it a little warm for black?” “You’re extremely pretty, Dr. Sattler,” he said. “I could look at your legs all day. But no, as a matter of fact, black is an excellent color for heat. If you remember your black-body radiation, black is actually best in heat. Efficient radiation. In any case, I wear only two colors, black and gray.” Ellie was staring at him, her mouth open. “These colors are appropriate for any occasion,” Malcolm continued, “and they go well together, should I mistakenly put on a pair of gray socks with my black trousers.” “But don’t you find it boring to wear only two colors?” “Not at all. I find it liberating. I believe my life has value, and I don’t want to waste it thinking about clothing,” Malcolm said. “I don’t want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud. But, on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports.” “Dr. Malcolm,” Hammond explained, “is a man of strong opinions.” “And mad as a hatter,” Malcolm said cheerfully. “But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn’t it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt", "text": "We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.” Hammond turned to Gennaro and raised his hands. “You invited him.” “And a lucky thing, too,” Malcolm said. “Because it sounds as if you have a serious problem.” “We have no problem,” Hammond said quickly. “I always maintained this island would be unworkable,” Malcolm said. “I predicted it from the beginning.” He reached into a soft leather briefcase. “And I trust by now we all know what the eventual outcome is going to be. You’re going to have to shut the thing down.” “Shut it down!” Hammond stood angrily. “This is ridiculous.” Malcolm shrugged, indifferent to Hammond’s outburst. “I’ve brought copies of my original paper for you to look at,” he said. “The original consultancy paper I did for InGen. The mathematics are a bit sticky, but I can walk you through it. Are you leaving now?” “I have some phone calls to make,” Hammond said, and went into the adjoining cabin. “Well, it’s a long flight,” Malcolm said to the others. “At least my paper will give you something to do.” The plane flew through the night. Grant knew that Ian Malcolm had his share of detractors, and he could understand why some found his style too abrasive, and his applications of chaos theory too glib. Grant thumbed through the paper, glancing at the equations. Gennaro said, “Your paper concludes that Hammond’s island is bound to fail?” “Correct.” “Because of chaos theory?” “Correct. To be more precise, because of the behavior of the system in phase space.” Gennaro tossed the paper aside and said, “Can you explain this in English?” “Surely,” Malcolm said. “Let’s see where we have to start. You know what a nonlinear equation is?” “No.” “Strange attractors?” “No.” “All right,” Malcolm said. “Let’s go back to the beginning.” He paused, staring at the ceiling. “Physics has had great success at describing certain kinds of behavior: planets in orbit, spacecraft going to the moon, pendulums and springs and rolling balls, that sort of thing. The regular movement of objects. These are described by what are called linear equations, and mathematicians can solve those equations easily. We’ve been doing it for hundreds of years.” “Okay,” Gennaro said. “But there is another kind of behavior, which physics handles badly. For example, anything to do with turbulence. Water coming out of a spout. Air moving over an airplane wing. Weather. Blood flowing through the heart. Turbulent events are described by nonlinear equations. They’re hard to solve—in fact, they’re usually impossible to solve. So physics has never understood this whole class of events. Until about ten years ago. The new theory that describes them is called chaos theory. “Chaos theory originally grew out of attempts to make computer models of weather in the 1960s. Weather is a big complicated system, namely the earth’s atmosphere as it interacts with the land and the sun. The behavior of this big complicated system always defied understanding. So naturally we couldn’t predict weather."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But what the early researchers learned from computer models was that, even if you could understand it, you still couldn’t predict it. Weather prediction is absolutely impossible. The reason is that the behavior of the system is sensitively dependent on initial conditions.” “You lost me,” Gennaro said. “If I use a cannon to fire a shell of a certain weight, at a certain speed, and a certain angle of inclination—and if I then fire a second shell with almost the same weight, speed, and angle—what will happen?” “The two shells will land at almost the same spot.” “Right,” Malcolm said. “That’s linear dynamics.” “Okay.” “But if I have a weather system that I start up with a certain temperature and a certain wind speed and a certain humidity—and if I then repeat it with almost the same temperature, wind, and humidity—the second system will not behave almost the same. It’ll wander off and rapidly will become very different from the first. Thunderstorms instead of sunshine. That’s nonlinear dynamics. They are sensitive to initial conditions: tiny differences become amplified.” “I think I see,” Gennaro said. “The shorthand is the ‘butterfly effect.’ A butterfly flaps its wings in Peking, and weather in New York is different.” “So chaos is all just random and unpredictable?” Gennaro said. “Is that it?” “No,” Malcolm said. “We actually find hidden regularities within the complex variety of a system’s behavior. That’s why chaos has now become a very broad theory that’s used to study everything from the stock market, to rioting crowds, to brain waves during epilepsy. Any sort of complex system where there is confusion and unpredictability. We can find an underlying order. Okay?” “Okay,” Gennaro said. “But what is this underlying order?” “It’s essentially characterized by the movement of the system within phase space,” Malcolm said. “Jesus,” Gennaro said. “All I want to know is why you think Hammond’s island can’t work.” “I understand,” Malcolm said. “I’ll get there. Chaos theory says two things. First, that complex systems like weather have an underlying order. Second, the reverse of that—that simple systems can produce complex behavior. For example, pool balls. You hit a pool ball, and it starts to carom off the sides of the table. In theory, that’s a fairly simple system, almost a Newtonian system. Since you can know the force imparted to the ball, and the mass of the ball, and you can calculate the angles at which it will strike the walls, you can predict the future behavior of the ball. In theory, you could predict the behavior of the ball far into the future, as it keeps bouncing from side to side. You could predict where it will end up three hours from now, in theory.” “Okay.” Gennaro nodded. “But in fact,” Malcolm said, “it turns out you can’t predict more than a few seconds into the future."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Because almost immediately very small effects—imperfections in the surface of the ball, tiny indentations in the wood of the table—start to make a difference. And it doesn’t take long before they overpower your careful calculations. So it turns out that this simple system of a pool ball on a table has unpredictable behavior.” “Okay.” “And Hammond’s project,” Malcolm said, “is another apparently simple system—animals within a zoo environment—that will eventually show unpredictable behavior.” “You know this because of …” “Theory,” Malcolm said. “But hadn’t you better see the island, to see what he’s actually done?” “No. That is quite unnecessary. The details don’t matter. Theory tells me that the island will quickly proceed to behave in unpredictable fashion.” “And you’re confident of your theory.” “Oh, yes,” Malcolm said. “Totally confident.” He sat back in the chair. “There is a problem with that island. It is an accident waiting to happen.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c15_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park ISLA NUBLAR With a whine, the rotors began to swing in circles overhead, casting shadows on the runway of San José airport. Grant listened to the crackle in his earphones as the pilot talked to the tower. They had picked up another passenger in San José, a man named Dennis Nedry, who had flown in to meet them. He was fat and sloppy, eating a candy bar, and there was sticky chocolate on his fingers, and flecks of aluminum foil on his shirt. Nedry had mumbled something about doing computers on the island, and hadn’t offered to shake hands. Through the Plexi bubble Grant watched the airport concrete drop away beneath his feet, and he saw the shadow of the helicopter racing along as they went west, toward the mountains. “It’s about a forty-minute trip,” Hammond said, from one of the rear seats. Grant watched the low hills rise up, and then they were passing through intermittent clouds, breaking out into sunshine. The mountains were rugged, though he was surprised at the amount of deforestation, acre after acre of denuded, eroded hills. “Costa Rica,” Hammond said, “has better population control than other countries in Central America. But, even so, the land is badly deforested. Most of this is within the last ten years.” They came down out of the clouds on the other side of the mountains, and Grant saw the beaches of the west coast. They flashed over a small coastal village. “Bahía Anasco,” the pilot said. “Fishing village.” He pointed north. “Up the coast there, you see the Cabo Blanco preserve. They have beautiful beaches.” The pilot headed straight out over the ocean. The water turned green, and then deep aquamarine. The sun shone on the water. It was about ten in the morning. “Just a few minutes now,” Hammond said, “and we should be seeing Isla Nublar.” Isla Nublar, Hammond explained, was not a true island. Rather, it was a seamount, a volcanic upthrusting of rock from the ocean floor. “Its volcanic origins can be seen all over the island,” Hammond said. “There are steam vents in many places, and the ground is often hot underfoot. Because of this, and also because of prevailing currents, Isla Nublar lies in a foggy area. As we get there you will see—ah, there we are.” The helicopter rushed forward, low to the water. Ahead Grant saw an island, rugged and craggy, rising sharply from the ocean. “Christ, it looks like Alcatraz,” Malcolm said. Its forested slopes were wreathed in fog, giving the island a mysterious appearance. “Much larger, of course,” Hammond said. “Eight miles long and three miles wide at the widest point, in total some twenty-two square miles. Making it the largest private animal preserve in North America.” The helicopter began to climb, and headed toward the north end of the island. Grant was trying to see through the dense fog. “It’s not usually this thick,” Hammond said. He sounded worried."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c15_r1.htm.txt", "text": "At the north end of the island, the hills were highest, rising more than two thousand feet above the ocean. The tops of the hills were in fog, but Grant saw rugged cliffs and crashing ocean below. The helicopter climbed above the hills. “Unfortunately,” Hammond said, “we have to land on the island. I don’t like to do it, because it disturbs the animals. And it’s sometimes a bit thrilling—” Hammond’s voice cut off as the pilot said, “Starting our descent now. Hang on, folks.” The helicopter started down, and immediately they were blanketed in fog. Grant heard a repetitive electronic beeping through his earphones, but he could see nothing at all; then he began dimly to discern the green branches of pine trees, reaching through the mist. Some of the branches were close. “How the hell is he doing this?” Malcolm said, but nobody answered. The pilot swung his gaze left, then right, looking at the pine forest. The trees were still close. The helicopter descended rapidly. “Jesus,” Malcolm said. The beeping was louder. Grant looked at the pilot. He was concentrating. Grant glanced down and saw a giant glowing fluorescent cross beneath the Plexi bubble at his feet. There were flashing lights at the comers of the cross. The pilot corrected slightly and touched down on a helipad. The sound of the rotors faded, and died. Grant sighed, and released his seat belt. “We have to come down fast, that way,” Hammond said, “because of the wind shear. There is often bad wind shear on this peak, and … well, we’re safe.” Someone was running up to the helicopter. A man with a baseball cap and red hair. He threw open the door and said cheerfully, “Hi, I’m Ed Regis. Welcome to Isla Nublar, everybody. And watch your step, please.” A narrow path wound down the hill. The air was chilly and damp. As they moved lower, the mist around them thinned, and Grant could see the landscape better. It looked, he thought, rather like the Pacific Northwest, the Olympic Peninsula. “That’s right,” Regis said. “Primary ecology is deciduous rain forest. Rather different from the vegetation on the mainland, which is more classical rain forest. But this is a microclimate that only occurs at elevation, on the slopes of the northern hills. The majority of the island is tropical.” Down below, they could see the white roofs of large buildings, nestled among the planting. Grant was surprised: the construction was elaborate. They moved lower, out of the mist, and now he could see the full extent of the island, stretching away to the south. As Regis had said, it was mostly covered in tropical forest. To the south, rising above the palm trees, Grant saw a single trunk with no leaves at all, just a big curving stump. Then the stump moved, and twisted around to face the new arrivals. Grant realized that he was not seeing a tree at all."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c15_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He was looking at the graceful, curving neck of an enormous creature, rising fifty feet into the air. He was looking at a dinosaur."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c16_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park WELCOME “My God,” Ellie said softly. They were all staring at the animal above the trees. “My God.” Her first thought was that the dinosaur was extraordinarily beautiful. Books portrayed them as oversize, dumpy creatures, but this long-necked animal had a gracefulness, almost a dignity, about its movements. And it was quick—there was nothing lumbering or dull in its behavior. The sauropod peered alertly at them, and made a low trumpeting sound, rather like an elephant. A moment later, a second head rose above the foliage, and then a third, and a fourth. “My God,” Ellie said again. Gennaro was speechless. He had known all along what to expect—he had known about it for years—but he had somehow never believed it would happen, and now, he was shocked into silence. The awesome power of the new genetic technology, which he had formerly considered to be just so many words in an overwrought sales pitch—the power suddenly became clear to him. These animals were so big! They were enormous! Big as a house! And so many of them! Actual damned dinosaurs! Just as real as you could want. Gennaro thought: We are going to make a fortune on this place. A fortune. He hoped to God the island was safe. Grant stood on the path on the side of the hill, with the mist on his face, staring at the gray necks craning above the palms. He felt dizzy, as if the ground were sloping away too steeply. He had trouble getting his breath. Because he was looking at something he had never expected to see in his life. Yet he was seeing it. The animals in the mist were perfect apatosaurs, medium-size sauropods. His stunned mind made academic associations: North American herbivores, late Jurassic horizon. Commonly called “brontosaurs.” First discovered by E. D. Cope in Montana in 1876. Specimens associated with Morrison formation strata in Colorado, Utah, and Oklahoma. Recently Berman and McIntosh had reclassified it a diplodocus based on skull appearance. Traditionally, Brontosaurus was thought to spend most of its time in shallow water, which would help support its large bulk. Although this animal was clearly not in the water, it was moving much too quickly, the head and neck shifting above the palms in a very active manner—a surprisingly active manner— Grant began to laugh. “What is it?” Hammond said, worried. “Is something wrong?” Grant just shook his head, and continued to laugh. He couldn’t tell them that what was funny was that he had seen the animal for only a few seconds, but he had already begun to accept it—and to use his observations to answer long-standing questions in the field. He was still laughing as he saw a fifth and a sixth neck crane up above the palm trees. The sauropods watched the people arrive. They reminded Grant of oversize giraffes—they had the same pleasant, rather stupid gaze. “I take it they’re not animatronic,” Malcolm said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c16_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“They’re very lifelike.” “Yes, they certainly are,” Hammond said. “Well, they should be, shouldn’t they?” From the distance, they heard the trumpeting sound again. First one animal made it, and then the others joined in. “That’s their call,” Ed Regis said. “Welcoming us to the island.” Grant stood and listened for a moment, entranced. “You probably want to know what happens next,” Hammond was saying, continuing down the path. “We’ve scheduled a complete tour of the facilities for you, and a trip to see the dinosaurs in the park later this afternoon. I’ll be joining you for dinner, and will answer any remaining questions you may have then. Now, if you’ll go with Mr. Regis …” The group followed Ed Regis toward the nearest buildings. Over the path, a crude hand-painted sign read: “Welcome to Jurassic Park.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park JURASSIC PARK They moved into a green tunnel of overarching palms leading toward the main visitor building. Everywhere, extensive and elaborate planting emphasized the feeling that they were entering a new world, a prehistoric tropical world, and leaving the normal world behind. Ellie said to Grant, “They look pretty good.” “Yes,” Grant said. “I want to see them up close. I want to lift up their toe pads and inspect their claws and feel their skin and open their jaws and have a look at their teeth. Until then I don’t know for sure. But yes, they look good.” “I suppose it changes your field a bit,” Malcolm said. Grant shook his head. “It changes everything,” he said. For 150 years, ever since the discovery of gigantic animal bones in Europe, the study of dinosaurs had been an exercise in scientific deduction. Paleontology was essentially detective work, searching for clues in the fossil bones and the trackways of the long-vanished giants. The best paleontologists were the ones who could make the most clever deductions. And all the great disputes of paleontology were carried out in this fashion—including the bitter debate, in which Grant was a key figure, about whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Scientists had always classified dinosaurs as reptiles, cold-blooded creatures drawing the heat they needed for life from the environment. A mammal could metabolize food to produce bodily warmth, but a reptile could not. Eventually a handful of researchers—led chiefly by John Ostrom and Robert Bakker at Yale—began to suspect that the concept of sluggish, cold-blooded dinosaurs was inadequate to explain the fossil record. In classic deductive fashion, they drew conclusions from several lines of evidence. First was posture: lizards and reptiles were bent-legged sprawlers, hugging the ground for warmth. Lizards didn’t have the energy to stand on their hind legs for more than a few seconds. But the dinosaurs stood on straight legs, and many walked erect on their hind legs. Among living animals, erect posture occurred only in warm-blooded mammals and birds. Thus dinosaur posture suggested warm-bloodedness. Next they studied metabolism, calculating the pressure necessary to push blood up the eighteen-foot-long neck of a brachiosaur, and concluding that it could only be accomplished by a four-chambered, hot-blooded heart. They studied trackways, fossil footprints left in mud, and concluded that dinosaurs ran as fast as a man; such activity implied warm blood. They found dinosaur remains above the Arctic Circle, in a frigid environment unimaginable for a reptile. And the new studies of group behavior, based largely on Grant’s own work, suggested that dinosaurs had a complex social life and reared their young, as reptiles did not. Turtles abandon their eggs. But dinosaurs probably did not. The warm-blooded controversy had raged for fifteen years, before a new perception of dinosaurs as quick-moving, active animals was accepted—but not without lasting animosities. At conventions, there were still colleagues who did not speak to one another."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But now, if dinosaurs could be cloned—why, Grant’s field of study was going to change instantly. The paleontological study of dinosaurs was finished. The whole enterprise—the museum halls with their giant skeletons and flocks of echoing schoolchildren, the university laboratories with their bone trays, the research papers, the journals—all of it was going to end. “You don’t seem upset,” Malcolm said. Grant shook his head. “It’s been discussed, in the field. Many people imagined it was coming. But not so soon.” “Story of our species,” Malcolm said, laughing. “Everybody knows it’s coming, but not so soon.” As they walked down the path, they could no longer see the dinosaurs, but they could hear them, trumpeting softly in the distance. Grant said, “My only question is, where’d they get the DNA?” Grant was aware of serious speculation in laboratories in Berkeley, Tokyo, and London that it might eventually be possible to clone an extinct animal such as a dinosaur—if you could get some dinosaur DNA to work with. The problem was that all known dinosaurs were fossils, and the fossilization destroyed most DNA, replacing it with inorganic material. Of course, if a dinosaur was frozen, or preserved in a peat bog, or mummified in a desert environment, then its DNA might be recoverable. But nobody had ever found a frozen or mummified dinosaur. So cloning was therefore impossible. There was nothing to clone from. All the modern genetic technology was useless. It was like having a Xerox copier but nothing to copy with it. Ellie said, “You can’t reproduce a real dinosaur, because you can’t get real dinosaur DNA.” “Unless there’s a way we haven’t thought of,” Grant said. “Like what?” she said. “I don’t know,” Grant said. Beyond a fence, they came to the swimming pool, which spilled over into a series of waterfalls and smaller rocky pools. The area was planted with huge ferns. “Isn’t this extraordinary?” Ed Regis said. “Especially on a misty day, these plants really contribute to the prehistoric atmosphere. These are authentic Jurassic ferns, of course.” Ellie paused to look more closely at the ferns. Yes, it was just as he said: Serenna veriformans, a plant found abundantly in fossils more than two hundred million years old, now common only in the wetlands of Brazil and Colombia. But whoever had decided to place this particular fern at poolside obviously didn’t know that the spores of veriformans contained a deadly beta-carboline alkaloid. Even touching the attractive green fronds could make you sick, and if a child were to take a mouthful, he would almost certainly die—the toxin was fifty times more poisonous than oleander. People were so naïve about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction—and defense."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But Ellie knew that, in the earth’s history, plants had evolved as competitively as animals, and in some ways more fiercely. The poison in Serenna veriformans was a minor example of the elaborate chemical arsenal of weapons that plants had evolved. There were terpenes, which plants spread to poison the soil around them and inhibit competitors; alkaloids, which made them unpalatable to insects and predators (and children); and pheromones, used for communication. When a Douglas fir tree was attacked by beetles, it produced an anti-feedant chemical—and so did other Douglas firs in distant parts of the forest. It happened in response to a warning alleochemical secreted by the trees that were under attack. People who imagined that life on earth consisted of animals moving against a green background seriously misunderstood what they were seeing. That green background was busily alive. Plants grew, moved, twisted, and turned, fighting for the sun; and they interacted continuously with animals—discouraging some with bark and thorns; poisoning others; and feeding still others to advance their own reproduction, to spread their pollen and seeds. It was a complex, dynamic process which she never ceased to find fascinating. And which she knew most people simply didn’t understand. But if planting deadly ferns at poolside was any indication, then it was clear that the designers of Jurassic Park had not been as careful as they should have been. “Isn’t it just wonderful?” Ed Regis was saying. “If you look up ahead, you’ll see our Safari Lodge.” Ellie saw a dramatic, low building, with a series of glass pyramids on the roof. “That’s where you’ll all be staying here in Jurassic Park.” Grant’s suite was done in beige tones, the rattan furniture in green jungle-print motifs. The room wasn’t quite finished; there were stacks of lumber in the closet, and pieces of electrical conduit on the floor. There was a television set in the corner, with a card on top: Channel 2: Hypsilophodont Highlands Channel 3: Triceratops Territory Channel 4: Sauropod Swamp Channel 5: Carnivore Country Channel 6: Stegosaurus South Channel 7: Velociraptor Valley Channel 8: Pterosaur Peak He found the names irritatingly cute. Grant turned on the television but got only static. He shut it off and went into his bedroom, tossed his suitcase on the bed. Directly over the bed was a large pyramidal skylight. It created a tented feeling, like sleeping under the stars. Unfortunately the glass had to be protected by heavy bars, so that striped shadows fell across the bed. Grant paused. He had seen the plans for the lodge, and he didn’t remember bars on the skylight. In fact, these bars appeared to be a rather crude addition. A black steel frame had been constructed outside the glass walls, and the bars welded to the frame. Puzzled, Grant moved from the bedroom to the living room. His window looked out on the swimming pool. “By the way, those ferns are poison,” Ellie said, walking into his room."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“But did you notice anything about the rooms, Alan?” “They changed the plans.” “I think so, yes.” She moved around the room. “The windows are small,” she said. “And the glass is tempered, set in a steel frame. The doors are steel-clad. That shouldn’t be necessary. And did you see the fence when we came in?” Grant nodded. The entire lodge was enclosed within a fence, with bars of inch-thick steel. The fence was gracefully landscaped and painted flat black to resemble wrought iron, but no cosmetic effort could disguise the thickness of the metal, or its twelve-foot height. “I don’t think the fence was in the plans, either,” Ellie said. “It looks to me like they’ve turned this place into a fortress.” Grant looked at his watch. “We’ll be sure to ask why,” he said. “The tour starts in twenty minutes.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park WHEN DINOSAURS RULEDTHE EARTH They met in the visitor building: two stories high, and all glass with exposed black anodized girders and supports. Grant found it determinedly high-tech. There was a small auditorium dominated by a robot Tyrannosaurus rex, poised menacingly by the entrance to an exhibit area labeled WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH. Farther on were other displays: WHAT IS A DINOSAUR? and THE MESOZOIC WORLD. But the exhibits weren’t completed; there were wires and cables all over the floor. Gennaro climbed up on the stage and talked to Grant, Ellie, and Malcolm, his voice echoing slightly in the room. Hammond sat in the back, his hands folded across his chest. “We’re about to tour the facilities,” Gennaro said. “I’m sure Mr. Hammond and his staff will show everything in the best light. Before we go, I wanted to review why we are here, and what I need to decide before we leave. Basically, as you all realize by now, this is an island in which genetically engineered dinosaurs have been allowed to move in a natural park-like setting, forming a tourist attraction. The attraction isn’t open to tourists yet, but it will be in a year. “Now, my question for you is a simple one. Is this island safe? Is it safe for visitors, and is it safely containing the dinosaurs?” Gennaro turned down the room lights. “There are two pieces of evidence which we have to deal with. First of all, there is Dr. Grant’s identification of a previously unknown dinosaur on the Costa Rican mainland. This dinosaur is known only from a partial fragment. It was found in July of this year, after it supposedly bit an American girl on a beach. Dr. Grant can tell you more later. I’ve asked for the original fragment, which is in a lab in New York, to be flown here so that we can inspect it directly. Meanwhile, there is a second piece of evidence. “Costa Rica has an excellent medical service, and it tracks all kinds of data. Beginning in March, there were reports of lizards biting infants in their cribs—and also, I might add, biting old people who were sleeping soundly. These lizard bites were sporadically reported in coastal villages from Ismaloya to Puntarenas. After March, lizard bites were no longer reported. However, I have this graph from the Public Health Service in San José of infant mortality in the towns of the west coast earlier this year.” “I direct your attention to two features of this graph,” Gennaro said. “First, infant mortality is low in the months of January and February, then spikes in March, then it’s low again in April. But from May onward, it is high, right through July, the month the American girl was bitten. The Public Health Service feels that something is now affecting infant mortality, and it is not being reported by the workers in the coastal villages."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The second feature is the puzzling biweekly spiking, which seems to suggest some kind of alternating phenomenon is at work.” The lights came back on. “All right,” Gennaro said. “That’s the evidence I want explained. Now, are there any—” “We can save ourselves a great deal of trouble,” Malcolm said. “I’ll explain it for you now.” “You will?” Gennaro said. “Yes,” Malcolm said. “First of all, animals have very likely gotten off the island.” “Oh balls,” Hammond growled, from the back. “And second, the graph from the Public Health Service is almost certainly unrelated to any animals that have escaped.” Grant said, “How do you know that?” “You’ll notice that the graph alternates between high and low spikes,” Malcolm said. “That is characteristic of many complex systems. For example, water dripping from a tap. If you turn on the faucet just a little, you’ll get a constant drip, drip, drip. But if you open it a little more, so that there’s a bit of turbulence in the flow, then you’ll get alternating large and small drops. Drip drip … Drip drip … Like that. You can try it yourself. Turbulence produces alternation—it’s a signature. And you will get an alternating graph like this for the spread of any new illness in a community.” “But why do you say it isn’t caused by escaped dinosaurs?” Grant said. “Because it is a nonlinear signature,” Malcolm said. “You’d need hundreds of escaped dinosaurs to cause it. And I don’t think hundreds of dinosaurs have escaped. So I conclude that some other phenomenon, such as a new variety of flu, is causing the fluctuations you see in the graph.” Gennaro said, “But you think that dinosaurs have escaped?” “Probably, yes.” “Why?” “Because of what you are attempting here. Look, this island is an attempt to re-create a natural environment from the past. To make an isolated world where extinct creatures roam freely. Correct?” “Yes.” “But from my point of view, such an undertaking is impossible. The mathematics are so self-evident that they don’t need to be calculated. It’s rather like my asking you whether, on a billion dollars in income, you had to pay tax. You wouldn’t need to pull out your calculator to check. You’d know tax was owed. And, similarly, I know overwhelmingly that one cannot successfully duplicate nature in this way, or hope to isolate it.” “Why not? After all, there are zoos.…” “Zoos don’t re-create nature,” Malcolm said. “Let’s be clear. Zoos take the nature that already exists and modify it very slightly, to create holding pens for animals. Even those minimal modifications often fail. The animals escape with regularity. But a zoo is not a model for this park. This park is attempting something far more ambitious than that. Something much more akin to making a space station on earth.” Gennaro shook his head. “I don’t understand.” “Well, it’s very simple. Except for the air, which flows freely, everything about this park is meant to be isolated."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Nothing gets in, nothing out. The animals kept here are never to mix with the greater ecosystems of earth. They are never to escape.” “And they never have,” Hammond snorted. “Such isolation is impossible,” Malcolm said flatly. “It simply cannot be done.” “It can. It’s done all the time.” “I beg your pardon,” Malcolm said. “But you don’t know what you are talking about.” “You arrogant little snot,” Hammond said. He stood, and walked out of the room. “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Gennaro said. “I’m sorry,” Malcolm said, “but the point remains. What we call ‘nature’ is in fact a complex system of far greater subtlety than we are willing to accept. We make a simplified image of nature and then we botch it up. I’m no environmentalist, but you have to understand what you don’t understand. How many times must the point be made? How many times must we see the evidence? We build the Aswan Dam and claim it is going to revitalize the country. Instead, it destroys the fertile Nile Delta, produces parasitic infestation, and wrecks the Egyptian economy. We build the—” “Excuse me,” Gennaro said. “But I think I hear the helicopter. That’s probably the sample for Dr. Grant to look at.” He started out of the room. They all followed. At the foot of the mountain, Gennaro was screaming over the sound of the helicopter. The veins of his neck stood out. “You did what? You invited who?” “Take it easy,” Hammond said. Gennaro screamed, “Are you out of your goddamned mind?” “Now, look here,” Hammond said, drawing himself up. “I think we have to get something clear—” “No,” Gennaro said. “No, you get something clear. This is not a social outing. This is not a weekend excursion—” “This is my island,” Hammond said, “and I can invite whomever I want.” “This is a serious investigation of your island because your investors are concerned that it’s out of control. We think this is a very dangerous place, and—” “You’re not going to shut me down, Donald—” “I will if I have to—” “This is a safe place,” Hammond said, “no matter what that damn mathematician is saying—” “It’s not—” “And I’ll demonstrate its safety—” “And I want you to put them right back on that helicopter,” Gennaro said. “Can’t,” Hammond said, pointing toward the clouds. “It’s already leaving.” And, indeed, the sound of the rotors was fading. “God damn it,” Gennaro said, “don’t you see you’re needlessly risking—” “Ah ah,” Hammond said. “Let’s continue this later. I don’t want to upset the children.” Grant turned, and saw two children coming down the hillside, led by Ed Regis. There was a bespectacled boy of about eleven, and a girl a few years younger, perhaps seven or eight, her blond hair pushed up under a Mets baseball cap, and a baseball glove slung over her shoulder. The two kids made their way nimbly down the path from the helipad, and stopped some distance from Gennaro and Hammond."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Low, under his breath, Gennaro said, “Christ.” “Now, take it easy,” Hammond said. “Their parents are getting a divorce, and I want them to have a fun weekend here.” The girl waved tentatively. “Hi, Grandpa,” she said. “We’re here.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park THE TOUR Tim Murphy could see at once that something was wrong. His grandfather was in the middle of an argument with the younger, red-faced man opposite him. And the other adults, standing behind, looked embarrassed and uncomfortable. Alexis felt the tension, too, because she hung back, tossing her baseball in the air. He had to push her: “Go on, Lex.” “Go on yourself, Timmy.” “Don’t be a worm,” he said. Lex glared at him, but Ed Regis said cheerfully, “I’ll introduce you to everybody, and then we can take the tour.” “I have to go,” Lex said. “I’ll just introduce you first,” Ed Regis said. “No, I have to go.” But Ed Regis was already making introductions. First to Grandpa, who kissed them both, and then to the man he was arguing with. This man was muscular and his name was Gennaro. The rest of the introductions were a blur to Tim. There was a blond woman wearing shorts, and a man with a beard who wore jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. He looked like the outdoors type. Then a fat college kid who had something to do with computers, and finally a thin man in black, who didn’t shake hands, but just nodded his head. Tim was trying to organize his impressions, and was looking at the blond woman’s legs, when he suddenly realized that he knew who the bearded man was. “Your mouth is open,” Lex said. Tim said, “I know him.” “Oh sure. You just met him.” “No,” Tim said. “I have his book.” The bearded man said, “What book is that, Tim?” “Lost World of the Dinosaurs,” Tim said. Alexis snickered. “Daddy says Tim has dinosaurs on the brain,” she said. Tim hardly heard her. He was thinking of what he knew about Alan Grant. Alan Grant was one of the principal advocates of the theory that dinosaurs were warm-blooded. He had done lots of digging at the place called Egg Hill in Montana, which was famous because so many dinosaur eggs had been found there. Professor Grant had found most of the dinosaur eggs that had ever been discovered. He was also a good illustrator, and he drew the pictures for his own books. “Dinosaurs on the brain?” the bearded man said. “Well, as a matter of fact, I have that same problem.” “Dad says dinosaurs are really stupid,” Lex said. “He says Tim should get out in the air and play more sports.” Tim felt embarrassed. “I thought you had to go,” he said. “In a minute,” Lex said. “I thought you were in such a rush.” “I’m the one who would know, don’t you think, Timothy?” she said, putting her hands on her hips, copying her mother’s most irritating stance. “Tell you what,” Ed Regis said. “Why don’t we all just head on over to the visitor center, and we can begin our tour.” Everybody started walking."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Tim heard Gennaro whisper to his grandfather, “I could kill you for this,” and then Tim looked up and saw that Dr. Grant had fallen into step beside him. “How old are you, Tim?” “Eleven.” “And how long have you been interested in dinosaurs?” Grant asked. Tim swallowed. “A while now,” he said. He felt nervous to be talking to Dr. Grant. “We go to museums sometimes, when I can talk my family into it. My father.” “Your father’s not especially interested?” Tim nodded, and told Grant about his family’s last trip to the Museum of Natural History. His father had looked at a skeleton and said, “That’s a big one.” Tim had said, “No, Dad, that’s a medium-size one, a camptosaurus.” “Oh, I don’t know. Looks pretty big to me.” “It’s not even full-grown, Dad.” His father squinted at the skeleton. “What is it, Jurassic?” “Jeez. No. Cretaceous.” “Cretaceous? What’s the difference between Cretaceous and Jurassic?” “Only about a hundred million years,” Tim said. “Cretaceous is older?” “No, Dad, Jurassic is older.” “Well,” his father said, stepping back, “it looks pretty damn big to me.” And he turned to Tim for agreement. Tim knew he had better agree with his father, so he just muttered something. And they went on to another exhibit. Tim stood in front of one skeleton—a Tyrannosaurus rex, the mightiest predator the earth had ever known—for a long time. Finally his father said, “What are you looking at?” “I’m counting the vertebrae,” Tim said. “The vertebrae?” “In the backbone.” “I know what vertebrae are,” his father said, annoyed. He stood there a while longer and then he said, “Why are you counting them?” “I think they’re wrong. Tyrannosaurs should only have thirty-seven vertebrae in the tail. This has more.” “You mean to tell me,” his father said, “that the Museum of Natural History has a skeleton that’s wrong? I can’t believe that.” “It’s wrong,” Tim said. His father stomped off toward a guard in the corner. “What did you do now?” his mother said to Tim. “I didn’t do anything,” Tim said. “I just said the dinosaur is wrong, that’s all.” And then his father came back with a funny look on his face, because of course the guard told him that the tyrannosaurus had too many vertebrae in the tail. “How’d you know that?” his father asked. “I read it,” Tim said. “That’s pretty amazing, son,” he said, and he put his hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “You know how many vertebrae belong in that tail. I’ve never seen anything like it. You really do have dinosaurs on the brain.” And then his father said he wanted to catch the last half of the Mets game on TV, and Lex said she did, too, so they left the museum. And Tim didn’t see any other dinosaurs, which was why they had come there in the first place. But that was how things happened in his family."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "How things used to happen in his family. Tim corrected himself. Now that his father was getting a divorce from his mother, things would probably be different. His father had already moved out, and even though it was weird at first, Tim liked it. He thought his mother had a boyfriend, but he couldn’t be sure, and of course he would never mention it to Lex. Lex was heartbroken to be separated from her father, and in the last few weeks she had become so obnoxious that— “Was it 5027?” Grant said. “I’m sorry?” Tim said. “The tyrannosaurus at the museum. Was it 5027?” “Yes,” Tim said. “How’d you know?” Grant smiled. “They’ve been talking about fixing it for years. But now it may never happen.” “Why is that?” “Because of what is taking place here,” Grant said, “on your grandfather’s island.” Tim shook his head. He didn’t understand what Grant was talking about. “My mom said it was just a resort, you know, with swimming and tennis.” “Not exactly,” Grant said. “I’ll explain as we walk along.” Now I’m a damned baby-sitter, Ed Regis thought unhappily, tapping his foot as he waited in the visitor center. That was what the old man had told him: You watch my kids like a hawk, they’re your responsibility for the weekend. Ed Regis didn’t like it at all. He felt degraded. He wasn’t a damn baby-sitter. And, for that matter, he wasn’t a damned tour guide, even for VIPs. He was the head of public relations for Jurassic Park, and he had much to prepare between now and the opening, a year away. Just to coordinate with the PR firms in San Francisco and London, and the agencies in New York and Tokyo, was a full-time job—especially since the agencies couldn’t yet be told what the resort’s real attraction was. The firms were all designing teaser campaigns, nothing specific, and they were unhappy. Creative people needed nurturing. They needed encouragement to do their best work. He couldn’t waste his time taking scientists on tours. But that was the trouble with a career in public relations—nobody saw you as a professional. Regis had been down here on the island off and on for the past seven months, and they were still pushing odd jobs on him. Like that episode back in January. Harding should have handled that. Harding, or Owens, the general contractor. Instead, it had fallen to Ed Regis. What did he know about taking care of some sick workman? And now he was a damn tour guide and baby-sitter. He turned back and counted the heads. Still one short. Then, in the back, he saw Dr. Sattler emerge from the bathroom. “All right, folks, let’s begin our tour on the second floor.” Tim went with the others, following Mr. Regis up the black suspended staircase to the second floor of the building."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "They passed a sign that read: CLOSED AREAAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLYBEYOND THIS POINT Tim felt a thrill when he saw that sign. They walked down the second-floor hallway. One wall was glass, looking out onto a balcony with palm trees in the light mist. On the other wall were stenciled doors, like offices: PARK WARDEN … GUEST SERVICES … GENERAL MANAGER.… Halfway down the corridor they came to a glass partition marked with another sign: Underneath were more signs: CAUTIONTERATOGENIC SUBSTANCESPREGNANT WOMEN AVOID EXPOSURETO THIS AREA DANGERRADIOACTIVE ISOTOPES IN USECARCINOGENIC POTENTIAL Tim grew more excited all the time. Teratogenic substances! Things that made monsters! It gave him a thrill, and he was disappointed to hear Ed Regis say, “Never mind the signs, they’re just up for legal reasons. I can assure you everything is perfectly safe.” He led them through the door. There was a guard on the other side. Ed Regis turned to the group. “You may have noticed that we have a minimum of personnel on the island. We can run this resort with a total of twenty people. Of course, we’ll have more when we have guests here, but at the moment there’s only twenty. Here’s our control room. The entire park is controlled from here.” They paused before windows and peered into a darkened room that looked like a small version of Mission Control. There was a vertical glass see-through map of the park, and facing it a bank of glowing computer consoles. Some of the screens displayed data, but most of them showed video images from around the park. There were just two people inside, standing and talking. “The man on the left is our chief engineer, John Arnold”—Regis pointed to a thin man in a button-down short-sleeve shirt and tie, smoking a cigarette—“and next to him, our park warden, Mr. Robert Muldoon, the famous white hunter from Nairobi.” Muldoon was a burly man in khaki, sunglasses dangling from his shirt pocket. He glanced out at the group, gave a brief nod, and turned back to the computer screens. “I’m sure you want to see this room,” Ed Regis said, “but first, let’s see how we obtain dinosaur DNA.” The sign on the door said EXTRACTIONS and, like all the doors in the laboratory building, it opened with a security card. Ed Regis slipped the card in the slot; the light blinked; and the door opened. Inside, Tim saw a small room bathed in green light. Four technicians in lab coats were peering into double-barreled stereo microscopes, or looking at images on high resolution video screens. The room was filled with yellow stones. The stones were in glass shelves; in cardboard boxes; in large pull-out trays. Each stone was tagged and numbered in black ink. Regis introduced Henry Wu, a slender man in his thirties. “Dr. Wu is our chief geneticist. I’ll let him explain what we do here.” Henry Wu smiled. “At least I’ll try,” he said. “Genetics is a bit complicated."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But you’re probably wondering where our dinosaur DNA comes from.” “It crossed my mind,” Grant said. “As a matter of fact,” Wu said, “there are two possible sources. Using the Loy antibody extraction technique, we can sometimes get DNA directly from dinosaur bones.” “What kind of a yield?” Grant asked. “Well, most soluble protein is leached out during fossilization, but twenty percent of the proteins are still recoverable by grinding up the bones and using Loy’s procedure. Dr. Loy himself has used it to obtain proteins from extinct Australian marsupials, as well as blood cells from ancient human remains. His technique is so refined it can work with a mere fifty nanograms of material. That’s fifty-billionths of a gram.” “And you’ve adapted his technique here?” Grant asked. “Only as a backup,” Wu said. “As you can imagine, a twenty percent yield is insufficient for our work. We need the entire dinosaur DNA strand in order to clone. And we get it here.” He held up one of the yellow stones. “From amber—the fossilized resin of prehistoric tree sap.” Grant looked at Ellie, then at Malcolm. “That’s really quite clever,” Malcolm said, nodding. “I still don’t understand,” Grant admitted. “Tree sap,” Wu explained, “often flows over insects and traps them. The insects are then perfectly preserved within the fossil. One finds all kinds of insects in amber—including biting insects that have sucked blood from larger animals.” “Sucked the blood,” Grant repeated. His mouth fell open. “You mean sucked the blood of dinosaurs …” “Hopefully, yes.” “And then the insects are preserved in amber.…” Grant shook his head. “l’ll be damned—that just might work.” “I assure you, it does work,” Wu said. He moved to one of the microscopes, where a technician positioned a piece of amber containing a fly under the microscope. On the video monitor, they watched as he inserted a long needle through the amber, into the thorax of the prehistoric fly. “If this insect has any foreign blood cells, we may be able to extract them, and obtain paleo-DNA, the DNA of an extinct creature. We won’t know for sure, of course, until we extract whatever is in there, replicate it, and test it. That is what we have been doing for five years now. It has been a long, slow process—but it has paid off. “Actually, dinosaur DNA is somewhat easier to extract by this process than mammalian DNA. The reason is that mammalian red cells have no nuclei, and thus no DNA in their red cells. To clone a mammal, you must find a white cell, which is much rarer than red cells. But dinosaurs had nucleated red cells, as do modern birds. It is one of the many indications we have that dinosaurs aren’t really reptiles at all. They are big leathery birds.” Tim saw that Dr. Grant still looked skeptical, and Dennis Nedry, the messy fat man, appeared completely uninterested, as if he knew it all already."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Nedry kept looking impatiently toward the next room. “I see Mr. Nedry has spotted the next phase of our work,” Wu said. “How we identify the DNA we have extracted. For that, we use powerful computers.” They went through sliding doors into a chilled room. There was a loud humming sound. Two six-foot-tall round towers stood in the center of the room, and along the walls were rows of waist-high stainless-steel boxes. “This is our high-tech laundromat,” Dr. Wu said. “The boxes along the walls are all Hamachi-Hood automated gene sequencers. They are being run, at very high speed, by the Cray XMP supercomputers, which are the towers in the center of the room. In essence, you are standing in the middle of an incredibly powerful genetics factory.” There were several monitors, all running so fast it was hard to see what they were showing. Wu pushed a button and slowed one image. “Here you see the actual structure of a small fragment of dinosaur DNA,” Wu said. “Notice the sequence is made up of four basic compounds—adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. This amount of DNA probably contains instructions to make a single protein—say, a hormone or an enzyme. The full DNA molecule contains three billion of these bases. If we looked at a screen like this once a second, for eight hours a day, it’d still take more than two years to look at the entire DNA strand. It’s that big.” He pointed to the image. “This is a typical example, because you see the DNA has an error, down here in line 1201. Much of the DNA we extract is fragmented or incomplete. So the first thing we have to do is repair it—or rather, the computer has to. It’ll cut the DNA, using what are called restriction enzymes. The computer will select a variety of enzymes that might do the job.” “Here is the same section of DNA, with the points of the restriction enzymes located. As you can see in line 1201, two enzymes will cut on either side of the damaged point. Ordinarily we let the computers decide which to use. But we also need to know what base pairs we should insert to repair the injury. For that, we have to align various cut fragments, like so.” “Now we are finding a fragment of DNA that overlaps the injury area, and will tell us what is missing. And you can see we can find it, and go ahead and make the repair. The dark bars you see are restriction fragments—small sections of dinosaur DNA, broken by enzymes and then analyzed. The computer is now recombining them, by searching for overlapping sections of code. It’s a little bit like putting a puzzle together. The computer can do it very rapidly.” “And here is the revised DNA strand, repaired by the computer."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The operation you’ve witnessed would have taken months in a conventional lab, but we can do it in seconds.” “Then are you working with the entire DNA strand?” Grant asked. “Oh no,” Wu said. “That’s impossible. We’ve come a long way from the sixties, when it took a whole laboratory four years to decode a screen like this. Now the computers can do it in a couple of hours. But, even so, the DNA molecule is too big. We look only at the sections of the strand that differ from animal to animal, or from contemporary DNA. Only a few percent of the nucleotides differ from one species to the next. That’s what we analyze, and it’s still a big job.” Dennis Nedry yawned. He’d long ago concluded that InGen must be doing something like this. A couple of years earlier, when InGen had hired Nedry to design the park control systems, one of the initial design parameters called for data records with 3 × 109 fields. Nedry just assumed that was a mistake, and had called Palo Alto to verify it. But they had told him the spec was correct. Three billion fields. Nedry had worked on a lot of large systems. He’d made a name for himself setting up worldwide telephone communications for multinational corporations. Often those systems had millions of records. He was used to that. But InGen wanted something so much larger.… Puzzled, Nedry had gone to see Barney Fellows over at Symbolics, near the M.I.T. campus in Cambridge. “What kind of a database has three billion records, Barney?” “A mistake,” Barney said, laughing. “They put in an extra zero or two.” “It’s not a mistake. I checked. It’s what they want.” “But that’s crazy,” Barney said. “It’s not workable. Even if you had the fastest processors and blindingly fast algorithms, a search would still take days. Maybe weeks.” “Yeah,” Nedry said. “I know. Fortunately I’m not being asked to do algorithms. I’m just being asked to reserve storage and memory for the overall system. But still … what could the database be for?” Barney frowned. “You operating under an ND?” “Yes,” Nedry said. Most of his jobs required nondisclosure agreements. “Can you tell me anything?” “It’s a bioengineering firm.” “Bioengineering,” Barney said. “Well, there’s the obvious …” “Which is?” “A DNA molecule.” “Oh, come on,” Nedry said. “Nobody could be analyzing a DNA molecule.” He knew biologists were talking about the Human Genome Project, to analyze a complete human DNA strand. But that would take ten years of coordinated effort, involving laboratories around the world. It was an enormous undertaking, as big as the Manhattan Project, which made the atomic bomb. “This is a private company,” Nedry said. “With three billion records,” Barney said, “I don’t know what else it could be. Maybe they’re being optimistic designing their system.” “Very optimistic,” Nedry said. “Or maybe they’re just analyzing DNA fragments, but they’ve got RAM-intensive algorithms.” That made more sense."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Certain database search techniques ate up a lot of memory. “You know who did their algorithms?” “No,” Nedry said. “This company is very secretive.” “Well, my guess is they’re doing something with DNA,” Barney said. “What’s the system?” “Multi-XMP.” “Multi-XMP? You mean more than one Cray? Wow.” Barney was frowning, now, thinking that one over. “Can you tell me anything else?” “Sorry,” Nedry said. “I can’t.” And he had gone back and designed the control systems. It had taken him and his programming team more than a year, and it was especially difficult because the company wouldn’t ever tell him what the subsystems were for. The instructions were simply “Design a module for record keeping” or “Design a module for visual display.” They gave him design parameters, but no details about use. He had been working in the dark. And now that the system was up and running, he wasn’t surprised to learn there were bugs. What did they expect? And they’d ordered him down here in a panic, all hot and bothered about “his” bugs. It was annoying, Nedry thought. Nedry turned back to the group as Grant asked, “And once the computer has analyzed the DNA, how do you know what animal it encodes?” “We have two procedures,” Wu said. “The first is phylogenetic mapping. DNA evolves over time, like everything else in an organism—hands or feet or any other physical attribute. So we can take an unknown piece of DNA and determine roughly, by computer, where it fits in the evolutionary sequence. It’s time-consuming, but it can be done.” “And the other way?” Wu shrugged. “Just grow it and find out what it is,” he said. “That’s what we usually do. I’ll show you how that’s accomplished.” Tim felt a growing impatience as the tour continued. He liked technical things, but, even so, he was losing interest. They came to the next door, which was marked FERTILIZATION. Dr. Wu unlocked the door with his security card, and they went inside. Tim saw still another room with technicians working at microscopes. In the back was a section entirely lit by blue ultraviolet light. Dr. Wu explained that their DNA work required the interruption of cellular mitosis at precise instants, and therefore they kept some of the most virulent poisons in the world. “Helotoxins, colchicinoids, beta-alkaloids,” he said, pointing to a series of syringes set out under the UV light. “Kill any living animal within a second or two.” Tim would have liked to know more about the poisons, but Dr. Wu droned on about using unfertilized crocodile ova and replacing the DNA; and then Professor Grant asked some complicated questions. To one side of the room were big tanks marked Liquid N2. And there were big walk-in freezers with shelves of frozen embryos, each stored in a tiny silver-foil wrapper. Lex was bored. Nedry was yawning. And even Dr. Sattler was losing interest. Tim was tired of looking at these complicated laboratories. He wanted to see the dinosaurs."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The next room was labeled HATCHERY. “It’s a little warm and damp in here,” Dr. Wu said. “We keep it at ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of one hundred percent. We also run a higher O2 concentration. It’s up to thirty-three percent.” “Jurassic atmosphere,” Grant said. “Yes. At least we presume so. If any of you feel faint, just tell me.” Dr. Wu inserted his security card into the slot, and the outer door hissed open. “Just a reminder: don’t touch anything in this room. Some of the eggs are permeable to skin oils. And watch your heads. The sensors are always moving.” He opened the inner door to the nursery, and they went inside. Tim faced a vast open room, bathed in deep infrared light. The eggs lay on long tables, their pale outlines obscured by the hissing low mist that covered the tables. The eggs were all moving gently, rocking. “Reptile eggs contain large amounts of yolk but no water at all. The embryos must extract water from the surrounding environment. Hence the mist.” Dr. Wu explained that each table contained 150 eggs, and represented a new batch of DNA extractions. The batches were identified by numbers at each table: STEG-458/2 or TRIC-390/4. Waist-deep in the mist, the workers in the nursery moved from one egg to the next, plunging their hands into the mist, turning the eggs every hour, and checking the temperatures with thermal sensors. The room was monitored by overhead TV cameras and motion sensors. An overhead thermal sensor moved from one egg to the next, touching each with a flexible wand, beeping, then going on. “In this hatchery, we have produced more than a dozen crops of extractions, giving us a total of two hundred thirty-eight live animals. Our survival rate is somewhere around point four percent, and we naturally want to improve that. But by computer analysis we’re working with something like five hundred variables: one hundred and twenty environmental, another two hundred intra-egg, and the rest from the genetic material itself. Our eggs are plastic. The embryos are mechanically inserted, and then hatched here.” “And how long to grow?” “Dinosaurs mature rapidly, attaining full size in two to four years. So we now have a number of adult specimens in the park.” “What do the numbers mean?” “Those codes,” Wu said, “identify the various batch extractions of DNA. The first four letters identify the animals being grown. Over there, that TRIC means Triceratops. And the STEG means Stegosaurus, and so on.” “And this table here?” Grant said. The code said xxxx-0001/1. Beneath was scrawled “Presumed Coelu.” “That’s a new batch of DNA,” Wu said. “We don’t know exactly what will grow out. The first time an extraction is done, we don’t know for sure what the animal is. You can see it’s marked ‘Presumed Coelu,’ so it is likely to be a coelurosaurus. A small herbivore, if I remember. It’s hard for me to keep track of the names."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "There are something like three hundred genera of dinosaurs known so far.” “Three hundred and forty-seven,” Tim said. Grant smiled, then said, “Is anything hatching now?” “Not at the moment. The incubation period varies with each animal, but in general it runs about two months. We try to stagger hatchings, to make less work for the nursery staff. You can imagine how it is when we have a hundred and fifty animals born within a few days—though of course most don’t survive. Actually, these X’s are due any day now. Any other questions? No? Then we’ll go to the nursery, where the newborns are.” It was a circular room, all white. There were some incubators of the kind used in hospital nurseries, but they were empty at the moment. Rags and toys were scattered across the floor. A young woman in a white coat was seated on the floor, her back to them. “What’ve you got here today, Kathy?” Dr. Wu asked. “Not much,” she said. “Just a baby raptor.” “Let’s have a look.” The woman got to her feet and stepped aside. Tim heard Nedry say, “It looks like a lizard.” The animal on the floor was about a foot and a half long, the size of a small monkey. It was dark yellow with brown stripes, like a tiger. It had a lizard’s head and long snout, but it stood upright on strong hind legs, balanced by a thick straight tail. Its smaller front legs waved in the air. It cocked its head to one side and peered at the visitors staring down at it. “Velociraptor,” Alan Grant said, in a low voice. “Velociraptor mongoliensis,” Wu said, nodding. “A predator. This one’s only six weeks old.” “I just excavated a raptor,” Grant said, as he bent down for a closer look. Immediately the little lizard sprang up, leaping over Grant’s head into Tim’s arms. “Hey!” “They can jump,” Wu said. “The babies can jump. So can the adults, as a matter of fact.” Tim caught the velociraptor and held it to him. The little animal didn’t weigh very much, a pound or two. The skin was warm and completely dry. The little head was inches from Tim’s face. Its dark, beady eyes stared at him. A small forked tongue flicked in and out. “Will he hurt me?” “No. She’s friendly.” “Are you sure about that?” asked Gennaro, with a look of concern. “Oh, quite sure,” Wu said. “At least until she grows a little older. But, in any case, the babies don’t have any teeth, even egg teeth.” “Egg teeth?” Nedry said. “Most dinosaurs are born with egg teeth—little horns on the tip of the nose, like rhino horns, to help them break out of the eggs. But raptors aren’t. They poke a hole in the eggs with their pointed snouts, and then the nursery staff has to help them out.” “You have to help them out,” Grant said, shaking his head."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“What happens in the wild?” “In the wild?” “When they breed in the wild,” Grant said. “When they make a nest.” “Oh, they can’t do that,” Wu said. “None of our animals is capable of breeding. That’s why we have this nursery. It’s the only way to replace stock in Jurassic Park.” “Why can’t the animals breed?” “Well, as you can imagine, it’s important that they not be able to breed,” Wu said. “And whenever we faced a critical matter such as this, we designed redundant systems. That is, we always arranged at least two control procedures. In this case, there are two independent reasons why the animals can’t breed. First of all, they’re sterile, because we irradiate them with X rays.” “And the second reason?” “All the animals in Jurassic Park are female,” Wu said, with a pleased smile. Malcolm said, “I should like some clarification about this. Because it seems to me that irradiation is fraught with uncertainty. The radiation dose may be wrong, or aimed at the wrong anatomical area of the animal—” “All true,” Wu said. “But we’re quite confident we have destroyed gonadal tissue.” “And as for them all being female,” Malcolm said, “is that checked? Does anyone go out and, ah, lift up the dinosaurs’ skirts to have a look? I mean, how does one determine the sex of a dinosaur, anyway?” “Sex organs vary with the species. It’s easy to tell on some, subtle on others. But, to answer your question, the reason we know all the animals are female is that we literally make them that way: we control their chromosomes, and we control the intra-egg developmental environment. From a bioengineering standpoint, females are easier to breed. You probably know that all vertebrate embryos are inherently female. We all start life as females. It takes some kind of added effect—such as a hormone at the right moment during development—to transform the growing embryo into a male. But, left to its own devices, the embryo will naturally become female. So our animals are all female. We tend to refer to some of them as male—such as the Tyrannosaurus rex; we all call it a ‘him’—but in fact, they’re all female. And, believe me, they can’t breed.” The little velociraptor sniffed at Tim, and then rubbed her head against Tim’s neck. Tim giggled. “She wants you to feed her,” Wu said. “What does she eat?” “Mice. but she’s just eaten, so we won’t feed her again for a while.” The little raptor leaned back, stared at Tim, and wiggled her forearms again in the air. Tim saw the small claws on the three fingers of each hand. Then the raptor burrowed her head against his neck again. Grant came over, and peered critically at the creature. He touched the tiny three-clawed hand. He said to Tim, “Do you mind?” and Tim released the raptor into his hands. Grant flipped the animal onto its back, inspecting it, while the little lizard wiggled and squirmed."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Then he lifted the animal high to look at its profile, and it screamed shrilly. “She doesn’t like that,” Regis said. “Doesn’t like to be held away from body contact.…” The raptor was still screaming, but Grant paid no attention. Now he was squeezing the tail, feeling the bones. Regis said, “Dr. Grant. If you please.” “I’m not hurting her.” “Dr. Grant. These creatures are not of our world. They come from a time when there were no human beings around to prod and poke them.” “I’m not prodding and—” “Dr. Grant. Put her down,” Ed Regis said. “But—” “Now.” Regis was starting to get annoyed. Grant handed the animal back to Tim. It stopped squealing. Tim could feel its little heart beating rapidly against his chest. “I’m sorry, Dr. Grant,” Regis said. “But these animals are delicate in infancy. We have lost several from a postnatal stress syndrome, which we believe is adrenocortically mediated. Sometimes they die within five minutes.” Tim petted the little raptor. “It’s okay, kid,” he said. “Everything’s fine now.” The heart was still beating rapidly. “We feel it is important that the animals here be treated in the most humane manner,” Regis said. “I promise you that you will have every opportunity to examine them later.” But Grant couldn’t stay away. He again moved toward the animal in Tim’s arms, peering at it. The little velociraptor opened her jaws and hissed at Grant, in a posture of sudden intense fury. “Fascinating,” Grant said. “Can I stay and play with her?” Tim said. “Not right now,” Ed Regis said, glancing at his watch. “It’s three o’clock, and it’s a good time for a tour of the park itself, so you can see all the dinosaurs in the habitats we have designed for them.” Tim released the velociraptor, which scampered across the room, grabbed a cloth rag, put it in her mouth, and tugged at the end with her tiny claws."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park CONTROL Walking back toward the control room, Malcolm said, “I have one more question, Dr. Wu. How many different species have you made so far?” “I’m not exactly sure,” Wu said. “I believe the number at the moment is fifteen. Fifteen species. Do you know, Ed?” “Yes, it’s fifteen,” Ed Regis said, nodding. “You don’t know for sure?” Malcolm said, affecting astonishment. Wu smiled. “I stopped counting,” he said, “after the first dozen. And you have to realize that sometimes we think we have an animal correctly made—from the standpoint of the DNA, which is our basic work—and the animal grows for six months and then something untoward happens. And we realize there is some error. A releaser gene isn’t operating. A hormone not being released. Or some other problem in the developmental sequence. So we have to go back to the drawing board with that animal, so to speak.” He smiled. “At one time, I thought I had more than twenty species. But now, only fifteen.” “And is one of the fifteen species a—” Malcolm turned to Grant. “What was the name?” “Procompsognathus,” Grant said. “You have made some procompsognathuses, or whatever they’re called?” Malcolm asked. “Oh yes,” Wu said immediately. “Compys are very distinctive animals. And, we made an unusually large number of them.” “Why is that?” “Well, we want Jurassic Park to be as real an environment as possible—as authentic as possible—and the procompsognathids are actual scavengers from the Jurassic period. Rather like jackals. So we wanted to have the compys around to clean up.” “You mean to dispose of carcasses?” “Yes, if there were any. But with only two hundred and thirty-odd animals in our total population, we don’t have many carcasses,” Wu said. “That wasn’t the primary objective. Actually, we wanted the compys for another kind of waste management entirely.” “Which was?” “Well,” Wu said, “we have some very big herbivores on this island. We have specifically tried not to breed the biggest sauropods, but even so, we’ve got several animals in excess of thirty tons walking around out there, and many others in the five- to ten-ton area. That gives us two problems. One is feeding them, and in fact we must import food to the island every two weeks. There is no way an island this small can support these animals for any time. “But the other problem is waste. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen elephant droppings,” Wu said, “but they are substantial. Each spoor is roughly the size of a soccer ball. Imagine the droppings of a brontosaur, ten times as large. Now imagine the droppings of a herd of such animals, as we keep here. And the largest animals do not digest their food terribly well, so that they excrete a great deal. And in the sixty million years since dinosaurs disappeared, apparently the bacteria that specialize in breaking down their feces disappeared, too. At least, the sauropod feces don’t decompose readily.” “That’s a problem,” Malcolm said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I assure you it is,” Wu said, not smiling. “We had a hell of a time trying to solve it. You probably know that in Africa there is a specific insect, the dung beetle, which eats elephant feces. Many other large species have associated creatures that have evolved to eat their excrement. Well, it turns out that compys will eat the feces of large herbivores and redigest it. And the droppings of compys are readily broken down by contemporary bacteria. So, given enough compys, our problem was solved.” “How many compys did you make?” “I’ve forgotten exactly, but I think the target population was fifty animals. And we attained that, or very nearly so. In three batches. We did a batch every six months until we had the number.” “Fifty animals,” Malcolm said, “is a lot to keep track of.” “The control room is built to do exactly that. They’ll show you how it’s done.” “I’m sure,” Malcolm said. “But if one of these compys were to escape from the island, to get away …” “They can’t get away.” “I know that, but just supposing one did …” “You mean like the animal that was found on the beach?” Wu said, raising his eyebrows, “The one that bit the American girl?” “Yes, for example.” “I don’t know what the explanation for that animal is,” Wu said. “But I know it can’t possibly be one of ours, for two reasons. First, the control procedures: our animals are counted by computer every few minutes. If one were missing, we’d know at once.” “And the second reason?” “The mainland is more than a hundred miles away. It takes almost a day to get there by boat. And in the outside world our animals will die within twelve hours,” Wu said. “How do you know?” “Because I’ve made sure that’s precisely what will occur,” Wu said, finally showing a trace of irritation. “Look, we’re not fools. We understand these are prehistoric animals. They are part of a vanished ecology—a complex web of life that became extinct millions of years ago. They might have no predators in the contemporary world, no checks on their growth. We don’t want them to survive in the wild. So I’ve made them lysine dependent. I inserted a gene that makes a single faulty enzyme in protein metabolism. As a result, the animals cannot manufacture the amino acid lysine. They must ingest it from the outside. Unless they get a rich dietary source of exogenous lysine—supplied by us, in tablet form—they’ll go into a coma within twelve hours and expire. These animals are genetically engineered to be unable to survive in the real world. They can only live here in Jurassic Park. They are not free at all. They are essentially our prisoners.” “Here’s the control room,” Ed Regis said. “Now that you know how the animals are made, you’ll want to see the control room for the park itself, before we go out on the—” He stopped."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Through the thick glass window, the room was dark. The monitors were off, except for three that displayed spinning numbers and the image of a large boat. “What’s going on?” Ed Regis said. “Oh hell, they’re docking.” “Docking?” “Every two weeks, the supply boat comes in from the mainland. One of the things this island doesn’t have is a good harbor, or even a good dock. It’s a little hairy to get the ship in, when the seas are rough. Could be a few minutes.” He rapped on the window, but the men inside paid no attention. “I guess we have to wait, then.” Ellie turned to Dr. Wu. “You mentioned before that sometimes you make an animal and it seems to be fine but, as it grows, it shows itself to be flawed.…” “Yes,” Wu said. “I don’t think there’s any way around that. We can duplicate the DNA, but there is a lot of timing in development, and we don’t know if everything is working unless we actually see an animal develop correctly.” Grant said, “How do you know if it’s developing correctly? No one has ever seen these animals before.” Wu smiled. “I have often thought about that. I suppose it is a bit of a paradox. Eventually, I hope, paleontologists such as yourself will compare our animals with the fossil record to verify the developmental sequence.” Ellie said, “But the animal we just saw, the velociraptor—you said it was a mongoliensis?” “From the location of the amber,” Wu said. “It is from China.” “Interesting,” Grant said. “I was just digging up an infant antirrhopus. Are there any full-grown raptors here?” “Yes,” Ed Regis said without hesitation. “Eight adult females. The females are the real hunters. They’re pack hunters, you know.” “Will we see them on the tour?” “No,” Wu said, looking suddenly uncomfortable. And there was an awkward pause. Wu looked at Regis. “Not for a while,” Regis said cheerfully. “The velociraptors haven’t been integrated into the park setting just yet. We keep them in a holding pen.” “Can I see them there?” Grant said. “Why, yes, of course. In fact, while we’re waiting”—he glanced at his watch—“you might want to go around and have a look at them.” “I certainly would,” Grant said. “Absolutely,” Ellie said. “I want to go, too,” Tim said eagerly. “Just go around the back of this building, past the support facility, and you’ll see the pen. But don’t get too close to the fence. Do you want to go, too?” he said to the girl. “No,” Lex said. She looked appraisingly at Regis. “You want to play a little pickle? Throw a few?” “Well, sure,” Ed Regis said. “Why don’t you and I go downstairs and we’ll do that, while we wait for the control room to open up?” Grant walked with Ellie and Malcolm around the back of the main building, with the kid tagging along."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Grant liked kids—it was impossible not to like any group so openly enthusiastic about dinosaurs. Grant used to watch kids in museums as they stared open-mouthed at the big skeletons rising above them. He wondered what their fascination really represented. He finally decided that children liked dinosaurs because these giant creatures personified the uncontrollable force of looming authority. They were symbolic parents. Fascinating and frightening, like parents. And kids loved them, as they loved their parents. Grant also suspected that was why even young children learned the names of dinosaurs. It never failed to amaze him when a three-year-old shrieked: “Stegosaurus!” Saying these complicated names was a way of exerting power over the giants, a way of being in control. “What do you know about Velociraptor?” Grant asked Tim. He was just making conversation. “It’s a small carnivore that hunted in packs, like Deinonychus,” Tim said. “That’s right,” Grant said, “although Deinonychus is now considered one of the velociraptors. And the evidence for pack hunting is all circumstantial. It derives in part from the appearance of the animals, which are quick and strong, but small for dinosaurs—just a hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds each. We assume they hunted in groups if they were to bring down larger prey. And there are some fossil finds in which a single large prey animal is associated with several raptor skeletons, suggesting they hunted in packs. And, of course, raptors were large-brained, more intelligent than most dinosaurs.” “How intelligent is that?” Malcolm asked. “Depends on who you talk to,” Grant said. “Just as paleontologists have come around to the idea that dinosaurs were probably warm-blooded, a lot of us are starting to think some of them might have been quite intelligent, too. But nobody knows for sure.” They left the visitor area behind, and soon they heard the loud hum of generators, smelled the faint odor of gasoline. They passed a grove of palm trees and saw a large, low concrete shed with a steel roof. The noise seemed to come from there. They looked in the shed. “It must be a generator,” Ellie said. “It’s big,” Grant said, peering inside. The power plant actually extended two stories below ground level: a vast complex of whining turbines and piping that ran down in the earth, lit by harsh electric bulbs. “They can’t need all this just for a resort,” Malcolm said. “They’re generating enough power here for a small city.” “Maybe for the computers?” “Maybe.” Grant heard bleating, and walked north a few yards. He came to an animal enclosure with goats. By a quick count, he estimated there were fifty or sixty goats. “What’s that for?” Ellie asked. “Beats me.” “Probably they feed ’em to the dinosaurs,” Malcolm said. The group walked on, following a dirt path through a dense bamboo grove. At the far side, they came to a double-layer chain-link fence twelve feet high, with spirals of barbed wire at the top."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt", "text": "There was an electric hum along the outer fence. Beyond the fences, Grant saw dense clusters of large ferns, five feet high. He heard a snorting sound, a kind of snuffling. Then the sound of crunching footsteps, coming closer. Then a long silence. “I don’t see anything,” Tim whispered, finally. “Ssssh.” Grant waited. Several seconds passed. Flies buzzed in the air. He still saw nothing. Ellie tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed. Amid the ferns, Grant saw the head of an animal. It was motionless, partially hidden in the fronds, the two large dark eyes watching them coldly. The head was two feet long. From a pointed snout, a long row of teeth ran back to the hole of the auditory meatus which served as an ear. The head reminded him of a large lizard, or perhaps a crocodile. The eyes did not blink, and the animal did not move. Its skin was leathery, with a pebbled texture, and basically the same coloration as the infant’s: yellow-brown with darker reddish markings, like the stripes of a tiger. As Grant watched, a single forelimb reached up very slowly to part the ferns beside the animal’s face. The limb, Grant saw, was strongly muscled. The hand had three grasping fingers, each ending in curved claws. The hand gently, slowly, pushed aside the ferns. Grant felt a chill and thought, He’s hunting us. For a mammal like man, there was something indescribably alien about the way reptiles hunted their prey. No wonder men hated reptiles. The stillness, the coldness, the pace was all wrong. To be among alligators or other large reptiles was to be reminded of a different kind of life, a different kind of world, now vanished from the earth. Of course, this animal didn’t realize that he had been spotted, that he— The attack came suddenly, from the left and right. Charging raptors covered the ten yards to the fence with shocking speed. Grant had a blurred impression of powerful, six-foot-tall bodies, stiff balancing tails, limbs with curving claws, open jaws with rows of jagged teeth. The animals snarled as they came forward, and then leapt bodily into the air, raising their hind legs with their big dagger-claws. Then they struck the fence in front of them, throwing off twin bursts of hot sparks. The velociraptors fell backward to the ground, hissing. The visitors all moved forward, fascinated. Only then did the third animal attack, leaping up to strike the fence at chest level. Tim screamed in fright as the sparks exploded all around him. The creatures snarled, a low reptilian hissing sound, and leapt back among the ferns. Then they were gone, leaving behind a faint odor of decay, and hanging acrid smoke. “Holy shit,” Tim said. “It was so fast,” Ellie said. “Pack hunters,” Grant said, shaking his head. “Pack hunters for whom ambush is an instinct … Fascinating.” “I wouldn’t call them tremendously intelligent,” Malcolm said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt", "text": "On the other side of the fence, they heard snorting in the palm trees. Several heads poked slowly out of the foliage. Grant counted three … four … five … The animals watched them. Staring coldly. A black man in coveralls came running up to them. “Are you all right?” “We’re okay,” Grant said. “The alarms were set off.” The man looked at the fence, dented and charred. “They attacked you?” “Three of them did, yes.” The black man nodded. “They do that all the time. Hit the fence, take a shock. They never seem to mind.” “Not too smart, are they?” Malcolm said. The black man paused. He squinted at Malcolm in the afternoon light. “Be glad for that fence, señor,” he said, and turned away. From beginning to end, the entire attack could not have taken more than six seconds. Grant was still trying to organize his impressions. The speed was astonishing—the animals were so fast, he had hardly seen them move. Walking back, Malcolm said, “They are remarkably fast.” “Yes,” Grant said. “Much faster than any living reptile. A bull alligator can move quickly, but only over a short distance—five or six feet. Big lizards like the five-foot Komodo dragons of Indonesia have been clocked at thirty miles an hour, fast enough to run down a man. And they kill men all the time. But I’d guess the animal behind the fence was more than twice that fast.” “Cheetah speed,” Malcolm said. “Sixty, seventy miles an hour.” “Exactly.” “But they seemed to dart forward,” Malcolm said. “Rather like birds.” “Yes.” In the contemporary world, only very small mammals, like the cobra-fighting mongoose, had such quick responses. Small mammals, and of course birds. The snake-hunting secretary bird of Africa, or the cassowary. In fact, the velociraptor conveyed precisely the same impression of deadly, swift menace Grant had seen in the cassowary, the clawed ostrich-like bird of New Guinea. “So these velociraptors look like reptiles, with the skin and general appearance of reptiles, but they move like birds, with the speed and predatory intelligence of birds. Is that about it?” Malcolm said. “Yes,” Grant said. “I’d say they display a mixture of traits.” “Does that surprise you?” “Not really,” Grant said. “It’s actually rather close to what paleontologists believed a long time ago.” When the first giant bones were found in the 1820s and 1830s, scientists felt obliged to explain the bones as belonging to some oversize variant of a modern species. This was because it was believed that no species could ever become extinct, since God would not allow one of His creations to die. Eventually it became clear that this conception of God was mistaken, and the bones belonged to extinct animals. But what kind of animals? In 1842, Richard Owen, the leading British anatomist of the day, called them Dinosauria, meaning “terrible lizards.” Owen recognized that dinosaurs seemed to combine traits of lizards, crocodiles, and birds. In particular, dinosaur hips were bird-like, not lizard-like."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And, unlike lizards, many dinosaurs seemed to stand upright. Owen imagined dinosaurs to be quick-moving, active creatures, and his view was accepted for the next forty years. But when truly gigantic finds were unearthed—animals that had weighed a hundred tons in life—scientists began to envision the dinosaurs as stupid, slow-moving giants destined for extinction. The image of the sluggish reptile gradually predominated over the image of the quick-moving bird. In recent years, scientists like Grant had begun to swing back toward the idea of more active dinosaurs. Grant’s colleagues saw him as radical in his conception of dinosaur behavior. But now he had to admit his own conception had fallen far short of the reality of these large, incredibly swift hunters. “Actually, what I was driving at,” Malcolm said, “was this: Is it a persuasive animal to you? Is it in fact a dinosaur?” “I’d say so, yes.” “And the coordinated attack behavior …” “To be expected,” Grant said. According to the fossil record, packs of velociraptors were capable of bringing down animals that weighed a thousand pounds, like Tenontosaurus, which could run as fast as a horse. Coordination would be required. “How do they do that, without language?” “Oh, language isn’t necessary for coordinated hunting,” Ellie said. “Chimpanzees do it all the time. A group of chimps will stalk a monkey and kill it. All communication is by eyes.” “And were the dinosaurs in fact attacking us?” “Yes.” “They would kill us and eat us if they could?” Malcolm said. “I think so.” “The reason I ask,” Malcolm said, “is that I’m told large predators such as lions and tigers are not born man-eaters. Isn’t that true? These animals must learn somewhere along the way that human beings are easy to kill. Only afterward do they become man-killers.” “Yes, I believe that’s true,” Grant said. “Well, these dinosaurs must be even more reluctant than lions and tigers. After all, they come from a time before human beings—or even large mammals—existed at all. God knows what they think when they see us. So I wonder: have they learned, somewhere along the line, that humans are easy to kill?” The group fell silent as they walked. “In any case,” Malcolm said, “I shall be extremely interested to see the control room now.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c21_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park VERSION 4.4 “Was there any problem with the group?” Hammond asked. “No,” Henry Wu said, “there was no problem at all.” “They accepted your explanation?” “Why shouldn’t they?” Wu said. “It’s all quite straightforward, in the broad strokes. It’s only the details that get sticky. And I wanted to talk about the details with you today. You can think of it as a matter of aesthetics.” John Hammond wrinkled his nose, as if he smelled something disagreeable. “Aesthetics?” he repeated. They were standing in the living room of Hammond’s elegant bungalow, set back among palm trees in the northern sector of the park. The living room was airy and comfortable, fitted with a half-dozen video monitors showing the animals in the park. The file Wu had brought, stamped ANIMAL DEVELOPMENT: VERSION 4.4, lay on the coffee table. Hammond was looking at him in that patient, paternal way. Wu, thirty-three years old, was acutely aware that he had worked for Hammond all his professional life. Hammond had hired him right out of graduate school. “Of course, there are practical consequences as well,” Wu said. “I really think you should consider my recommendations for phase two. We should go to version 4.4.” “You want to replace all the current stock of animals?” Hammond said. “Yes, I do.” “Why? What’s wrong with them?” “Nothing,” Wu said, “except that they’re real dinosaurs.” “That’s what I asked for, Henry,” Hammond said, smiling. “And that’s what you gave me.” “I know,” Wu said. “But you see …” He paused. How could he explain this to Hammond? Hammond hardly ever visited the island. And it was a peculiar situation that Wu was trying to convey. “Right now, as we stand here, almost no one in the world has ever seen an actual dinosaur. Nobody knows what they’re really like.” “Yes …” “The dinosaurs we have now are real,” Wu said, pointing to the screens around the room, “but in certain ways they are unsatisfactory. Unconvincing. I could make them better.” “Better in what way?” “For one thing, they move too fast,” Henry Wu said. “People aren’t accustomed to seeing large animals that are so quick. I’m afraid visitors will think the dinosaurs look speeded up, like film running too fast.” “But, Henry, these are real dinosaurs. You said so yourself.” “I know,” Wu said. “But we could easily breed slower, more domesticated dinosaurs.” “Domesticated dinosaurs?” Hammond snorted. “Nobody wants domesticated dinosaurs, Henry. They want the real thing.” “But that’s my point,” Wu said. “I don’t think they do. They want to see their expectation, which is quite different.” Hammond was frowning. “You said yourself, John, this park is entertainment,” Wu said. “And entertainment has nothing to do with reality. Entertainment is antithetical to reality.” Hammond sighed. “Now, Henry, are we going to have another one of those abstract discussions? You know I like to keep it simple. The dinosaurs we have now are real, and—” “Well, not exactly,” Wu said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c21_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He paced the living room, pointed to the monitors. “I don’t think we should kid ourselves. We haven’t re-created the past here. The past is gone. It can never be re-created. What we’ve done is reconstruct the past—or at least a version of the past. And I’m saying we can make a better version.” “Better than real?” “Why not?” Wu said. “After all, these animals are already modified. We’ve inserted genes to make them patentable, and to make them lysine dependent. And we’ve done everything we can to promote growth, and accelerate development into adulthood.” Hammond shrugged. “That was inevitable. We didn’t want to wait. We have investors to consider.” “Of course. But I’m just saying, why stop there? Why not push ahead to make exactly the kind of dinosaur that we’d like to see? One that is more acceptable to visitors, and one that is easier for us to handle? A slower, more docile version for our park?” Hammond frowned. “But then the dinosaurs wouldn’t be real.” “But they’re not real now,” Wu said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There isn’t any reality here.” He shrugged helplessly. He could see he wasn’t getting through. Hammond had never been interested in technical details, and the essence of the argument was technical. How could he explain to Hammond about the reality of DNA dropouts, the patches, the gaps in the sequence that Wu had been obliged to fill in, making the best guesses he could, but still, making guesses. The DNA of the dinosaurs was like old photographs that had been retouched, basically the same as the original but in some places repaired and clarified, and as a result— “Now, Henry,” Hammond said, putting his arm around Wu’s shoulder. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you’re getting cold feet. You’ve been working very hard for a long time, and you’ve done a hell of a job—a hell of a job—and it’s finally time to reveal to some people what you’ve done. It’s natural to be a little nervous. To have some doubts. But I am convinced, Henry, that the world will be entirely satisfied. Entirely satisfied.” 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: LAW 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c21_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But the fact was that, after five long years, Jurassic Park was nearing completion, and John Hammond just 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 lab. 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 it? 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c21_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“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?” “No.” “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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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.” “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 othnielian 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—but 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 procompsognathids. Suppose I suspect that some of them aren’t really the correct species."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“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 Gaussian 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c23_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c23_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c23_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“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 hand. 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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.” For the past two years, Arnold’s job had been to get Jurassic Park up and running. As an engineer, he was accustomed to long time schedules—he often referred to “the September opening,” by which he meant September of the following year—and as the September opening approached, he was unhappy with the progress that had been made. He knew from experience that it sometimes took years to work the bugs out of a single park ride—let alone get a whole park running properly. “You’re just a worrier,” Hammond said. “I don’t think so,” Arnold said. “You’ve got to realize that, from an engineering standpoint, Jurassic Park is by far the most ambitious theme park in history. Visitors will never think about it, but I do.” He ticked the points off on his fingers. “First, Jurassic Park has all the problems of any amusement park—ride maintenance, queue control, transportation, food handling, living accommodations, trash disposal, security. “Second, we have all the problems of a major zoo—care of the animals; health and welfare; feeding and cleanliness; protection from insects, pests, allergies, and illnesses; maintenance of barriers; and all the rest."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“And, finally, we have the unprecedented problems of caring for a population of animals that no one has ever tried to maintain before.” “Oh, it’s not as bad as all that,” Hammond said. “Yes, it is. You’re just not here to see it,” Arnold said. “The tyrannosaurs drink the lagoon water and sometimes get sick; we aren’t sure why. The triceratops females kill each other in fights for dominance and have to be separated into groups smaller than six. We don’t know why. The stegosaurs frequently get blisters on their tongues and diarrhea, for reasons no one yet understands, even though we’ve lost two. Hypsilophodonts get skin rashes. And the velociraptors—” “Let’s not start on the velociraptors,” Hammond said. “I’m sick of hearing about the velociraptors. How they’re the most vicious creatures anyone has ever seen.” “They are,” Muldoon said, in a low voice. “They should all be destroyed.” “You wanted to fit them with radio collars,” Hammond said. “And I agreed.” “Yes. And they promptly chewed the collars off. But even if the raptors never get free,” Arnold said, “I think we have to accept that Jurassic Park is inherently hazardous.” “Oh balls,” Hammond said. “Whose side are you on, anyway?” “We now have fifteen species of extinct animals, and most of them are dangerous,” Arnold said. “We’ve been forced to delay the Jungle River Ride because of the dilophosaurs; and the Pteratops Lodge in the aviary, because the pterodactyls are so unpredictable. These aren’t engineering delays, Mr. Hammond. They’re problems with control of the animals.” “You’ve had plenty of engineering delays,” Hammond said. “Don’t blame it on the animals.” “Yes, we have. In fact, it’s all we could do to get the main attraction, Park Drive, working correctly, to get the CD-ROMs inside the cars to be controlled by the motion sensors. It’s taken weeks of adjustment to get that working properly—and now the electric gearshifts on the cars are acting up! The gearshifts!” “Let’s keep it in perspective,” Hammond said. “You get the engineering correct and the animals will fall into place. After all, they’re trainable.” From the beginning, this had been one of the core beliefs of the planners. The animals, however exotic, would fundamentally behave like animals in zoos anywhere. They would learn the regularities of their care, and they would respond. “Meanwhile, how’s the computer?” Hammond said. He glanced at Dennis Nedry, who was working at a terminal in the corner of the room. “This damn computer has always been a headache.” “We’re getting there,” Nedry said. “If you had done it right in the first place,” Hammond began, but Arnold put a restraining hand on his arm. Arnold knew there was no point in antagonizing Nedry while he was working. “It’s a large system,” Arnold said. “There are bound to be glitches.” In fact, the bug list now ran to more than 130 items, and included many odd aspects."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "For example: The animal-feeding program reset itself every twelve hours, not every twenty-four hours, and would not record feedings on Sundays. As a result, the staff could not accurately measure how much the animals were eating. The security system, which controlled all the security-card-operated doors, cut out whenever main power was lost, and did not come back on with auxiliary power. The security program only ran with main power. The physical conservation program, intended to dim lights after 10:00 p.m., only worked on alternate days of the week. The automated fecal analysis (called Auto Poop), designed to check for parasites in the animal stools, invariably recorded all specimens as having the parasite Phagostomum venulosum, although none did. The program then automatically dispensed medication into the animals’ food. If the handlers dumped the medicine out of the hoppers to prevent its being dispensed, an alarm sounded which could not be turned off. And so it went, page after page of errors. When he had arrived, Dennis Nedry had been under the impression that he could make all the fixes himself over the weekend. He had paled when he saw the full listing. Now he was calling his office in Cambridge, telling his staff programmers they were going to have to cancel their weekend plans and work overtime until Monday. And he had told John Arnold that he would need to use every telephone link between Isla Nublar and the mainland just to transfer program data back and forth to his programmers. While Nedry worked, Arnold punched up a new window in his own monitor. It allowed him to see what Nedry was doing at the corner console. Not that he didn’t trust Nedry. But Arnold just liked to know what was going on. He looked at the graphics display on his right-hand console, which showed the progress of the electric Land Cruisers. They were following the river, just north of the aviary, and the ornithischian paddock. “If you look to your left,” said the voice, “you will see the dome of the Jurassic Park aviary, which is not yet finished for visitors.” Tim saw sunlight glinting off aluminum struts in the distance. “And directly below is our Mesozoic jungle river—where, if you are lucky, you just may catch a glimpse of a very rare carnivore. Keep your eyes peeled, everyone!” Inside the Land Cruiser, the screens showed a bird-like head topped with a flaming red crest. But everyone in Tim’s car was looking out the windows. The car was driving along a high ridge, overlooking a fast-moving river below. The river was almost enclosed by dense foliage on both sides. “There they are now,” said the voice. “The animals you see are called dilophosaurs.” Despite what the recording said, Tim saw only one. The dilophosaur crouched on its hind legs by the river, drinking. It was built on the basic carnivore pattern, with a heavy tail, strong hind limbs, and a long neck."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Its ten-foot-tall body was spotted yellow and black, like a leopard. But it was the head that held Tim’s attention. Two broad curving crests ran along the top of the head from the eyes to the nose. The crests met in the center, making a V shape above the dinosaur’s head. The crests had red and black stripes, reminiscent of a parrot or toucan. The animal gave a soft hooting cry, like an owl. “They’re pretty,” Lex said. “Dilophosaurus,” the tape said, “is one of the earliest carnivorous dinosaurs. Scientists thought their jaw muscles were too weak to kill prey, and imagined they were primarily scavengers. But now we know they are poisonous.” “Hey.” Tim grinned. “All right.” Again the distinctive hooting call of the dilophosaur drifted across the afternoon air toward them. Lex shifted uneasily in her seat. “Are they really poisonous, Mr. Regis?” “Don’t worry about it,” Ed Regis said. “But are they?” “Well, yes, Lex.” “Along with such living reptiles as Gila monsters and rattlesnakes, Dilophosaurus secretes a hematotoxin from glands in its mouth. Unconsciousness follows within minutes of a bite. The dinosaur will then finish the victim off at its leisure—making Dilophosaurus a beautiful but deadly addition to the animals you see here at Jurassic Park.” The Land Cruiser turned a corner, leaving the river behind. Tim looked back, hoping for a last glimpse of the dilophosaur. This was amazing! Poisonous dinosaurs! He wished he could stop the car, but everything was automatic. He bet Dr. Grant wanted to stop the car, too. “If you look on the bluff to the right, you’ll see Les Gigantes, the site of our superb three-star dining room. Chef Alain Richard hails from the world-famous Le Beaumanière in France. Make your reservations by dialing four from your hotel rooms.” Tim looked up on the bluff, and saw nothing. “Not for a while, though,” Ed Regis said. “The restaurant won’t even start construction until November.” “Continuing on our prehistoric safari, we come next to the herbivores of the ornithischian group. If you look to your right, you can probably see them now.” Tim saw two animals, standing motionless in the shade of a large tree. Triceratops: the size and gray color of an elephant, with the truculent stance of a rhino. The horns above each eye curved five feet into the air, looking almost like inverted elephant tusks. A third, rhino-like horn was located near the nose. And they had the beaky snout of a rhino. “Unlike other dinosaurs,” the voice said, “Triceratops serratus can’t see well. They’re nearsighted, like the rhinos of today, and they tend to be surprised by moving objects. They’d charge our car if they were close enough to see it! But relax, folks—we’re safe enough here. “Triceratops have a fan-shaped crest behind their heads. It’s made of solid bone, and it’s very strong. These animals weigh about seven tons each. Despite their appearance, they are actually quite docile."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "They know their handlers, and they’ll allow themselves to be petted. They particularly like to be scratched in the hindquarters.” “Why don’t they move?” Lex said. She rolled down her window. “Hey! Stupid dinosaur! Move!” “Don’t bother the animals, Lex,” Ed Regis said. “Why? It’s stupid. They just sit there like a picture in a book,” Lex said. The voice was saying, “—easygoing monsters from a bygone world stand in sharp contrast to what we will see next. The most famous predator in the history of the world: the mighty tyrant lizard, known as Tyrannosaurus rex.” “Good, Tyrannosaurus rex,” Tim said. “I hope he’s better than these bozos,” Lex said, turning away from the triceratops. The Land Cruiser rumbled forward."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c25_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park BIG REX “The mighty tyrannosaurs arose late in dinosaur history. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a hundred and twenty million years, but there were tyrannosaurs for only the last fifteen million years of that period.” The Land Cruisers had stopped at the rise of a hill. They overlooked a forested area sloping down to the edge of the lagoon. The sun was falling to the west, sinking into a misty horizon. The whole landscape of Jurassic Park was bathed in soft light, with lengthening shadows. The surface of the lagoon rippled in pink crescents. Farther south, they saw the graceful necks of the apatosaurs, standing at the water’s edge, their bodies mirrored in the moving surface. It was quiet, except for the soft drone of cicadas. As they stared out at that landscape, it was possible to believe that they had really been transported millions of years back in time to a vanished world. “It works, doesn’t it?” they heard Ed Regis say, over the intercom. “I like to come here sometimes, in the evening. And just sit.” Grant was unimpressed. “Where is T-rex?” “Good question. You often see the little one down in the lagoon. The lagoon’s stocked, so we have fish in there. The little one has learned to catch the fish. Interesting how he does it. He doesn’t use his hands, but he ducks his whole head under the water. Like a bird.” “The little one?” “The little T-rex. He’s a juvenile, two years old, and about a third grown now. Stands eight feet high, weighs a ton and a half. The other one’s a full-grown tyrannosaur. But I don’t see him at the moment.” “Maybe he’s down hunting the apatosaurs,” Grant said. Regis laughed, his voice tinny over the radio. “He would if he could, believe me. Sometimes he stands by the lagoon and stares at those animals, and wiggles those little forearms of his in frustration. But the T-rex territory is completely enclosed with trenches and fences. They’re disguised from view, but believe me, he can’t go anywhere.” “Then where is he?” “Hiding,” Regis said. “He’s a little shy.” “Shy?” Malcolm said. “Tyrannosaurus rex is shy?” “Well, he conceals himself as a general rule. You almost never see him out in the open, especially in daylight.” “Why is that?” “We think it’s because he has sensitive skin and sunburns easily.” Malcolm began to laugh. Grant sighed. “You’re destroying a lot of illusions.” “I don’t think you’ll be disappointed,” Regis said. “Just wait.” They heard a soft bleating sound. In the center of a field, a small cage rose up into view, lifted on hydraulics from underground. The cage bars slid down, and the goat remained tethered in the center of the field, bleating plaintively. “Any minute now,” Regis said again. They stared out the window. “Look at them,” Hammond said, watching the control room monitor. “Leaning out of the windows, so eager. They can’t wait to see it."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c25_r1.htm.txt", "text": "They have come for the danger.” “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Muldoon said. He twirled the keys on his finger and watched the Land Cruisers tensely. This was the first time that visitors had toured Jurassic Park, and Muldoon shared Arnold’s apprehension. Robert Muldoon was a big man, fifty years old, with a steel-gray mustache and deep blue eyes. Raised in Kenya, he had spent most of his life as a guide for African big-game hunters, as had his father before him. But since 1980, he had worked principally for conservation groups and zoo designers as a wildlife consultant. He had become well known; an article in the London Sunday Times had said, “What Robert Trent Jones is to golf courses, Robert Muldoon is to zoos: a designer of unsurpassed knowledge and skill.” In 1986, he had done some work for a San Francisco company that was building a private wildlife park on an island in North America. Muldoon had laid out the boundaries for different animals, defining space and habitat requirements for lions, elephants, zebras, and hippos. Identifying which animals could be kept together, and which had to be separated. At the time, it had been a fairly routine job. He had been more interested in an Indian park called Tiger World in southern Kashmir. Then, a year ago, he was offered a job as game warden of Jurassic Park. It coincided with a desire to leave Africa; the salary was excellent; Muldoon had taken it on for a year. He was astonished to discover the park was really a collection of genetically engineered prehistoric animals. It was of course interesting work, but during his years in Africa, Muldoon had developed an unblinking view of animals—an unromantic view—that frequently set him at odds with the Jurassic Park management in California, particularly the little martinet standing beside him in the control room. In Muldoon’s opinion, cloning dinosaurs in a laboratory was one thing. Maintaining them in the wild was quite another. It was Muldoon’s view that some dinosaurs were too dangerous to be kept in a park setting. In part, the danger existed because they still knew so little about the animals. For example, nobody even suspected the dilophosaurs were poisonous until they were observed hunting indigenous rats on the island—biting the rodents and then stepping back, to wait for them to die. And even then nobody suspected the dilophosaurs could spit until one of the handlers was almost blinded by spitting venom. After that, Hammond had agreed to study dilophosaur venom, which was found to contain seven different toxic enzymes. It was also discovered that the dilophosaurs could spit a distance of fifty feet. Since this raised the possibility that a guest in a car might be blinded, management decided to remove the poison sacs. The vets had tried twice, on two different animals, without success. No one knew where the poison was being secreted."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c25_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And no one would ever know until an autopsy was performed on a dilophosaur—and management would not allow one to be killed. Muldoon worried even more about the velociraptors. They were instinctive hunters, and they never passed up prey. They killed even when they weren’t hungry. They killed for the pleasure of killing. They were swift: strong runners and astonishing jumpers. They had lethal claws on all four limbs; one swipe of a forearm would disembowel a man, spilling his guts out. And they had powerful tearing jaws that ripped flesh instead of biting it. They were far more intelligent than the other dinosaurs, and they seemed to be natural cage-breakers. Every zoo expert knew that certain animals were especially likely to get free of their cages. Some, like monkeys and elephants, could undo cage doors. Others, like wild pigs, were unusually intelligent and could lift gate fasteners with their snouts. But who would suspect that the giant armadillo was a notorious cage-breaker? Or the moose? Yet a moose was almost as skillful with its snout as an elephant with its trunk. Moose were always getting free; they had a talent for it. And so did velociraptors. Raptors were at least as intelligent as chimpanzees. And, like chimpanzees, they had agile hands that enabled them to open doors and manipulate objects. They could escape with ease. And when, as Muldoon had feared, one of them finally escaped, it killed two construction workers and maimed a third before being recaptured. After that episode, the visitor lodge had been reworked with heavy barred gates, a high perimeter fence, and tempered-glass windows. And the raptor holding pen was rebuilt with electronic sensors to warn of another impending escape. Muldoon wanted guns as well. And he wanted shoulder-mounted LAW-missile launchers. Hunters knew how difficult it was to bring down a four-ton African elephant—and some of the dinosaurs weighed ten times as much. Management was horrified, insisting there be no guns anywhere on the island. When Muldoon threatened to quit, and to take his story to the press, a compromise was reached. In the end, two specially built laser-guided missile launchers were kept in a locked room in the basement. Only Muldoon had keys to the room. Those were the keys Muldoon was twirling now. “I’m going downstairs,” he said. Arnold, watching the control screens, nodded. The two Land Cruisers sat at the top of the hill, waiting for the T-rex to appear. “Hey,” Dennis Nedry called, from the far console. “As long as you’re up, get me a Coke, okay?” Grant waited in the car, watching quietly. The bleating of the goat became louder, more insistent. The goat tugged frantically at its tether, racing back and forth. Over the radio, Grant heard Lex say in alarm, “What’s going to happen to the goat? Is she going to eat the goat?” “I think so,” someone said to her, and then Ellie turned the radio down."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c25_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Then they smelled the odor, a garbage stench of putrefaction and decay that drifted up the hillside toward them. Grant whispered, “He’s here.” “She,” Malcolm said. The goat was tethered in the center of the field, thirty yards from the nearest trees. The dinosaur must be somewhere among the trees, but for a moment Grant could see nothing at all. Then he realized he was looking too low: the animal’s head stood twenty feet above the ground, half concealed among the upper branches of the palm trees. Malcolm whispered, “Oh, my God.… She’s as large as a bloody building.…” Grant stared at the enormous square head, five feet long, mottled reddish brown, with huge jaws and fangs. The tyrannosaur’s jaws worked once, opening and closing. But the huge animal did not emerge from hiding. Malcolm whispered: “How long will it wait?” “Maybe three or four minutes. Maybe—” The tyrannosaur sprang silently forward, fully revealing her enormous body. In four bounding steps she covered the distance to the goat, bent down, and bit it through the neck. The bleating stopped. There was silence. Poised over her kill, the tyrannosaur became suddenly hesitant. Her massive head turned on the muscular neck, looking in all directions. She stared fixedly at the Land Cruiser, high above on the hill. Malcolm whispered, “Can she see us?” “Oh yes,” Regis said, on the intercom. “Let’s see if she’s going to eat here in front of us, or if she’s going to drag the prey away.” The tyrannosaur bent down, and sniffed the carcass of the goat. A bird chirped: her head snapped up, alert, watchful. She looked back and forth, scanning in small jerking shifts. “Like a bird,” Ellie said. Still the tyrannosaur hesitated. “What is she afraid of?” Malcolm whispered. “Probably another tyrannosaur,” Grant whispered. Big carnivores like lions and tigers often became cautious after a kill, behaving as if suddenly exposed. Nineteenth-century zoologists imagined the animals felt guilty for what they had done. But contemporary scientists documented the effort behind a kill—hours of patient stalking before the final lunge—as well as the frequency of failure. The idea of “nature, red in tooth and claw” was wrong; most often the prey got away. When a carnivore finally brought down an animal, it was watchful for another predator, who might attack it and steal its prize. Thus this tyrannosaur was probably fearful of another tyrannosaur. The huge animal bent over the goat again. One great hind limb held the carcass in place as the jaws began to tear the flesh. “She’s going to stay,” Regis whispered. “Excellent.” The tyrannosaur lifted her head again, ragged chunks of bleeding flesh in her jaws. She stared at the Land Cruiser. She began to chew. They heard the sickening crunch of bones. “Ewww,” Lex said, over the intercom."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c25_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“That’s disgusting.” And then, as if caution had finally gotten the better of her, the tyrannosaur lifted the remains of the goat in her jaws and carried them silently back among the trees. “Ladies and gentlemen, Tyrannosaurus rex,” the tape said. The Land Cruisers started up, and moved silently off, through the foliage. Malcolm sat back in his seat. “Fantastic,” he said. Gennaro wiped his forehead. He looked pale."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c26_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park CONTROL Henry Wu came into the control room to find everyone sitting in the dark, listening to the voices on the radio. “—Jesus, if an animal like that gets out,” Gennaro was saying, his voice tinny on the speaker, “there’d be no stopping it.” “No stopping it, no …” “Huge, with no natural enemies …” “My God, think of it …” In the control room, Hammond said, “Damn those people. They are so negative.” Wu said, “They’re still going on about an animal escaping? I don’t understand. They must have seen by now that we have everything under control. We’ve engineered the animals and engineered the resort.…” He shrugged. It was Wu’s deepest perception that the park was fundamentally sound, as he believed his paleo-DNA was fundamentally sound. Whatever problems might arise in the DNA were essentially point-problems in the code, causing a specific problem in the phenotype: an enzyme that didn’t switch on, or a protein that didn’t fold. Whatever the difficulty, it was always solved with a relatively minor adjustment in the next version. Similarly, he knew that Jurassic Park’s problems were not fundamental problems. They were not control problems. Nothing as basic, or as serious, as the possibility of an animal escaping. Wu found it offensive to think that anyone would believe him capable of contributing to a system where such a thing could happen. “It’s that Malcolm,” Hammond said darkly. “He’s behind it all. He was against us from the start, you know. He’s got his theory that complex systems can’t be controlled and nature can’t be imitated. I don’t know what his problem is. Hell, we’re just making a zoo here. World’s full of ’em, and they all work fine. But he’s going to prove his theory or die trying. I just hope he doesn’t panic Gennaro into trying to shut the park down.” Wu said, “Can he do that?” “No,” Hammond said. “But he can try. He can try and frighten the Japanese investors, and get them to withdraw funds. Or he can make a stink with the San José government. He can make trouble.” Arnold stubbed out his cigarette. “Let’s wait and see what happens,” he said. “We believe in the park. Let’s see how it plays out.” Muldoon got off the elevator, nodded to the ground-floor guard, and went downstairs to the basement. He flicked on the lights. The basement was filled with two dozen Land Cruisers, arranged in neat rows. These were the electric cars that would eventually form an endless loop, touring the park, returning to the visitor center. In the corner was a Jeep with a red stripe, one of two gasoline-powered vehicles—Harding, the vet, had taken the other that morning—which could go anywhere in the park, even among the animals. The Jeeps were painted with a diagonal red stripe because for some reason it discouraged the triceratops from charging the car. Muldoon moved past the Jeep, toward the back."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c26_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The steel door to the armaments room was unmarked. He unlocked it with his key, and swung the heavy door wide. Gun racks lined the interior. He pulled out a Randler Shoulder Launcher and a case of canisters. He tucked two gray rockets under his other arm. After locking the door behind him, he put the gun into the back seat of the Jeep. As he left the garage, he heard the distant rumble of thunder. “Looks like rain,” Ed Regis said, glancing up at the sky. The Land Cruisers had stopped again, near the sauropod swamp. A large herd of apatosaurs was grazing at the edge of the lagoon, eating the leaves of the upper branches of the palm trees. In the same area were several duckbilled hadrosaurs, which in comparison looked much smaller. Of course, Tim knew the hadrosaurs weren’t really small. It was only that the apatosaurs were so much larger. Their tiny heads reached fifty feet into the air, extending out on their long necks. “The big animals you see are commonly called Brontosaurus,” the recording said, “but they are actually Apatosaurus. They weigh more than thirty tons. That means a single animal is as big as a whole herd of modern elephants. And you may notice that their preferred area, alongside the lagoon, is not swampy. Despite what the books say, brontosaurs avoid swamps. They prefer dry land.” “Brontosaurus is the biggest dinosaur, Lex,” Ed Regis said. Tim didn’t bother to contradict him. Actually, Brachiosaurus was three times as large. And some people thought Ultrasaurus and Seismosaurus were even larger than Brachiosaurus. Seismosaurus might have weighed a hundred tons! Alongside the apatosaurs, the smaller hadrosaurs stood on their hind legs to get at foliage. They moved gracefully for such large creatures. Several infant hadrosaurs scampered around the adults, eating the leaves that dropped from the mouths of the larger animals. “The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park don’t breed,” the recording said. “The young animals you see were introduced a few months ago, already hatched. But the adults nurture them anyway.” There was the rolling growl of thunder. The sky was darker, lower, and menacing. “Yeah, looks like rain, all right,” Ed Regis said. The car started forward, and Tim looked back at the hadrosaurs. Suddenly, off to one side, he saw a pale yellow animal moving quickly. There were brownish stripes on its back. He recognized it instantly. “Hey!” he shouted. “Stop the car!” “What is it?” Ed Regis said. “Quick! Stop the car!” “We move on now to see the last of our great prehistoric animals, the stegosaurs,” the recorded voice said. “What’s the matter, Tim?’ ” “I saw one! I saw one in the field out there!” “Saw what?” “A raptor! In that field!” “The stegosaurs are a mid-Jurassic animal, evolving about a hundred and seventy million years ago,” the recording said. “Several of these remarkable herbivores live here at Jurassic Park.” “Oh, I don’t think so, Tim,” Ed Regis said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c26_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Not a raptor.” “I did! Stop the car!” There was a babble on the intercom, as the news was relayed to Grant and Malcolm. “Tim says he saw a raptor.” “Where?” “Back at the field.” “Let’s go back and look.” “We can’t go back,” Ed Regis said. “We can only go forward. The cars are programmed.” “We can’t go back?” Grant said. “No,” Regis said. “Sorry. You see, it’s kind of a ride—” “Tim, this is Professor Malcolm,” said a voice cutting in on the intercom. “I have just one question for you about this raptor. How old would you say it was?” “Older than the baby we saw today,” Tim said. “And younger than the big adults in the pen. The adults were six feet tall. This one was about half that size.” “That’s fine,” Malcolm said. “I only saw it for a second,” Tim said. “I’m sure it wasn’t a raptor,” Ed Regis said. “It couldn’t possibly be a raptor. Must have been one of the othys. They’re always jumping their fences. We have a hell of a time with them.” “I know I saw a raptor,” Tim said. “I’m hungry,” Lex said. She was starting to whine. In the control room, Arnold turned to Wu. “What do you think the kid saw?” “I think it must have been an othy.” Arnold nodded. “We have trouble tracking othys, because they spend so much time in the trees.” The othys were an exception to the usual minute-to-minute control they maintained over the animals. The computers were constantly losing and picking up the othys, as they went into the trees and then came down again. “What burns me,” Hammond said, “is that we have made this wonderful park, this fantastic park, and our very first visitors are going through it like accountants, just looking for problems. They aren’t experiencing the wonder of it at all.” “That’s their problem,” Arnold said. “We can’t make them experience wonder.” The intercom clicked, and Arnold heard a voice drawl, “Ah, John, this is the Anne B over at the dock. We haven’t finished offloading, but I’m looking at that storm pattern south of us. I’d rather not be tied up here if this chop gets any worse.” Arnold turned to the monitor showing the cargo vessel, which was moored at the dock on the east side of the island. He pressed the radio button. “How much left to do, Jim?” “Just the three final equipment containers. I haven’t checked the manifest, but I assume you can wait another two weeks for it. We’re not well berthed here, you know, and we are one hundred miles offshore.” “You requesting permission to leave?” “Yes, John.” “I want that equipment,” Hammond said. “That’s equipment for the labs. We need it.” “Yes,” Arnold said. “But you didn’t want to put money into a storm barrier to protect the pier. So we don’t have a good harbor."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c26_r1.htm.txt", "text": "If the storm gets worse, the ship will be pounded against the dock. I’ve seen ships lost that way. Then you’ve got all the other expenses, replacement of the vessel plus salvage to clear your dock … and you can’t use your dock until you do.…” Hammond gave a dismissing wave. “Get them out of there.” “Permission to leave, Anne B,” Arnold said, into the radio. “See you in two weeks,” the voice said. On the video monitor, they saw the crew on the decks, casting off the lines. Arnold turned back to the main console bank. He saw the Land Cruisers moving through fields of steam. “Where are they now?” Hammond said. “It looks like the south fields,” Arnold said. The southern end of the island had more volcanic activity than the north. “That means they should be almost to the stegos. I’m sure they’ll stop and see what Harding is doing.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park STEGOSAUR As the Land Cruiser came to a stop, Ellie Sattler stared through the plumes of steam at the stegosaurus. It was standing quietly, not moving. A Jeep with a red stripe was parked alongside it. “I have to admit, that’s a funny-looking animal,” Malcolm said. The stegosaurus was twenty feet long, with a huge bulky body and vertical armor plates along its back. The tail had dangerous-looking three-foot spikes. But the neck tapered to an absurdly small head with a stupid gaze, like a very dumb horse. As they watched, a man walked around from behind the animal. “That’s our vet, Dr. Harding,” Regis said, over the radio. “He’s anesthetized the stego, which is why it’s not moving. It’s sick.” Grant was already getting out of the car, hurrying toward the motionless stegosaur. Ellie got out and looked back as the second Land Cruiser pulled up and the two kids jumped out. “What’s he sick with?” Tim said. “They’re not sure,” Ellie said. The great leathery plates along the stegosaur’s spine drooped slightly. It breathed slowly, laboriously, making a wet sound with each breath. “Is it contagious?” Lex said. They walked toward the tiny head of the animal, where Grant and the vet were on their knees, peering into the stegosaur’s mouth. Lex wrinkled her nose. “This thing sure is big,” she said. “And smelly.” “Yes, it is.” Ellie had already noticed the stegosaur had a peculiar odor, like rotting fish. It reminded her of something she knew, but couldn’t quite place. In any case, she had never smelled a stegosaur before. Maybe this was its characteristic odor. But she had her doubts. Most herbivores did not have a strong smell. Nor did their droppings. It was reserved for the meat-eaters to develop a real stink. “Is that because it’s sick?” Lex asked. “Maybe. And don’t forget the vet’s tranquilized it.” “Ellie, have a look at this tongue,” Grant said. The dark purple tongue drooped limply from the animal’s mouth. The vet shone a light on it so she could see the very fine silvery blisters. “Microvesicles,” Ellie said. “Interesting.” “We’ve had a difficult time with these stegos,” the vet said. “They’re always getting sick.” “What are the symptoms?” Ellie asked. She scratched the tongue with her fingernail. A clear liquid exuded from the broken blisters. “Ugh,” Lex said. “Imbalance, disorientation, labored breathing, and massive diarrhea,” Harding said. “Seems to happen about once every six weeks or so.” “They feed continuously?” “Oh yes,” Harding said. “Animal this size has to take in a minimum of five or six hundred pounds of plant matter daily just to keep going. They’re constant foragers.” “Then it’s not likely to be poisoning from a plant,” Ellie said. Constant browsers would be constantly sick if they were eating a toxic plant. Not every six weeks. “Exactly,” the vet said. “May I?” Ellie asked. She took the flashlight from the vet."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“You have pupillary effects from the tranquilizer?” she said, shining the light in the stegosaur’s eye. “Yes. There’s a miotic effect, pupils are constricted.” “But these pupils are dilated,” she said. Harding looked. There was no question: the stegosaur’s pupil was dilated, and did not contract when light shone on it. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “That’s a pharmacological effect.” “Yes.” Ellie got back on her feet and looked around. “What is the animal’s range?” “About five square miles.” “In this general area?” she asked. They were in an open meadow, with scattered rocky outcrops, and intermittent plumes of steam rising from the ground. It was late afternoon, and the sky was pink beneath the lowering gray clouds. “Their range is mostly north and east of here,” Harding said. “But when they get sick, they’re usually somewhere around this particular area.” It was an interesting puzzle, she thought. How to explain the periodicity of the poisoning? She pointed across the field. “You see those low, delicate-looking bushes?” “West Indian lilac.” Harding nodded. “We know it’s toxic. The animals don’t eat it.” “You’re sure?” “Yes. We monitor them on video, and I’ve checked droppings just to be certain. The stegos never eat the lilac bushes.” Melia azedarach, called chinaberry or West Indian lilac, contained a number of toxic alkaloids. The Chinese used the plant as a fish poison. “They don’t eat it,” the vet said. “Interesting,” Ellie said. “Because otherwise I would have said that this animal shows all the classic signs of Melia toxicity: stupor, blistering of the mucous membranes, and pupillary dilatation.” She set off toward the field to examine the plants more closely, her body bent over the ground. “You’re right,” she said. “Plants are healthy, no sign of being eaten. None at all.” “And there’s the six-week interval,” the vet reminded her. “The stegosaurs come here how often?” “About once a week,” he said. “Stegos make a slow loop through their home-range territory, feeding as they go. They complete the loop in about a week.” “But they’re only sick once every six weeks.” “Correct,” Harding said. “This is boring,” Lex said. “Ssshh,” Tim said. “Dr. Sattler’s trying to think.” “Unsuccessfully,” Ellie said, walking farther out into the field. Behind her, she heard Lex saying, “Anybody want to play a little pickle?” Ellie stared at the ground. The field was rocky in many places. She could hear the sound of the surf, somewhere to the left. There were berries among the rocks. Perhaps the animals were just eating berries. But that didn’t make sense. West Indian lilac berries were terribly bitter. “Finding anything?” Grant said, coming up to join her. Ellie sighed. “Just rocks,” she said. “We must be near the beach, because all these rocks are smooth. And they’re in funny little piles.” “Funny little piles?” Grant said. “All over. There’s one pile right there.” She pointed. As soon as she did, she realized what she was looking at."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The rocks were worn, but it had nothing to do with the ocean. These rocks were heaped in small piles, almost as if they had been thrown down that way. They were piles of gizzard stones. Many birds and crocodiles swallowed small stones, which collected in a muscular pouch in the digestive tract, called the gizzard. Squeezed by the muscles of the gizzard, the stones helped crush tough plant food before it reached the stomach, and thus aided digestion. Some scientists thought dinosaurs also had gizzard stones. For one thing, dinosaur teeth were too small, and too little worn, to have been used for chewing food. It was presumed that dinosaurs swallowed their food whole and let the gizzard stones break down the plant fibers. And some skeletons had been found with an associated pile of small stones in the abdominal area. But it had never been verified, and— “Gizzard stones,” Grant said. “I think so, yes. They swallow these stones, and after a few weeks the stones are worn smooth, so they regurgitate them, leaving this little pile, and swallow fresh stones. And when they do, they swallow berries as well. And get sick.” “I’ll be damned,” Grant said. “I’m sure you’re right.” He looked at the pile of stones, brushing through them with his hand, following the instinct of a paleontologist. Then he stopped. “Ellie,” he said. “Take a look at this.” “Put it there, babe! Right in the old mitt!” Lex cried, and Gennaro threw the ball to her. She threw it back so hard that his hand stung. “Take it easy! I don’t have a glove!” “You wimp!” she said contemptuously. Annoyed, he fired the ball at her, and heard it smack! in the leather. “Now that’s more like it,” she said. Standing by the dinosaur, Gennaro continued to play catch as he talked to Malcolm. “How does this sick dinosaur fit into your theory?” “It’s predicted,” Malcolm said. Gennaro shook his head. “Is anything not predicted by your theory?” “Look,” Malcolm said. “It’s nothing to do with me. It’s chaos theory. But I notice nobody is willing to listen to the consequences of the mathematics. Because they imply very large consequences for human life. Much larger than Heisenberg’s principle or Gödel’s theorem, which everybody rattles on about. Those are actually rather academic considerations. Philosophical considerations. But chaos theory concerns everyday life. Do you know why computers were first built?” “No,” Gennaro said. “Burn it in there,” Lex yelled. “Computers were built in the late 1940s because mathematicians like John von Neumann thought that if you had a computer—a machine to handle a lot of variables simultaneously—you would be able to predict the weather. Weather would finally fall to human understanding. And men believed that dream for the next forty years. They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "That’s been a cherished scientific belief since Newton.” “And?” “Chaos theory throws it right out the window. It says that you can never predict certain phenomena at all. You can never predict the weather more than a few days away. All the money that has been spent on long-range forecasting—about half a billion dollars in the last few decades—is money wasted. It’s a fool’s errand. It’s as pointless as trying to turn lead into gold. We look back at the alchemists and laugh at what they were trying to do, but future generations will laugh at us the same way. We’ve tried the impossible—and spent a lot of money doing it. Because in fact there are great categories of phenomena that are inherently unpredictable.” “Chaos says that?” “Yes, and it is astonishing how few people care to hear it,” Malcolm said. “I gave all this information to Hammond long before he broke ground on this place. You’re going to engineer a bunch of prehistoric animals and set them on an island? Fine. A lovely dream. Charming. But it won’t go as planned. It is inherently unpredictable, just as the weather is.” “You told him this?” Gennaro said. “Yes. I also told him where the deviations would occur. Obviously the fitness of the animals to the environment was one area. This stegosaur is a hundred million years old. It isn’t adapted to our world. The air is different, the solar radiation is different, the land is different, the insects are different, the sounds are different, the vegetation is different. Everything is different. The oxygen content is decreased. This poor animal’s like a human being at ten thousand feet altitude. Listen to him wheezing.” “And the other areas?” “Broadly speaking, the ability of the park to control the spread of life-forms. Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.” Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t mean to be philosophical, but there it is.” Gennaro looked over. Ellie and Grant were across the field, waving their arms and shouting. “Did you get my Coke?” Dennis Nedry asked, as Muldoon came back into the control room. Muldoon didn’t bother to answer. He went directly to the monitor and looked at what was happening. Over the radio he heard Harding’s voice saying, “—the stego—finally—handle on—now—” “What’s that about?” Muldoon said. “They’re down by the south point,” Arnold said. “That’s why they’re breaking up a little. I’ll switch them to another channel. But they found out what’s wrong with the stegos. Eating some kind of berry.” Hammond nodded. “I knew we’d solve that sooner or later,” he said. “It’s not very impressive,” Gennaro said. He held the white fragment, no larger than a postage stamp, up on his fingertip in the fading light. “You sure about this, Alan?” “Absolutely sure,” Grant said. “What gives it away is the patterning on the interior surface, the interior curve."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Turn it over and you will notice a faint pattern of raised lines, making roughly triangular shapes.” “Yes, I see them.” “Well, I’ve dug out two eggs with patterns like that at my site in Montana.” “You’re saying this is a piece of dinosaur eggshell?” “Absolutely,” Grant said. Harding shook his head. “These dinosaurs can’t breed.” “Evidently they can,” Gennaro said. “That must be a bird egg,” Harding said. “We have literally dozens of species on the island.” Grant shook his head. “Look at the curvature. The shell is almost flat. That’s from a very big egg. And notice the thickness of the shell. Unless you have ostriches on this island, it’s a dinosaur egg.” “But they can’t possibly breed,” Harding insisted. “All the animals are female.” “All I know,” Grant said, “is that this is a dinosaur egg.” Malcolm said, “Can you tell the species?” “Yes,” Grant said. “It’s a velociraptor egg.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c28_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park CONTROL “Absolutely absurd,” Hammond said in the control room, listening to the report over the radio. “It must be a bird egg. That’s all it can be.” The radio crackled. He heard Malcolm’s voice. “Let’s do a little test, shall we? Ask Mr. Arnold to run one of his computer tallies.” “Now?” “Yes, right now. I understand you can transmit it to the screen in Dr. Harding’s car. Do that, too, will you?” “No problem,” Arnold said. A moment later, the screen in the control room printed out: “I hope you’re satisfied,” Hammond said. “Are you receiving it down there on your screen?” “We see it,” Malcolm said. “Everything accounted for, as always.” He couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of his voice. “Now then,” Malcolm said. “Can you have the computer search for a different number of animals?” “Like what?” Arnold said. “Try two hundred thirty-nine.” “Just a minute,” Arnold said, frowning. A moment later the screen printed: Hammond sat forward. “What the hell is that?” “We picked up another compy.” “From where?” “I don’t know!” The radio crackled. “Now, then: can you ask the computer to search for, let us say, three hundred animals?” “What is he talking about?” Hammond said, his voice rising. “Three hundred animals? What’s he talking about?” “Just a minute,” Arnold said. “That’ll take a few minutes.” He punched buttons on the screen. The first line of the totals appeared: Total Animals 239 “I don’t understand what he’s driving at,” Hammond said. “I’m afraid I do,” Arnold said. He watched the screen. The numbers on the first line were clicking: Total Animals 244 “Two hundred forty-four?” Hammond said. “What’s going on?” “The computer is counting the animals in the park,” Wu said. “All the animals.” “I thought that’s what it always did.” He spun. “Nedry! Have you screwed up again?” “No,” Nedry said, looking up from his console. “Computer allows the operator to enter an expected number of animals, in order to make the counting process faster. But it’s a convenience, not a flaw.” “He’s right,” Arnold said. “We just always used the base count of two hundred thirty-eight because we assumed there couldn’t be more.” Total Animals 262 “Wait a minute,” Hammond said. “These animals can’t breed. The computer must be counting field mice or something.” “I think so, too,” Arnold said. “It’s almost certainly an error in the visual tracking. But we’ll know soon enough.” Hammond turned to Wu. “They can’t breed, can they?” “No,” Wu said. Total Animals 270 “Where are they coming from?” Arnold said. “Damned if I know,” Wu said. They watched the numbers climb. Total Animals 283 Over the radio, they heard Gennaro say, “Holy shit, how much more?” And they heard the girl say, “I’m getting hungry. When are we going home?” “Pretty soon, Lex.” On the screen, there was a flashing error message: ERROR: Search Params: 300 Animals Not Found “An error,” Hammond said, nodding. “I thought so."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c28_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I had the feeling all along there must be an error.” But a moment later the screen printed: The radio crackled. “Now you see the flaw in your procedures,” Malcolm said. “You only tracked the expected number of dinosaurs. You were worried about losing animals, and your procedures were designed to advise you instantly if you had less than the expected number. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was, you had more than the expected number.” “Christ,” Arnold said. “There can’t be more,” Wu said. “We know how many we’ve released. There can’t be more than that.” “Afraid so, Henry,” Malcolm said. “They’re breeding.” “No.” “Even if you don’t accept Grant’s eggshell, you can prove it with your own data. Take a look at the compy height graph. Arnold will put it up for you.” “Notice anything about it?” Malcolm said. “It’s a Gaussian distribution,” Wu said. “Normal curve.” “But didn’t you say you introduced the compys in three batches? At six-month intervals?” “Yes …” “Then you should get a graph with peaks for each of the three separate batches that were introduced,” Malcolm said, tapping the keyboard. “Like this.” “But you didn’t get this graph,” Malcolm said. “The graph you actually got is a graph of a breeding population. Your compys are breeding.” Wu shook his head. “I don’t see how.” “They’re breeding, and so are the othnielia, the maiasaurs, the hypsys—and the velociraptors.” “Christ,” Muldoon said. “There are raptors free in the park.” “Well, it’s not that bad,” Hammond said, looking at the screen. “We have increases in just three categories—well, five categories. Very small increases in two of them …” “What are you talking about?” Wu said, loudly. “Don’t you know what this means?” “Of course I know what this means, Henry,” Hammond said. “It means you screwed up.” “Absolutely not.” “You’ve got breeding dinosaurs out there, Henry.” “But they’re all female,” Wu said. “It’s impossible. There must be a mistake. And look at the numbers. A small increase in the big animals, the maiasaurs and the hypsys. And big increases in the number of small animals. It just doesn’t make sense. It must be a mistake.” The radio clicked. “Actually not,” Grant said. “I think these numbers confirm that breeding is taking place. In seven different sites around the island.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park BREEDING SITES The sky was growing darker. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Grant and the others leaned in the doors of the Jeep, staring at the screen on the dashboard. “Breeding sites?” Wu said, over the radio. “Nests,” Grant said. “Assuming the average clutch is eight to twelve hatching eggs, these data would indicate the compys have two nests. The raptors have two nests. The othys have one nest. And the hypsys and the maias have one nest each.” “Where are these nests?” “We’ll have to find them,” Grant said. “Dinosaurs build their nests in secluded places.” “But why are there so few big animals?” Wu said. “If there is a maia nest of eight to twelve eggs, there should be eight to twelve new maias. Not just one.” “That’s right,” Grant said. “Except that the raptors and the compys that are loose in the park are probably eating the eggs of the bigger animals—and perhaps eating the newly hatched young, as well.” “But we’ve never seen that,” Arnold said, over the radio. “Raptors are nocturnal,” he said. “Is anyone watching the park at night?” There was a long silence. “I didn’t think so,” Grant said. “It still doesn’t make sense,” Wu said. “You can’t support fifty additional animals on a couple of nests of eggs.” “No,” Grant said. “I assume they are eating something else as well. Perhaps small rodents. Mice and rats?” There was another silence. “Let me guess,” Grant said. “When you first came to the island, you had a problem with rats. But as time passed, the problem faded away.” “Yes. That’s true.…” “And you never thought to investigate why.” “Well, we just assumed …” Arnold said. “Look,” Wu said, “the fact remains, all the animals are female. They can’t breed.” Grant had been thinking about that. He had recently learned of an intriguing West German study that he suspected held the answer. “When you made your dinosaur DNA,” Grant said, “you were working with fragmentary pieces, is that right?” “Yes,” Wu said. “In order to make a complete strand, were you ever required to include DNA fragments from other species?” “Occasionally, yes,” Wu said. “It’s the only way to accomplish the job. Sometimes we included avian DNA, from a variety of birds, and sometimes reptilian DNA.” “Any amphibian DNA? Specifically, frog DNA?” “Possibly. I’d have to check.” “Check,” Grant said. “I think you’ll find that holds the answer.” Malcolm said, “Frog DNA? Why frog DNA?” Gennaro said impatiently, “Listen, this is all very intriguing, but we’re forgetting the main question: have any animals gotten off the island?” Grant said, “We can’t tell from these data.” “Then how are we going to find out?” “There’s only one way I know,” Grant said. “We’ll have to find the individual dinosaur nests, inspect them, and count the remaining egg fragments. From that we may be able to determine how many animals were originally hatched."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And we can begin to assess whether any are missing.” Malcolm said, “Even so, you won’t know if the missing animals are killed, or dead from natural causes, or whether they have left the island.” “No,” Grant said, “but it’s a start. And I think we can get more information from an intensive look at the population graphs.” “How are we going to find these nests?” “Actually,” Grant said, “I think the computer will be able to help us with that.” “Can we go back now?” Lex said. “I’m hungry.” “Yes, let’s go,” Grant said, smiling at her. “You’ve been very patient.” “You’ll be able to eat in about twenty minutes,” Ed Regis said, starting toward the two Land Cruisers. “I’ll stay for a while,” Ellie said, “and get photos of the stego with Dr. Harding’s camera. Those vesicles in the mouth will have cleared up by tomorrow.” “I want to get back,” Grant said. “I’ll go with the kids.” “I will, too,” Malcolm said. “I think I’ll stay,” Gennaro said, “and go back with Harding in his Jeep, with Dr. Sattler.” “Fine, let’s go.” They started walking. Malcolm said, “Why exactly is our lawyer staying?” Grant shrugged. “I think it might have something to do with Dr. Sattler.” “Really? The shorts, you think?” “It’s happened before,” Grant said. When they came to the Land Cruisers, Tim said, “I want to ride in the front one this time, with Dr. Grant.” Malcolm said, “Unfortunately, Dr. Grant and I need to talk.” “I’ll just sit and listen. I won’t say anything,” Tim said. “It’s a private conversation,” Malcolm said. “Tell you what, Tim,” Ed Regis said. “Let them sit in the rear car by themselves. We’ll sit in the front car, and you can use the night-vision goggles. Have you ever used night-vision goggles, Tim? They’re goggles with very sensitive CCDs that allow you to see in the dark.” “Neat,” he said, and moved toward the first car. “Hey!” Lex said. “I want to use it, too.” “No,” Tim said. “No fair! No fair! You get to do everything, Timmy!” Ed Regis watched them go and said to Grant, “I can see what the ride back is going to be like.” Grant and Malcolm climbed into the second car. A few raindrops spattered the windshield. “Let’s get going,” Ed Regis said. “I’m about ready for dinner. And I could do with a nice banana daiquiri. What do you say, folks? Daiquiri sound good?” He pounded the metal panel of the car. “See you back at camp,” he said, and he started running toward the first car, and climbed aboard. A red light on the dashboard blinked. With a soft electric whirr, the Land Cruisers started off. Driving back in the fading light, Malcolm seemed oddly subdued. Grant said, “You must feel vindicated. About your theory.” “As a matter of fact, I’m feeling a bit of dread."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I suspect we are at a very dangerous point.” “Why?” “Intuition.” “Do mathematicians believe in intuition?” “Absolutely. Very important, intuition. Actually, I was thinking of fractals,” Malcolm said. “You know about fractals?” Grant shook his head. “Not really, no.” “Fractals are a kind of geometry, associated with a man named Mandelbrot. Unlike ordinary Euclidean geometry that everybody learns in school—squares and cubes and spheres—fractal geometry appears to describe real objects in the natural world. Mountains and clouds are fractal shapes. So fractals are probably related to reality. Somehow. “Well, Mandelbrot found a remarkable thing with his geometric tools. He found that things looked almost identical at different scales.” “At different scales?” Grant said. “For example,” Malcolm said, “a big mountain, seen from far away, has a certain rugged mountain shape. If you get closer, and examine a small peak of the big mountain, it will have the same mountain shape. In fact, you can go all the way down the scale to a tiny speck of rock, seen under a microscope—it will have the same basic fractal shape as the big mountain.” “I don’t really see why this is worrying you,” Grant said. He yawned. He smelled the sulfur fumes of the volcanic steam. They were coming now to the section of road that ran near the coastline, overlooking the beach and the ocean. “It’s a way of looking at things,” Malcolm said. “Mandelbrot found a sameness from the smallest to the largest. And this sameness of scale also occurs for events.” “Events?” “Consider cotton prices,” Malcolm said. “There are good records of cotton prices going back more than a hundred years. When you study fluctuations in cotton prices, you find that the graph of price fluctuations in the course of a day looks basically like the graph for a week, which looks basically like the graph for a year, or for ten years. And that’s how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there.… And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.” “I guess it’s one way to look at things,” Grant said. “No,” Malcolm said. “It’s the only way to look at things. At least, the only way that is true to reality. You see, the fractal idea of sameness carries within it an aspect of recursion, a kind of doubling back on itself, which means that events are unpredictable. That they can change suddenly, and without warning.” “Okay …” “But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And chaos theory teaches us,” Malcolm said, “that straight linearity, which we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn’t a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.” Malcolm sat back in his seat, looking toward the other Land Cruiser, a few yards ahead. “That’s a deep truth about the structure of our universe. But, for some reason, we insist on behaving as if it were not true.” At that moment, the cars jolted to a stop. “What’s happened?” Grant said. Up ahead, they saw the kids in the car, pointing toward the ocean. Offshore, beneath lowering clouds, Grant saw the dark outline of the supply boat making its way back toward Puntarenas. “Why have we stopped?” Malcolm said. Grant turned on the radio and heard the girl saying excitedly, “Look there, Timmy! You see it, it’s there!” Malcolm squinted at the boat. “They talking about the boat?” “Apparently.” Ed Regis climbed out of the front car and came running back to their window. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but the kids are all worked up. Do you have binoculars here?” “For what?” “The little girl says she sees something on the boat. Some kind of animal,” Regis said. Grant grabbed the binoculars and rested his elbows on the window ledge of the Land Cruiser. He scanned the long shape of the supply ship. It was so dark it was almost a silhouette; as he watched, the ship’s running lights came on, brilliant in the dark purple twilight. “Do you see anything?” Regis said. “No,” Grant said. “They’re low down,” Lex said, over the radio. “Look low down.” Grant tilted the binoculars down, scanning the hull just above the waterline. The supply ship was broad-beamed, with a splash flange that ran the length of the ship. But it was quite dark now, and he could hardly make out details. “No, nothing …” “I can see them,” Lex said impatiently. “Near the back. Look near the back!” “How can she see anything in this light?” Malcolm said. “Kids can see,” Grant said. “They’ve got visual acuity we forgot we ever had.” He swung the binoculars toward the stern, moving them slowly, and suddenly he saw the animals. They were playing, darting among the silhouetted stern structures. He could see them only briefly, but even in the fading light he could tell that they were upright animals, about two feet tall, standing with stiff balancing tails. “You see them now?” Lex said. “I see them,” he said. “What are they?” “They’re raptors,” Grant said. “At least two. Maybe more. Juveniles.” “Jesus,” Ed Regis said. “That boat’s going to the mainland.” Malcolm shrugged. “Don’t get excited."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Just call the control room and tell them to recall the boat.” Ed Regis reached in and grabbed the radio from the dashboard. They heard hissing static, and clicks as he rapidly changed channels. “There’s something wrong with this one,” he said. “It’s not working.” He ran off to the first Land Cruiser. They saw him duck into it. Then he looked back at them. “There’s something wrong with both the radios,” he said. “I can’t raise the control room.” “Then let’s get going,” Grant said. In the control room, Muldoon stood before the big windows that overlooked the park. At seven o’clock, the quartz floodlights came on all over the island, turning the landscape into a glowing jewel stretching away to the south. This was his favorite moment of the day. He heard the crackle of static from the radios. “The Land Cruisers have started again,” Arnold said. “They’re on their way home.” “But why did they stop?” Hammond said. “And why can’t we talk to them?” “I don’t know,” Arnold said. “Maybe they turned off the radios in the cars.” “Probably the storm,” Muldoon said. “Interference from the storm.” “They’ll be here in twenty minutes,” Hammond said. “You better call down and make sure the dining room is ready for them. Those kids are going to be hungry.” Arnold picked up the phone and heard a steady monotonous hiss. “What’s this? What’s going on?” “Jesus, hang that up,” Nedry said. “You’ll screw up the data stream.” “You’ve taken all the phone lines? Even the internal ones?” “I’ve taken all the lines that communicate outside,” Nedry said. “But your internal lines should still work.” Arnold punched console buttons one after another. He heard nothing but hissing on all the lines. “Looks like you’ve got ’em all.” “Sorry about that,” Nedry said. “I’ll clear a couple for you at the end of the next transmission, in about fifteen minutes.” He yawned. “Looks like a long weekend for me. I guess I’ll go get that Coke now.” He picked up his shoulder bag and headed for the door. “Don’t touch my console, okay?” The door closed. “What a slob,” Hammond said. “Yeah,” Arnold said. “But I guess he knows what he’s doing.” Along the side of the road, clouds of volcanic steam misted rainbows in the bright quartz lights. Grant said into the radio, “How long does it take the ship to reach the mainland?” “Eighteen hours,” Ed Regis said. “More or less. It’s pretty reliable.” He glanced at his watch. “It should arrive around eleven tomorrow morning.” Grant frowned. “You still can’t talk to the control room?” “Not so far.” “How about Harding? Can you reach him?” “No, I’ve tried. He may have his radio turned off.” Malcolm was shaking his head. “So we’re the only ones who know about the animals on the ship.” “I’m trying to raise somebody,” Ed Regis said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I mean, Christ, we don’t want those animals on the mainland.” “How long until we get back to the base?” “From here, another sixteen, seventeen minutes,” Ed Regis said. At night, the whole road was illuminated by big floodlights. It felt to Grant as if they were driving through a bright green tunnel of leaves. Large raindrops spattered the windshield. Grant felt the Land Cruiser slow, then stop. “Now what?” Lex said, “I don’t want to stop. Why did we stop?” And then, suddenly, all the floodlights went out. The road was plunged into darkness. Lex said, “Hey!” “Probably just a power outage or something,” Ed Regis said. “I’m sure the lights’ll be on in a minute.” “What the hell?” Arnold said, staring at his monitors. “What happened?” Muldoon said. “You lose power?” “Yeah, but only power on the perimeter. Everything in this building’s working fine. But outside, in the park, the power is gone. Lights, TV cameras, everything.” His remote video monitors had gone black. “What about the two Land Cruisers?” “Stopped somewhere around the tyrannosaur paddock.” “Well,” Muldoon said, “call Maintenance and let’s get the power back on.” Arnold picked up one of his phones and heard hissing: Nedry’s computers talking to each other. “No phones. That damn Nedry. Nedry! Where the hell is he?” Dennis Nedry pushed open the door marked FERTILIZATION. With the perimeter power out, all the security-card locks were disarmed. Every door in the building opened with a touch. The problems with the security system were high on Jurassic Park’s bug list. Nedry wondered if anybody ever imagined that it wasn’t a bug—that Nedry had programmed it that way. He had built in a classic trap door. Few programmers of large computer systems could resist the temptation to leave themselves a secret entrance. Partly it was common sense: if inept users locked up the system—and then called you for help—you always had a way to get in and repair the mess. And partly it was a kind of signature: Kilroy was here. And partly it was insurance for the future. Nedry was annoyed with the Jurassic Park project; late in the schedule, InGen had demanded extensive modifications to the system but hadn’t been willing to pay for them, arguing they should be included under the original contract. Lawsuits were threatened; letters were written to Nedry’s other clients, implying that Nedry was unreliable. It was blackmail, and in the end Nedry had been forced to eat his overages on Jurassic Park and to make the changes that Hammond wanted. But later, when he was approached by Lewis Dodgson at Biosyn, Nedry was ready to listen. And able to say that he could indeed get past Jurassic Park security. He could get into any room, any system, anywhere in the park. Because he had programmed it that way. Just in case. He entered the fertilization room. The lab was deserted; as he had anticipated, all the staff was at dinner."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Nedry unzipped his shoulder bag and removed the can of Gillette shaving cream. He unscrewed the base, and saw the interior was divided into a series of cylindrical slots. He pulled on a pair of heavy insulated gloves and opened the walk-in freezer marked CONTENTS VIABLE BIOLOGICAL MAINTAIN — 10°C MINIMUM. The freezer was the size of a small closet, with shelves from floor to ceiling. Most of the shelves contained reagents and liquids in plastic sacs. To one side he saw a smaller nitrogen cold box with a heavy ceramic door. He opened it, and a rack of small tubes slid out, in a cloud of white liquid-nitrogen smoke. The embryos were arranged by species: Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Hadrosaurus, Tyrannosaurus. Each embryo in a thin glass container, wrapped in silver foil, stoppered with polylene. Nedry quickly took two of each, slipping them into the shaving cream can. Then he screwed the base of the can shut and twisted the top. There was a hiss of releasing gas inside, and the can frosted in his hands. Dodgson had said there was enough coolant to last thirty-six hours. More than enough time to get back to San José. Nedry left the freezer, returned to the main lab. He dropped the can back in his bag, zipped it shut. He went back into the hallway. The theft had taken less than two minutes. He could imagine the consternation upstairs in the control room, as they began to realize what had happened. All their security codes were scrambled, and all their phone lines were jammed. Without his help, it would take hours to untangle the mess—but in just a few minutes Nedry would be back in the control room, setting things right. And no one would ever suspect what he had done. Grinning, Dennis Nedry walked down to the ground floor, nodded to the guard, and continued downstairs to the basement. Passing the neat lines of electric Land Cruisers, he went to the gasoline-powered Jeep parked against the wall. He climbed into it, noticing some odd gray tubing on the passenger seat. It looked almost like a rocket launcher, he thought, as he turned the ignition key and started the Jeep. Nedry glanced at his watch. From here, into the park, and three minutes straight to the east dock. Three minutes from there back to the control room. Piece of cake. “Damn it!” Arnold said, punching buttons on the console. “It’s all screwed up.” Muldoon was standing at the windows, looking out at the park. The lights had gone out all over the island, except in the immediate area around the main buildings. He saw a few staff personnel hurrying to get out of the rain, but no one seemed to realize anything was wrong. Muldoon looked over at the visitor lodge, where the lights burned brightly. “Uh-oh,” Arnold said. “We have real trouble.” “What’s that?” Muldoon said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He turned away from the window, and so he didn’t see the Jeep drive out of the underground garage and head east along the maintenance road into the park. “That idiot Nedry turned off the security systems,” Arnold said. “The whole building’s opened up. None of the doors are locked any more.” “I’ll notify the guards,” Muldoon said. “That’s the least of it,” Arnold said. “When you turn off the security, you turn off all the peripheral fences as well.” “The fences?” Muldoon said. “The electrical fences,” Arnold said. “They’re off, all over the island.” “You mean …” “That’s right,” Arnold said. “The animals can get out now.” Arnold lit a cigarette. “Probably nothing will happen, but you never know.…” Muldoon started toward the door. “I better drive out and bring in the people in those two Land Cruisers,” he said. “Just in case.” Muldoon quickly went downstairs to the garage. He wasn’t really worried about the fences’ going down. Most of the dinosaurs had been in their paddocks for nine months or more, and they had brushed up against the fences more than once, with notable results. Muldoon knew how quickly animals learned to avoid shock stimuli. You could train a laboratory pigeon with just two or three stimulation events. So it was unlikely the dinosaurs would now approach the fences. Muldoon was more concerned about what the people in the cars would do. He didn’t want them getting out of the Land Cruisers, because once the power came back on, the cars would start moving again, whether the people were inside them or not. They might be left behind. Of course, in the rain it was unlikely they would leave the cars. But, still… you never knew.… He reached the garage and hurried toward the Jeep. It was lucky, he thought, that he had had the foresight to put the launcher in it. He could start right out, and be out there in— It was gone! “What the hell?” Muldoon stared at the empty parking space, astonished. The Jeep was gone! What the hell was happening?"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park THE MAIN ROAD Rain drummed loudly on the roof of the Land Cruiser. Tim felt the night-vision goggles pressing heavily on his forehead. He reached for the knob near his ear and adjusted the intensity. There was a brief phosphorescent flare, and then, in shades of electronic green and black, he could see the Land Cruiser behind, with Dr. Grant and Dr. Malcolm inside. Neat! Dr. Grant was staring out the front windshield toward him. Tim saw him pick up the radio from the dash. There was a burst of static, and then he heard Dr. Grant’s voice: “Can you see us back here?” Tim picked up the radio from Ed Regis. “I see you.” “Everything all right?” “We’re fine, Dr. Grant.” “Stay in the car.” “We will. Don’t worry.” He clicked the radio off. Ed Regis snorted. “It’s pouring down rain. Of course we’ll stay in the car,” he muttered. Tim turned to look at the foliage at the side of the road. Through the goggles, the foliage was a bright electronic green, and beyond he could see sections of the green grid pattern of the fence. The Land Cruisers were stopped on the downslope of a hill, which must mean they were someplace near the tyrannosaur area. It would be amazing to see a tyrannosaur with these night-vision goggles. A real thrill. Maybe the tyrannosaur would come to the fence and look over at them. Tim wondered if its eyes would glow in the dark when he saw them. That would be neat. But he didn’t see anything, and eventually he stopped looking. Everyone in the cars fell silent. The rain thrummed on the roof of the car. Sheets of water streamed down over the sides of the windows. It was hard for Tim to see out, even with the goggles. “How long have we been sitting here?” Malcolm asked. “I don’t know. Four or five minutes.” “I wonder what the problem is.” “Maybe a short circuit from the rain.” “But it happened before the rain really started.” There was another silence. In a tense voice, Lex said, “But there’s no lightning, right?” She had always been afraid of lightning, and she now sat nervously squeezing her leather mitt in her hands. Dr. Grant said, “What was that? We didn’t quite read that.” “Just my sister talking.” “Oh.” Tim again scanned the foliage, but saw nothing. Certainly nothing as big as a tyrannosaur. He began to wonder if the tyrannosaurs came out at night. Were they nocturnal animals? Tim wasn’t sure if he had ever read that. He had the feeling that tyrannosaurs were all-weather, day or night animals. The time of day didn’t matter to a tyrannosaur. The rain continued to pour. “Hell of a rain,” Ed Regis said. “It’s really coming down.” Lex said, “I’m hungry.” “I know that, Lex,” Regis said, “but we’re stuck here, sweetie."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The cars run on electricity in buried cables in the road.” “Stuck for how long?” “Until they fix the electricity.” Listening to the sound of the rain, Tim felt himself growing sleepy. He yawned, and turned to look at the palm trees on the left side of the road, and was startled by a sudden thump as the ground shook. He swung back just in time to catch a glimpse of a dark shape as it swiftly crossed the road between the two cars. “Jesus!” “What was it?” “It was huge, it was big as the car—” “Tim! Are you there?” He picked up the radio. “Yes, I’m here.” “Did you see it, Tim?” “No,” Tim said. “I missed it.” “What the hell was it?” Malcolm said. “Are you wearing the night-vision goggles, Tim?” “Yes. I’ll watch,” Tim said. “Was it the tyrannosaur?” Ed Regis asked. “I don’t think so. It was in the road.” “But you didn’t see it?” Ed Regis said. “No.” Tim felt bad that he had missed seeing the animal, whatever it was. There was a sudden white crack of lightning, and his night goggles flared bright green. He blinked his eyes and started counting. “One one thousand … two one thousand …” The thunder crashed, deafeningly loud and very close. Lex began to cry. “Oh, no…” “Take it easy, honey,” Ed Regis said. “It’s just lightning.” Tim scanned the side of the road. The rain was coming down hard now, shaking the leaves with hammering drops. It made everything move. Everything seemed alive. He scanned the leaves.… He stopped. There was something beyond the leaves. Tim looked up, higher. Behind the foliage, beyond the fence, he saw a thick body with a pebbled, grainy surface like the bark of a tree. But it wasn’t a tree.… He continued to look higher, sweeping the goggles upward— He saw the huge head of the tyrannosaurus. Just standing there, looking over the fence at the two Land Cruisers. The lightning flashed again, and the big animal rolled its head and bellowed in the glaring light. Then darkness, and silence again, and the pounding rain. “Tim?” “Yes, Dr. Grant.” “You see what it is?” “Yes, Dr. Grant.” Tim had the sense that Dr. Grant was trying to talk in a way that wouldn’t upset his sister. “What’s going on right now?” “Nothing,” Tim said, watching the tyrannosaur through his night goggles. “Just standing on the other side of the fence.” “I can’t see much from here, Tim.” “I can see fine, Dr. Grant. It’s just standing there.” “Okay.” Lex continued to cry, snuffling. There was another pause. Tim watched the tyrannosaur. The head was huge! The animal looked from one vehicle to another. Then back again. It seemed to stare right at Tim. In the goggles, the eyes glowed bright green. Tim felt a chill, but then, as he looked down the animal’s body, moving down from the massive head and jaws, he saw the smaller, muscular forelimb."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It waved in the air and then it gripped the fence. “Jesus Christ,” Ed Regis said, staring out the window. The greatest predator the world has ever known. The most fearsome attack in human history. Somewhere in the back of his publicist’s brain, Ed Regis was still writing copy. But he could feel his knees begin to shake uncontrollably, his trousers flapping like flags. Jesus, he was frightened. He didn’t want to be here. Alone among all the people in the two cars, Ed Regis knew what a dinosaur attack was like. He knew what happened to people. He had seen the mangled bodies that resulted from a raptor attack. He could picture it in his mind. And this was a rex! Much, much bigger! The greatest meat-eater that ever walked the earth! Jesus. When the tyrannosaur roared it was terrifying, a scream from some other world. Ed Regis felt the spreading warmth in his trousers. He’d peed in his pants. He was simultaneously embarrassed and terrified. But he knew he had to do something. He couldn’t just stay here. He had to do something. Something. His hands were shaking, trembling against the dash. “Jesus Christ,” he said again. “Bad language,” Lex said, wagging her finger at him. Tim heard the sound of a door opening, and he swung his head away from the tyrannosaur—the night-vision goggles streaked laterally—in time to see Ed Regis stepping out through the open door, ducking his head in the rain. “Hey,” Lex said, “where are you going?” Ed Regis just turned and ran in the opposite direction from the tyrannosaur, disappearing into the woods. The door to the Land Cruiser hung open; the paneling was getting wet. “He left!” Lex said. “Where did he go? He left us alone!” “Shut the door,” Tim said, but she had started to scream, “He left us! He left us!” “Tim, what’s going on?” It was Dr. Grant, on the radio. “Tim?” Tim leaned forward and tried to shut the door. From the backseat, he couldn’t reach the handle. He looked back at the tyrannosaur as lightning flashed again, momentarily silhouetting the huge black shape against the white-flaring sky. “Tim, what’s happening?” “He left us, he left us!” Tim blinked to recover his vision. When he looked again, the tyrannosaur was standing there, exactly as before, motionless and huge. Rain dripped from its jaws. The forelimb gripped the fence.… And then Tim realized: the tyrannosaur was holding on to the fence! The fence wasn’t electrified any more! “Lex, close the door!” The radio crackled. “Tim!” “I’m here, Dr. Grant.” “What’s going on?” “Regis ran away,” Tim said. “He what?” “He ran away. I think he saw that the fence isn’t electrified,” Tim said. “The fence isn’t electrified?” Malcolm said, over the radio."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Did he say the fence isn’t electrified?” “Lex,” Tim said, “close the door.” But Lex was screaming, “He left us, he left us!” in a steady, monotonous wail, and there was nothing for Tim to do but climb out of the back door, into the slashing rain, and shut the door for her. Thunder rumbled, and the lightning flashed again. Tim looked up and saw the tyrannosaur crashing down the cyclone fence with a giant hind limb. “Timmy!” He jumped back in and slammed the door, the sound lost in the thunderclap. The radio: “Tim! Are you there?” He grabbed the radio. “I’m here.” He turned to Lex. “Lock the doors. Get in the middle of the car. And shut up.” Outside, the tyrannosaur rolled its head and took an awkward step forward. The claws of its feet had caught in the grid of the flattened fence. Lex saw the animal finally, and became silent, still. She watched with wide eyes. Radio crackle. “Tim.” “Yes, Dr. Grant.” “Stay in the car. Stay down. Be quiet. Don’t move, and don’t make noise.” “Okay.” “You should be all right. I don’t think it can open the car.” “Okay.” “Just stay quiet, so you don’t arouse its attention any more than necessary.” “Okay.” Tim clicked the radio off. “You hear that, Lex?” His sister nodded, silently. She never took her eyes off the dinosaur. The tyrannosaur roared. In the glare of lightning, they saw it pull free of the fence and take a bounding step forward. Now it was standing between the two cars. Tim couldn’t see Dr. Grant’s car any more, because the huge body blocked his view. The rain ran in rivulets down the pebbled skin of the muscular hind legs. He couldn’t see the animal’s head, which was high above the roofline. The tyrannosaur moved around the side of their car. It went to the very spot where Tim had gotten out of the car. Where Ed Regis had gotten out of the car. The animal paused there. The big head ducked down, toward the mud. Tim looked back at Dr. Grant and Dr. Malcolm in the rear car. Their faces were tense as they stared forward through the windshield. The huge head raised back up, jaws open, and then stopped by the side windows. In the glare of lightning, they saw the beady, expressionless reptile eye moving in the socket. It was looking in the car. His sister’s breath came in ragged, frightened gasps. He reached out and squeezed her arm, hoping she would stay quiet. The dinosaur continued to stare for a long time through the side window. Perhaps the dinosaur couldn’t really see them, he thought. Finally the head lifted up, out of view again. “Timmy …” Lex whispered. “It’s okay,” Tim whispered."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I don’t think it saw us.” He was looking back toward Dr. Grant when a jolting impact rocked the Land Cruiser and shattered the windshield in a spiderweb as the tyrannosaur’s head crashed against the hood of the Land Cruiser. Tim was knocked flat on the seat. The night-vision goggles slid off his forehead. He got back up quickly, blinking in the darkness, his mouth warm with blood. “Lex?” He couldn’t see his sister anywhere. The tyrannosaur stood near the front of the Land Cruiser, its chest moving as it breathed, the forelimbs making clawing movements in the air. “Lex!” Tim whispered. Then he heard her groan. She was lying somewhere on the floor under the front seat. Then the huge head came down, entirely blocking the shattered windshield. The tyrannosaur banged again on the front hood of the Land Cruiser. Tim grabbed the seat as the car rocked on its wheels. The tyrannosaur banged down twice more, denting the metal. Then it moved around the side of the car. The big raised tail blocked his view out of all the side windows. At the back, the animal snorted, a deep rumbling growl that blended with the thunder. It sank its jaws into the spare tire mounted on the back of the Land Cruiser and, in a single head shake, tore it away. The rear of the car lifted into the air for a moment; then it thumped down with a muddy splash. “Tim!” Dr. Grant said. “Tim, are you there?” Tim grabbed the radio. “We’re okay,” he said. There was a shrill metallic scrape as claws raked the roof of the car. Tim’s heart was pounding in his chest. He couldn’t see anything out of the windows on the right side except pebbled leathery flesh. The tyrannosaur was leaning against the car, which rocked back and forth with each breath, the springs and metal creaking loudly. Lex groaned again. Tim put down the radio, and started to crawl over into the front seat. The tyrannosaur roared and the metal roof dented downward. Tim felt a sharp pain in his head and tumbled to the floor, onto the transmission hump. He found himself lying alongside Lex, and he was shocked to see that the whole side of her head was covered in blood. She looked unconscious. There was another jolting impact, and pieces of glass fell all around him. Tim felt rain. He looked up and saw that the front windshield had broken out. There was just a jagged rim of glass and, beyond, the big head of the dinosaur. Looking down at him. Tim felt a sudden chill and then the head rushed forward toward him, the jaws open. There was the squeal of metal against teeth, and he felt the hot stinking breath of the animal and a thick tongue stuck into the car through the windshield opening."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The tongue slapped wetly around inside the car—he felt the hot lather of dinosaur saliva—and the tyrannosaur roared—a deafening sound inside the car— The head pulled away abruptly. Tim scrambled up, avoiding the dent in the roof. There was still room to sit on the front seat by the passenger door. The tyrannosaur stood in the rain near the front fender. It seemed confused by what had happened to it. Blood dripped freely from its jaws. The tyrannosaur looked at Tim, cocking its head to stare with one big eye. The head moved close to the car, sideways, and peered in. Blood spattered on the dented hood of the Land Cruiser, mixing with the rain. It can’t get to me, Tim thought. It’s too big. Then the head pulled away, and in the flare of lightning he saw the hind leg lift up. And the world tilted crazily as the Land Cruiser slammed over on its side, the windows splatting in the mud. He saw Lex fall helplessly against the side window, and he fell down beside her, banging his head. Tim felt dizzy. Then the tyrannosaur’s jaws clamped onto the window frame, and the whole Land Cruiser was lifted up into the air, and shaken. “Timmy!” Lex shrieked, so near to his ear that it hurt. She was suddenly awake, and he grabbed her as the tyrannosaur crashed the car down again. Tim felt a stabbing pain in his side, and his sister fell on top of him. The car went up again, tilting crazily. Lex shouted “Timmy!” and he saw the door give way beneath her, and she fell out of the car into the mud, but Tim couldn’t answer, because in the next instant everything swung crazily—he saw the trunks of the palm trees sliding downward past him—moving sideways through the air—he glimpsed the ground very far below—the hot roar of the tyrannosaur—the blazing eye—the tops of the palm trees— And then, with a metallic scraping shriek, the car fell from the tyrannosaur’s jaws, a sickening fall, and Tim’s stomach heaved in the moment before the world became totally black, and silent. In the other car, Malcolm gasped. “Jesus! What happened to the car?” Grant blinked his eyes as the lightning faded. The other car was gone. Grant couldn’t believe it. He peered forward, trying to see through the rain-streaked windshield. The dinosaur’s body was so large, it was probably just blocking— No. In another flash of lightning, he saw clearly: the car was gone. “What happened?” Malcolm said. “I don’t know.” Faintly, over the rain, Grant heard the sound of the little girl screaming. The dinosaur was standing in darkness on the road up ahead, but they could see well enough to know that it was bending over now, sniffing the ground. Or eating something on the ground. “Can you see?” Malcolm said, squinting. “Not much, no,” Grant said. The rain pounded on the roof of the car."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He listened for the little girl, but he didn’t hear her any more. The two men sat in the car, listening. “Was it the girl?” Malcolm said, finally. “It sounded like the girl.” “It did, yes.” “Was it?” “I don’t know,” Grant said. He felt a seeping fatigue overtake him. Blurred through the rainy windshield, the dinosaur was coming toward their car. Slow, ominous strides, coming right toward them. Malcolm said, “You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct. Don’t you have that feeling now?” “Yes,” Grant said. He was feeling his heart pounding. “Umm. Do you, ah, have any suggestions about what we do now?” “I can’t think of a thing,” Grant said. Malcolm twisted the handle, kicked open the door, and ran. But even as he did, Grant could see he was too late, the tyrannosaur too close. There was another crack of lightning, and in that instant of glaring white light, Grant watched in horror as the tyrannosaur roared, and leapt forward. Grant was not clear about exactly what happened next. Malcolm was running, his feet splashing in the mud. The tyrannosaur bounded alongside him and ducked its massive head, and Malcolm was tossed into the air like a small doll. By then Grant was out of the car, too, feeling the cold rain slashing his face and body. The tyrannosaur had turned its back to him, the huge tail swinging through the air. Grant was tensing to run for the woods when suddenly the tyrannosaur spun back to face him, and roared. Grant froze. He was standing beside the passenger door of the Land Cruiser, drenched in rain. He was completely exposed, the tyrannosaur no more than eight feet away. The big animal roared again. At so close a range the sound was terrifyingly loud. Grant felt himself shaking with cold and fright. He pressed his trembling hands against the metal of the door panel to steady them. The tyrannosaur roared once more, but it did not attack. It cocked its head, and looked with first one eye, then the other, at the Land Cruiser. And it did nothing. It just stood there. What was going on? The powerful jaws opened and closed. The tyrannosaur bellowed angrily, and then the big hind leg came up and crashed down on the roof of the car; the claws slid off with a metal screech, barely missing Grant as he stood there, still unmoving. The foot splashed in the mud. The head ducked down in a slow arc, and the animal inspected the car, snorting. It peered into the front windshield. Then, moving toward the rear, it banged the passenger door shut, and moved right toward Grant as he stood there. Grant was dizzy with fear, his heart pounding inside his chest."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "With the animal so close, he could smell the rotten flesh in the mouth, the sweetish blood-smell, the sickening stench of the carnivore.… He tensed his body, awaiting the inevitable. The big head slid past him, toward the rear of the car. Grant blinked. What had happened? Was it possible the tyrannosaur hadn’t seen him? It seemed as if it hadn’t. But how could that be? Grant looked back to see the animal sniffing the rear-mounted tire. It nudged the tire with its snout, and then the head swung back. Again it approached Grant. This time the animal stopped, the black flaring nostrils just inches away. Grant felt the animal’s startling hot breath on his face. But the tyrannosaur wasn’t sniffing like a dog. It was just breathing, and if anything it seemed puzzled. No, the tyrannosaur couldn’t see him. Not if he stood motionless. And in a detached academic corner of his mind he found an explanation for that, a reason why— The jaws opened before him, the massive head raised up. Grant squeezed his fists together, and bit his lip, trying desperately to remain motionless, to make no sound. The tyrannosaur bellowed in the night air. But by now Grant was beginning to understand. The animal couldn’t see him, but it suspected he was there, somewhere, and was trying with its bellowing to frighten Grant into some revealing movement. So long as he stood his ground, Grant realized, he was invisible. In a final gesture of frustration, the big hind leg lifted up and kicked the Land Cruiser over, and Grant felt searing pain and the surprising sensation of his own body flying through the air. It seemed to be happening very slowly, and he had plenty of time to feel the world turn colder, and watch the ground rush up to strike him in the face."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c31_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park RETURN “Oh damn,” Harding said. “Will you look at that.” They were sitting in Harding’s gasoline-powered Jeep, staring forward past the flick flick of the windshield wipers. In the yellow flare of the headlamps, a big fallen tree blocked the road. “Must have been the lightning,” Gennaro said. “Hell of a tree.” “We can’t get past it,” Harding said. “I better tell Arnold in control.” He picked up the radio and twisted the channel dial. “Hello, John. Are you there, John?” There was nothing but steady hissing static. “I don’t understand,” he said. “The radio lines seem to be down.” “It must be the storm,” Gennaro said. “I suppose,” Harding said. “Try the Land Cruisers,” Ellie said. Harding opened the other channels, but there was no answer. “Nothing,” he said. “They’re probably back to camp by now, and outside the range of our little set. In any case, I don’t think we should stay here. It’ll be hours before Maintenance gets a crew out here to move that tree.” He turned the radio off, and put the Jeep into reverse. “What’re you going to do?” Ellie said. “Go back to the turnout, and get onto the maintenance road. Fortunately there’s a second road system,” Harding explained. “We have one road for visitors, and a second road for animal handlers and feed trucks and so on. We’ll drive back on that maintenance road. It’s a little longer. And not so scenic. But you may find it interesting. If the rain lets up, we’ll get a glimpse of some of the animals at night. We should be back in thirty, forty minutes,” Harding said. “If I don’t get lost.” He turned the Jeep around in the night, and headed south again. Lightning flashed, and every monitor in the control room went black. Arnold sat forward, his body rigid and tense. Jesus, not now. Not now. That was all he needed—to have everything go out now in the storm. All the main power circuits were surge-protected, of course, but Arnold wasn’t sure about the modems Nedry was using for his data transmission. Most people didn’t know it was possible to blow an entire system through a modem—the lightning pulse climbed back into the computer through the telephone line, and—bang!—no more motherboard. No more RAM. No more file server. No more computer. The screens flickered. And then, one by one, they came back on. Arnold sighed, and collapsed back in his chair. He wondered again where Nedry had gone. Five minutes ago, he’d sent guards to search the building for him. The fat bastard was probably in the bathroom reading a comic book. But the guards hadn’t come back, and they hadn’t called in. Five minutes. If Nedry was in the building, they should have found him by now. “Somebody took the damned Jeep,” Muldoon said as he came back in the room."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c31_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Have you talked to the Land Cruisers yet?” “Can’t raise them on the radio,” Arnold said, “I have to use this, because the main board is down. It’s weak, but it ought to work. I’ve tried on all six channels. I know they have radios in the cars, but they’re not answering.” “That’s not good,” Muldoon said. “If you want to go out there, take one of the maintenance vehicles.” “I would,” Muldoon said, “but they’re all in the east garage, more than a mile from here. Where’s Harding?” “I assume he’s on his way back.” “Then he’ll pick up the people in the Land Cruisers on his way.” “I assume so.” “Anybody tell Hammond the kids aren’t back yet?” “Hell no,” Arnold said. “I don’t want that son of a bitch running around here, screaming at me. Everything’s all right, for the moment. The Land Cruisers are just stuck in the rain. They can sit a while, until Harding brings them back. Or until we find Nedry, and make that little bastard turn the systems back on.” “You can’t get them back on?” Muldoon said. Arnold shook his head. “I’ve been trying. But Nedry’s done something to the system. I can’t figure out what, but if I have to go into the code itself, that’ll take hours. We need Nedry. We’ve got to find the son of a bitch right away.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c32_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park NEDRY The sign said ELECTRIFIED FENCE 10,000 VOLTS DO NOT TOUCH, but Nedry opened it with his bare hand, and unlocked the gate, swinging it wide. He went back to the Jeep, drove through the gate, and then walked back to close it behind him. Now he was inside the park itself, no more than a mile from the east dock. He stepped on the accelerator and hunched forward over the steering wheel, peering through the rain-slashed windshield as he drove the Jeep down the narrow road. He was driving fast—too fast—but he had to keep to his timetable. He was surrounded on all sides by black jungle, but soon he should be able to see the beach and the ocean off to his left. This damned storm, he thought. It might screw up everything. Because if Dodgson’s boat wasn’t waiting for him at the east dock when Nedry got there, the whole plan would be ruined. Nedry couldn’t wait very long, or he would be missed back at the control room. The whole idea behind the plan was that he could drive to the east dock, drop off the embryos, and be back in a few minutes, before anyone noticed. It was a good plan, a clever plan. Nedry’d worked on it carefully, refining every detail. This plan was going to make him a million and a half dollars, one point five meg. That was ten years of income in a single tax-free shot, and it was going to change his life. Nedry’d been damned careful, even to the point of making Dodgson meet him in the San Francisco Airport at the last minute with an excuse about wanting to see the money. Actually, Nedry wanted to record his conversation with Dodgson, and mention him by name on the tape. Just so that Dodgson wouldn’t forget he owed the rest of the money, Nedry was including a copy of the tape with the embryos. In short, Nedry had thought of everything. Except this damned storm. Something dashed across the road, a white flash in his headlights. It looked like a large rat. It scurried into the underbrush, dragging a fat tail. Possum. Amazing that a possum could survive here. You’d think the dinosaurs would get an animal like that. Where was the damned dock? He was driving fast, and he’d already been gone five minutes. He should have reached the east dock by now. Had he taken a wrong turn? He didn’t think so. He hadn’t seen any forks in the road at all. Then where was the dock? It was a shock when he came around a corner and saw that the road terminated in a gray concrete barrier, six feet tall and streaked dark with rain."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c32_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He slammed on the brakes, and the Jeep fishtailed, losing traction in an end-to-end spin, and for a horrified moment he thought he was going to smash into the barrier—he knew he was going to smash—and he spun the wheel frantically, and the Jeep slid to a stop, the headlamps just a foot from the concrete wall. He paused there, listening to the rhythmic flick of the wipers. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He looked back down the road. He’d obviously taken a wrong turn somewhere. He could retrace his steps, but that would take too long. He’d better try and find out where the hell he was. He got out of the Jeep, feeling heavy raindrops spatter his head. It was a real tropical storm, raining so hard that it hurt. He glanced at his watch, pushing the button to illuminate the digital dial. Six minutes gone. Where the hell was he? He walked around the concrete barrier and on the other side, along with the rain, he heard the sound of gurgling water. Could it be the ocean? Nedry hurried forward, his eyes adjusting to the darkness as he went. Dense jungle on all sides. Raindrops slapping on the leaves. The gurgling sound became louder, drawing him forward, and suddenly he came out of the foliage and felt his feet sink into soft earth and saw the dark currents of the river. The river! He was at the jungle river! Damn, he thought. At the river where? The river ran for miles through the island. He looked at his watch again. Seven minutes gone. “You have a problem, Dennis,” he said aloud. As if in reply, there was a soft hooting cry of an owl in the forest. Nedry hardly noticed; he was worrying about his plan. The plain fact was that time had run out. There wasn’t a choice any more. He had to abandon his original plan. All he could do was go back to the control room, restore the computer, and somehow try to contact Dodgson, to set up the drop at the east dock for the following night. Nedry would have to scramble to make that work, but he thought he could pull it off. The computer automatically logged all calls; after Nedry got through to Dodgson, he’d have to go back into the computer and erase the record of the call. But one thing was sure—he couldn’t stay out in the park any longer, or his absence would be noticed. Nedry started back, heading toward the glow of the car’s headlights. He was drenched and miserable. He heard the soft hooting cry once more, and this time he paused. That hadn’t really sounded like an owl. And it seemed to be close by, in the jungle somewhere off to his right. As he listened, he heard a crashing sound in the underbrush. Then silence. He waited, and heard it again."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c32_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It sounded distinctly like something big, moving slowly through the jungle toward him. Something big. Something near. A big dinosaur. Get out of here. Nedry began to run. He made a lot of noise as he ran, but even so he could hear the animal crashing through the foliage. And hooting. It was coming closer. Stumbling over tree roots in the darkness, clawing his way past dripping branches, he saw the Jeep ahead, and the lights shining around the vertical wall of the barrier made him feel better. In a moment he’d be in the car and then he’d get the hell out of here. He scrambled around the barrier and then he froze. The animal was already there. But it wasn’t close. The dinosaur stood forty feet away, at the edge of the illumination from the headlamps. Nedry hadn’t taken the tour, so he hadn’t seen the different types of dinosaurs, but this one was strange-looking. The ten-foot-tall body was yellow with black spots, and along the head ran a pair of red V-shaped crests. The dinosaur didn’t move, but again gave its soft hooting cry. Nedry waited to see if it would attack. It didn’t. Perhaps the headlights from the Jeep frightened it, forcing it to keep its distance, like a fire. The dinosaur stared at him and then snapped its head in a single swift motion. Nedry felt something smack wetly against his chest. He looked down and saw a dripping glob of foam on his rain-soaked shirt. He touched it curiously, not comprehending.… It was spit. The dinosaur had spit on him. It was creepy, he thought. He looked back at the dinosaur and saw the head snap again, and immediately felt another wet smack against his neck, just above the shirt collar. He wiped it away with his hand. Jesus, it was disgusting. But the skin of his neck was already starting to tingle and burn. And his hand was tingling, too. It was almost like he had been touched with acid. Nedry opened the car door, glancing back at the dinosaur to make sure it wasn’t going to attack, and felt a sudden, excruciating pain in his eyes, stabbing like spikes into the back of his skull, and he squeezed his eyes shut and gasped with the intensity of it and threw up his hands to cover his eyes and felt the slippery foam trickling down both sides of his nose. Spit. The dinosaur had spit in his eyes. Even as he realized it, the pain overwhelmed him, and he dropped to his knees, disoriented, wheezing. He collapsed onto his side, his cheek pressed to the wet ground, his breath coming in thin whistles through the constant, ever-screaming pain that caused flashing spots of light to appear behind his tightly shut eyelids."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c32_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The earth shook beneath him and Nedry knew the dinosaur was moving, he could hear its soft hooting cry, and despite the pain he forced his eyes open and still he saw nothing but flashing spots against black. Slowly the realization came to him. He was blind. The hooting was louder as Nedry scrambled to his feet and staggered back against the side panel of the car, as a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. The dinosaur was close now, he could feel it coming close, he was dimly aware of its snorting breath. But he couldn’t see. He couldn’t see anything, and his terror was extreme. He stretched out his hands, waving them wildly in the air to ward off the attack he knew was coming. And then there was a new, searing pain, like a fiery knife in his belly, and Nedry stumbled, reaching blindly down to touch the ragged edge of his shirt, and then a thick, slippery mass that was surprisingly warm, and with horror he suddenly knew he was holding his own intestines in his hands. The dinosaur had torn him open. His guts had fallen out. Nedry fell to the ground and landed on something scaly and cold, it was the animal’s foot, and then there was new pain on both sides of his head. The pain grew worse, and as he was lifted to his feet he knew the dinosaur had his head in its jaws, and the horror of that realization was followed by a final wish, that it would all be ended soon."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c33_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park BUNGALOW “More coffee?” Hammond asked politely. “No, thank you,” Henry Wu said, leaning back in his chair. “I couldn’t eat anything more.” They were sitting in the dining room of Hammond’s bungalow, in a secluded corner of the park not far from the labs. Wu had to admit that the bungalow Hammond had built for himself was elegant, with sparse, almost Japanese lines. And the dinner had been excellent, considering the dining room wasn’t fully staffed yet. But there was something about Hammond that Wu found troubling. The old man was different in some way … subtly different. All during dinner, Wu had tried to decide what it was. In part, a tendency to ramble, to repeat himself, to retell old stories. In part, it was an emotional liability, flaring anger one moment, maudlin sentimentality the next. But all that could be understood as a natural concomitant of age. John Hammond was, after all, almost seventy-seven. But there was something else. A stubborn evasiveness. An insistence on having his way. And, in the end, a complete refusal to deal with the situation that now faced the park. Wu had been stunned by the evidence (he did not yet allow himself to believe the case was proved) that the dinosaurs were breeding. After Grant had asked about amphibian DNA, Wu had intended to go directly to his laboratory and check the computer records of the various DNA assemblies. Because, if the dinosaurs were in fact breeding, then everything about Jurassic Park was called into question—their genetic development methods, their genetic control methods, everything. Even the lysine dependency might be suspect. And if these animals could truly breed, and could also survive in the wild … Henry Wu wanted to check the data at once. But Hammond had stubbornly insisted Wu accompany him at dinner. “Now then, Henry, you must save room for ice cream,” Hammond said, pushing back from the table. “María makes the most wonderful ginger ice cream.” “All right” Wu looked at the beautiful, silent serving girl. His eyes followed her out of the room, and then he glanced up at the single video monitor mounted in the wall. The monitor was dark. “Your monitor’s out,” Wu said. “Is it?” Hammond glanced over. “Must be the storm.” He reached behind him for the telephone. “I’ll just check with John in control.” Wu could hear the static crackle on the telephone line. Hammond shrugged, and set the receiver back in its cradle. “Lines must be down,” he said. “Or maybe Nedry’s still doing data transmission. He has quite a few bugs to fix this weekend. Nedry’s a genius in his way, but we had to press him quite hard, toward the end, to make sure he got things right.” “Perhaps I should go to the control room and check,” Wu said. “No, no,” Hammond said. “There’s no reason. If there were any problem, we’d hear about it."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c33_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Ah.” María came back into the room, with two plates of ice cream. “You must have just a little, Henry,” Hammond said. “It’s made with fresh ginger, from the eastern part of the island. It’s an old man’s vice, ice cream. But still …” Dutifully, Wu dipped his spoon. Outside, lightning flashed, and there was the sharp crack of thunder. “That was close,” Wu said. “I hope the storm isn’t frightening the children.” “I shouldn’t think so,” Hammond said. He tasted the ice cream. “But I can’t help but hold some fears about this park, Henry.” Inwardly, Wu felt relieved. Perhaps the old man was going to face the facts, after all. “What kind of fears?” “You know, Jurassic Park’s really made for children. The children of the world love dinosaurs, and the children are going to delight—just delight—in this place. Their little faces will shine with the joy of finally seeing these wonderful animals. But I am afraid … I may not live to see it, Henry. I may not live to see the joy on their faces.” “I think there are other problems, too,” Wu said, frowning. “But none so pressing on my mind as this,” Hammond said, “that I may not live to see their shining, delighted faces. This is our triumph, this park. We have done what we set out to do. And, you remember, our original intent was to use the newly emerging technology of genetic engineering to make money. A lot of money.” Wu knew Hammond was about to launch into one of his old speeches. He held up his hand. “I’m familiar with this, John—” “If you were going to start a bioengineering company, Henry, what would you do? Would you make products to help mankind, to fight illness and disease? Dear me, no. That’s a terrible idea. A very poor use of new technology.” Hammond shook his head sadly. “Yet, you’ll remember,” he said, “the original genetic engineering companies, like Genentech and Cetus, were all started to make pharmaceuticals. New drugs for mankind. Noble, noble purpose. Unfortunately, drugs face all kinds of barriers. FDA testing alone takes five to eight years—if you’re lucky. Even worse, there are forces at work in the marketplace. Suppose you make a miracle drug for cancer or heart disease—as Genentech did. Suppose you now want to charge a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars a dose. You might imagine that is your privilege. After all, you invented the drug, you paid to develop and test it; you should be able to charge whatever you wish. But do you really think that the government will let you do that? No, Henry, they will not. Sick people aren’t going to pay a thousand dollars a dose for needed medication—they won’t be grateful, they’ll be outraged. Blue Cross isn’t going to pay it. They’ll scream highway robbery. So something will happen. Your patent application will be denied. Your permits will be delayed."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c33_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Something will force you to see reason—and to sell your drug at a lower cost. From a business standpoint, that makes helping mankind a very risky business. Personally, I would never help mankind.” Wu had heard the argument before. And he knew Hammond was right; some new bioengineered pharmaceuticals had indeed suffered inexplicable delays and patent problems. “Now,” Hammond said, “think how different it is when you’re making entertainment. Nobody needs entertainment. That’s not a matter for government intervention. If I charge five thousand dollars a day for my park, who is going to stop me? After all, nobody needs to come here. And, far from being highway robbery, a costly price tag actually increases the appeal of the park. A visit becomes a status symbol, and all Americans love that. So do the Japanese, and of course they have far more money.” Hammond finished his ice cream, and María silently took the dish away. “She’s not from here, you know,” he said. “She’s Haitian. Her mother is French. But in any case, Henry, you will recall that the original purpose behind pointing my company in this direction in the first place—was to have freedom from government intervention, anywhere in the world.” “Speaking of the rest of the world …” Hammond smiled. “We have already leased a large tract in the Azores, for Jurassic Park Europe. And you know we long ago obtained an island near Guam, for Jurassic Park Japan. Construction on the next two Jurassic Parks will begin early next year. They will all be open within four years. At that time, direct revenues will exceed ten billion dollars a year, and merchandising, television, and ancillary rights should double that. I see no reason to bother with children’s pets, which I’m told Lew Dodgson thinks we’re planning to make.” “Twenty billion dollars a year,” Wu said softly, shaking his head. “That’s speaking conservatively,” Hammond said. He smiled. “There’s no reason to speculate wildly. More ice cream, Henry?” “Did you find him?” Arnold snapped, when the guard walked into the control room. “No, Mr. Arnold.” “Find him.” “I don’t think he’s in the building, Mr. Arnold.” “Then look in the lodge,” Arnold said, “look in the maintenance building, look in the utility shed, look everywhere, but just find him.” “The thing is …” The guard hesitated. “Mr. Nedry’s the fat man, is that right?” “That’s right,” Arnold said. “He’s fat. A fat slob.” “Well, Jimmy down in the main lobby said he saw the fat man go into the garage.” Muldoon spun around. “Into the garage? When?” “About ten, fifteen minutes ago.” “Jesus,” Muldoon said. The Jeep screeched to a stop. “Sorry,” Harding said. In the headlamps, Ellie saw a herd of apatosaurs lumbering across the road. There were six animals, each the size of a house, and a baby as large as a full-grown horse. The apatosaurs moved in unhurried silence, never looking toward the Jeep and its glowing headlamps."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c33_r1.htm.txt", "text": "At one point, the baby stopped to lap water from a puddle in the road, then moved on. A comparable herd of elephants would have been startled by the arrival of a car, would have trumpeted and circled to protect the baby. But these animals showed no fear. “Don’t they see us?” she said. “Not exactly, no,” Harding said. “Of course, in a literal sense they do see us, but we don’t really mean anything to them. We hardly ever take cars out at night, and so they have no experience of them. We are just a strange, smelly object in their environment. Representing no threat, and therefore no interest. I’ve occasionally been out at night, visiting a sick animal, and on my way back these fellows blocked the road for an hour or more.” “What do you do?” Harding grinned. “Play a recorded tyrannosaur roar. That gets them moving. Not that they care much about tyrannosaurs. These apatosaurs are so big they don’t really have any predators. They can break a tyrannosaur’s neck with a swipe of their tail. And they know it. So does the tyrannosaur.” “But they do see us. I mean, if we were to get out of the car …” Harding shrugged. “They probably wouldn’t react. Dinosaurs have excellent visual acuity, but they have a basic amphibian visual system: it’s attuned to movement. They don’t see unmoving things well at all.” The animals moved on, their skin glistening in the rain. Harding put the car in gear. “I think we can continue now,” he said. Wu said, “I suspect you may find there are pressures on your park, just as there are pressures on Genentech’s drugs.” He and Hammond had moved to the living room, and they were now watching the storm lash the big glass windows. “I can’t see how,” Hammond said. “The scientists may wish to constrain you. Even to stop you.” “Well, they can’t do that,” Hammond said. He shook his finger at Wu. “You know why the scientists would try to do that? It’s because they want to do research, of course. That’s all they ever want to do, is research. Not to accomplish anything. Not to make any progress. Just do research. Well, they have a surprise coming to them.” “I wasn’t thinking of that,” Wu said. Hammond sighed. “I’m sure it would be interesting for the scientists, to do research. But you arrive at the point where these animals are simply too expensive to be used for research. This is wonderful technology, Henry, but it’s also frightfully expensive technology. The fact is, it can only be supported as entertainment.” Hammond shrugged. “That’s just the way it is.” “But if there are attempts to close down—” “Face the damn facts, Henry,” Hammond said irritably. “This isn’t America. This isn’t even Costa Rica. This is my island. I own it. And nothing is going to stop me from opening Jurassic Park to all the children of the world.” He chuckled."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c33_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Or, at least, to the rich ones. And I tell you, they’ll love it.” In the backseat of the Jeep, Ellie Sattler stared out the window. They had been driving through rain-drenched jungle for the last twenty minutes, and had seen nothing since the apatosaurs crossed the road. “We’re near the jungle river now,” Harding said, as he drove. “It’s off there somewhere to our left.” Abruptly he slammed on the brakes again. The car skidded to a stop in front of a flock of small green animals. “Well, you’re getting quite a show tonight,” he said. “Those are compys.” Procompsognathids, Ellie thought, wishing that Grant were here to see them. This was the animal they had seen in the fax, back in Montana. The little dark green procompsognathids scurried to the other side of the road, then squatted on their hind legs to look at the car, chittering briefly, before hurrying onward into the night. “Odd,” Harding said. “Wonder where they’re off to? Compys don’t usually move at night, you know. They climb up in a tree and wait for daylight.” “Then why are they out now?” Ellie said. “I can’t imagine. You know compys are scavengers, like buzzards. They’re attracted to a dying animal, and they have tremendously sensitive smell. They can smell a dying animal for miles.” “Then they’re going to a dying animal?” “Dying, or already dead.” “Should we follow them?” Ellie said. “I’d be curious,” Harding said. “Yes, why not? Let’s go see where they’re going.” He turned the car around, and headed back toward the compys."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c34_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park TIM Tim Murphy lay in the Land Cruiser, his cheek pressed against the car door handle. He drifted slowly back to consciousness. He wanted only to sleep. He shifted his position, and felt the pain in his cheekbone where it lay against the metal door. His whole body ached. His arms and his legs and most of all his head—there was a terrible pounding pain in his head. All the pain made him want to go back to sleep. He pushed himself up on one elbow, opened his eyes, and retched, vomiting all over his shirt. He tasted sour bile and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His head throbbed; he felt dizzy and seasick, as if the world were moving, as if he were rocking back and forth on a boat. Tim groaned, and rolled onto his back, turning away from the puddle of vomit. The pain in his head made him breathe in short, shallow gasps. And he still felt sick, as if everything were moving. He opened his eyes and looked around, trying to get his bearings. He was inside the Land Cruiser. But the car must have flipped over on its side, because he was lying on his back against the passenger door, looking up at the steering wheel and beyond, at the branches of a tree, moving in the wind. The rain had nearly stopped, but water drops still fell on him through the broken front windshield. He stared curiously at the fragments of glass. He couldn’t remember how the windshield had broken. He couldn’t remember anything except that they had been parked on the road and he had been talking to Dr. Grant when the tyrannosaur came toward them. That was the last thing he remembered. He felt sick again, and closed his eyes until the nausea passed. He was aware of a rhythmic creaking sound, like the rigging of a boat. Dizzy and sick to his stomach, he really felt as if the whole car were moving beneath him. But when he opened his eyes again, he saw it was true—the Land Cruiser was moving, lying on its side, swaying back and forth. The whole car was moving. Tentatively, Tim rose to his feet. Standing on the passenger door, he peered over the dashboard, looking out through the shattered windshield. At first he saw only dense foliage, moving in the wind. But here and there he could see gaps, and beyond the foliage, the ground was— The ground was twenty feet below him. He stared uncomprehendingly. The Land Cruiser was lying on its side in the branches of a large tree, twenty feet above the ground, swaying back and forth in the wind. “Oh shit,” he said. What was he going to do? He stood on his tiptoes and peered out, trying to see better, grabbing the steering wheel for support."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c34_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The wheel spun free in his hand, and with a loud crack the Land Cruiser shifted position, dropping a few feet in the branches of the tree. He looked down through the shattered glass of the passenger-door window at the ground below. “Oh shit. Oh shit.” He kept repeating it. “Oh shit. Oh shit.” Another loud crack—the Land Cruiser jolted down another foot He had to get out of here. He looked down at his feet. He was standing on the door handle. He crouched back down on his hands and knees to look at the handle. He couldn’t see very well in the dark, but he could tell that the door was dented outward so the handle couldn’t turn. He’d never get the door open. He tried to roll the window down, but the window was stuck, too. Then he thought of the back door. Maybe he could open that. He leaned over the front seat, and the Land Cruiser lurched with the shift in weight. Carefully, Tim reached back and twisted the handle on the rear door. It was stuck, too. How was he going to get out? He heard a snorting sound and looked down. A dark shape passed below him. It wasn’t the tyrannosaur. This shape was tubby and it made a kind of snuffling as it waddled along. The tail flopped back and forth, and Tim could see the long spikes. It was the stegosaur, apparently recovered from its illness. Tim wondered where the other people were: Gennaro and Sattler and the vet. He had last seen them near the stegosaur. How long ago was that? He looked at his watch, but the face was cracked; he couldn’t see the numbers. He took the watch off and tossed it aside. The stegosaur snuffled and moved on. Now the only sound was the wind in the trees, and the creaking of the Land Cruiser as it shifted back and forth. He had to get out of here. Tim grabbed the handle, tried to force it, but it was stuck solid. It wouldn’t move at all. Then he realized what was wrong: the rear door was locked! Tim pulled up the pin and twisted the handle. The rear door swung open, downward—and came to rest against the branch a few feet below. The opening was narrow, but Tim thought he could wriggle through it. Holding his breath, he crawled slowly back into the rear seat. The Land Cruiser creaked, but held its position. Gripping the doorposts on both sides, Tim slowly lowered himself down, through the narrow angled opening of the door. Soon he was lying flat on his stomach on the slanted door, his legs sticking out of the car. He kicked in the air—his feet touched something solid—a branch—and he rested his weight on it."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c34_r1.htm.txt", "text": "As soon as he did, the branch bent down and the door swung wider, spilling him out of the Land Cruiser, and he fell—leaves scratching his face—his body bouncing from branch to branch—a jolt—searing pain, bright light in his head— He slammed to a stop, the wind knocked from him. Tim lay doubled over a large branch, his stomach burning pain. Tim heard another crack and looked up at the Land Cruiser, a big dark shape five feet above him. Another crack. The car shifted. Tim forced himself to move, to climb down. He used to like to climb trees. He was a good tree-climber. And this was a good tree to climb, the branches spaced close together, almost like a staircase.… Crackkkk … The car was definitely moving. Tim scrambled downward, slipping over the wet branches, feeling sticky sap on his hands, hurrying. He had not descended more than a few feet when the Land Cruiser creaked a final time, and then slowly, very slowly, nosed over. Tim could see the big green grille and the front headlights swinging down at him, and then the Land Cruiser fell free, gaining momentum as it rushed toward him, slamming against the branch where Tim had just been— And it stopped. His face just inches from the dented grille, bent inward like an evil mouth, headlamps for eyes. Oil dripped on Tim’s face. He was still twelve feet above the ground. He reached down, found another branch, and moved down. Above, he saw the branch bending under the weight of the Land Cruiser, and then it cracked, and the Land Cruiser came rushing down toward him and he knew he could never escape it, he could never get down fast enough, so Tim just let go. He fell the rest of the way. Tumbling, banging, feeling pain in every part of his body, hearing the Land Cruiser smashing down through the branches after him like a pursuing animal, and then Tim’s shoulder hit the soft ground, and he rolled as hard as he could, and pressed his body against the trunk of the tree as the Land Cruiser tumbled down with a loud metallic crash and a sudden hot burst of electrical sparks that stung his skin and sputtered and sizzled on the wet ground around him. Slowly, Tim got to his feet. In the darkness he heard the snuffling, and saw the stegosaur coming back, apparently attracted by the crash of the Land Cruiser. The dinosaur moved dumbly, the low head thrust forward, and the big cartilaginous plates running in two rows along the hump of the back. It behaved like an overgrown tortoise. Stupid like that. And slow. Tim picked up a rock and threw it. “Get away!” The rock thunked dully off the plates. The stegosaur kept coming. “Go on! Go!” He threw another rock, and hit the stegosaur in the head. The animal grunted, turned slowly away, and shuffled off in the direction it had come."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c34_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Tim leaned against the crumpled Land Cruiser and looked around in the darkness. He had to get back to the others, but he didn’t want to get lost. He knew he was somewhere in the park, probably not far from the main road. If he could only get his bearings. He couldn’t see much in the dark, but— Then he remembered the goggles. He climbed through the shattered front windshield into the Land Cruiser and found the night-vision goggles, and the radio. The radio was broken and silent, so he left it behind. But the goggles still worked. He flicked them on, saw the reassuringly familiar phosphorescent green image. Wearing the goggles, he saw the battered fence off to his left, and walked toward it. The fence was twelve feet high, but the tyrannosaur had flattened it easily. Tim hurried across it, moved through an area of dense foliage, and came out onto the main road. Through his goggles, he saw the other Land Cruiser turned on its side. He ran toward it, took a breath, and looked inside. The car was empty. No sign of Dr. Grant and Dr. Malcolm. Where had they gone? Where had everybody gone? He felt sudden panic, standing alone in the jungle road at night with that empty car, and turned quickly in circles, seeing the bright green world in the goggles swirl. Something pale by the side of the road caught his eye. It was Lex’s baseball. He wiped the mud off it. “Lex!” Tim shouted as loud as he could, not caring if the animals heard him. He listened, but there was only the wind, and the plink of raindrops falling from the trees. “Lex!” He vaguely remembered that she had been in the Land Cruiser when the tyrannosaur attacked. Had she stayed there? Or had she gotten away? The events of the attack were confused in his mind. He wasn’t exactly sure what had happened. Just to think of it made him uneasy. He stood in the road, gasping with panic. “Lex!” The night seemed to close in around him. Feeling sorry for himself, he sat in a cold rainy puddle in the road and whimpered for a while. When he finally stopped, he still heard whimpering. It was faint, and it was coming from somewhere farther up the road. “How long has it been?” Muldoon said, coming back into the control room. He was carrying a black metal case. “Half an hour.” “Harding’s Jeep should be back here by now.” Arnold stubbed out his cigarette. “I’m sure they’ll arrive any minute now.” “Still no sign of Nedry?” Muldoon said. “No. Not yet.” Muldoon opened the case, which contained six portable radios. “I’m going to distribute these to people in the building.” He handed one to Arnold. “Take the charger, too. These are our emergency radios, but nobody had them plugged in, naturally."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c34_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Let it charge about twenty minutes, and then try and raise the cars.” Henry Wu opened the door marked FERTILIZATION and entered the darkened lab. There was nobody here; apparently all the technicians were still at dinner. Wu went directly to the computer terminal and punched up the DNA logbooks. The logbooks had to be kept on computer. DNA was such a large molecule that each species required ten gigabytes of optical disk space to store details of all the iterations. He was going to have to check all fifteen species. That was a tremendous amount of information to search through. He still wasn’t clear about why Grant thought frog DNA was important. Wu himself didn’t often distinguish one kind of DNA from another. After all, most DNA in living creatures was exactly the same. DNA was an incredibly ancient substance. Human beings, walking around in the streets of the modern world, bouncing their pink new babies, hardly stopped to think that the substance at the center of it all—the substance that began the dance of life—was a chemical almost as old as the earth itself. The DNA molecule was so old that its evolution had essentially finished more than two billion years ago. There had been little new since that time. Just a few recent combinations of the old genes—and not much of that. When you compared the DNA of man and the DNA of a lowly bacterium, you found that only about 10 percent of the strands were different. This innate conservatism of DNA emboldened Wu to use whatever DNA he wished. In making his dinosaurs, Wu had manipulated the DNA as a sculptor might clay or marble. He had created freely. He started the computer search program, knowing it would take two or three minutes to run. He got up and walked around the lab, checking instruments out of long-standing habit. He noted the recorder outside the freezer door, which tracked the freezer temperature. He saw there was a spike in the graph. That was odd, he thought. It meant somebody had been in the freezer. Recently, too—within the last half hour. But who would go in there at night? The computer beeped, signaling that the first of the data searches was complete. Wu went over to see what it had found, and when he saw the screen, he forgot all about the freezer and the graph spike. The result was clear: all breeding dinosaurs incorporated rana, or frog DNA. None of the other animals did. Wu still did not understand why this had caused them to breed. But he could no longer deny that Grant was right. The dinosaurs were breeding. He hurried up to the control room."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c35_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park LEX She was curled up inside a big one-meter drainage pipe that ran under the road. She had her baseball glove in her mouth and she was rocking back and forth, banging her head repeatedly against the back of the pipe. It was dark in there, but he could see her clearly with his goggles. She seemed unhurt, and he felt a great burst of relief. “Lex, it’s me. Tim.” She didn’t answer. She continued to bang her head on the pipe. “Come on out.” She shook her head no. He could see she was badly frightened. “Lex,” he said, “if you come out, I’ll let you wear these night goggles.” She just shook her head. “Look what I have,” he said, holding up his hand. She stared uncomprehendingly. It was probably too dark for her to see. “It’s your ball, Lex. I found your ball.” “So what.” He tried another approach. “It must be uncomfortable in there. Cold, too. Wouldn’t you like to come out?” She resumed banging her head against the pipe. “Why not?” “There’s aminals out there.” That threw him for a moment. She hadn’t said “aminals” for years. “The aminals are gone,” he said. “There’s a big one. A Tyrannosaurus rex.” “He’s gone.” “Where did he go?” “I don’t know, but he’s not around here now,” Tim said, hoping it was true. Lex didn’t move. He heard her banging again. Tim sat down in the grass outside the pipe, where she could see him. The ground was wet where he sat. He hugged his knees and waited. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. “I’m just going to sit here,” he said. “And rest.” “Is Daddy out there?” “No,” he said, feeling strange. “He’s back at home, Lex.” “Is Mommy?” “No, Lex.” “Are there any grown-ups out there?” Lex said. “Not yet. But I’m sure they’ll come soon. They’re probably on their way right now.” Then he heard her moving inside the pipe, and she came out. Shivering with cold, and with dried blood on her forehead, but otherwise all right. She looked around in surprise and said, “Where’s Dr. Grant?” “I don’t know.” “Well, he was here before.” “He was? When?” “Before,” Lex said. “I saw him when I was in the pipe.” “Where’d he go?” “How am I supposed to know?” Lex said, wrinkling her nose. She began to shout: “Hellooo. Hell-oooo! Dr. Grant? Dr. Grant!” Tim was uneasy at the noise she was making—it might bring back the tyrannosaur—but a moment later he heard an answering shout. It was coming from the right, over toward the Land Cruiser that Tim had left a few minutes before. With his goggles, Tim saw with relief that Dr. Grant was walking toward them. He had a big tear in his shirt at the shoulder, but otherwise he looked okay. “Thank God,” he said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c35_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I’ve been looking for you.” Shivering, Ed Regis got to his feet, and wiped the cold mud off his face and hands. He had spent a very bad half hour, wedged among big boulders on the slope of a hill below the road. He knew it wasn’t much of a hiding place, but he was panicked and he wasn’t thinking clearly. He had lain in this muddy cold place and he had tried to get hold of himself, but he kept seeing that dinosaur in his mind. That dinosaur coming toward him. Toward the car. Ed Regis didn’t remember exactly what had happened after that. He remembered that Lex had said something but he hadn’t stopped, he couldn’t stop, he had just kept running and running. Beyond the road he had lost his footing and tumbled down the hill and come to rest by some boulders, and it had seemed to him that he could crawl in among the boulders, and hide, there was enough room, so that was what he had done. Gasping and terrified, thinking of nothing except to get away from the tyrannosaur. And, finally, when he was wedged in there like a rat between the boulders, he had calmed down a little, and he had been overcome with horror and shame because he’d abandoned those kids, he had just run away, he had just saved himself. He knew he should go back up to the road, he should try to rescue them, because he had always imagined himself as brave and cool under pressure, but whenever he tried to get control of himself, to make himself go back up there—somehow he just couldn’t. He started to feel panicky, and he had trouble breathing, and he didn’t move. He told himself it was hopeless, anyway. If the kids were still up there on the road they could never survive, and certainly there was nothing Ed Regis could do for them, and he might as well stay where he was. No one was going to know what had happened except him. And there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could have done. And so Regis had remained among the boulders for half an hour, fighting off panic, carefully not thinking about whether the kids had died, or about what Hammond would have to say when he found out. What finally made him move was the peculiar sensation he noticed in his mouth. The side of his mouth felt funny, kind of numb and tingling, and he wondered if he had hurt it during the fall. Regis touched his face and felt swollen flesh on the side of his mouth. It was funny, but it didn’t hurt at all. Then he realized the swollen flesh was a leech growing fat as it sucked his lips. It was practically in his mouth. Shivering with nausea, Regis pulled the leech away, feeling it tear from the flesh of his lips, feeling the gush of warm blood in his mouth."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c35_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He spat, and flung it with disgust into the forest. He saw another leech on his forearm, and pulled it off, leaving a dark bloody streak behind. Jesus, he was probably covered with them. That fall down the hillside. These jungle hills were full of leeches. So were the dark rocky crevices. What did the workmen say? The leeches crawled up your underwear. They liked dark warm places. They liked to crawl right up your— “Hellooo!” He stopped. It was a voice, carried by the wind. “Hello! Dr. Grant!” Jesus, that was the little girl. Ed Regis listened to the tone of her voice. She didn’t sound frightened, or in pain. She was just calling in her insistent way. And it slowly dawned on him that something else must have happened, that the tyrannosaur must have gone away—or at least hadn’t attacked— and that the other people might still be alive. Grant and Malcolm. Everybody might be alive. And the realization made him pull himself together in an instant, the way you got sober in an instant when the cops pulled you over, and he felt better, because now he knew what he had to do. And as he crawled out from the boulders he was already formulating the next step, already figuring out what he would say, how to handle things from this point. Regis wiped the cold mud off his face and hands, the evidence that he had been hiding. He wasn’t embarrassed that he had been hiding, but now he had to take charge. He scrambled back up toward the road, but when he emerged from the foliage he had a moment of disorientation. He didn’t see the cars at all. He was somehow at the bottom of the hill. The Land Cruisers must be at the top. He started walking up the hill, back toward the Land Cruisers. It was very quiet. His feet splashed in the muddy puddles. He couldn’t hear the little girl any more. Why had she stopped calling? As he walked, he began to think that maybe something had happened to her. In that case, he shouldn’t walk back there. Maybe the tyrannosaur was still hanging around. Here he was, already at the bottom of the hill. That much closer to home. And it was so quiet. Spooky, it was so quiet. Ed Regis turned around, and started walking back toward the camp. Alan Grant ran his hands over her limbs, squeezing the arms and legs briefly. She didn’t seem to have any pain. It was amazing: aside from a cut on her head, she was fine. “I told you I was,” she said. “Well, I had to check.” The boy was not quite so fortunate. Tim’s nose was swollen and painful; Grant suspected it was broken. His right shoulder was badly bruised and swollen. But his legs seemed to be all right. Both kids could walk. That was the important thing."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c35_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Grant himself was all right except for a claw abrasion down his right chest, where the tyrannosaur had kicked him. It burned with every breath, but it didn’t seem to be serious, and it didn’t limit his movement. He wondered if he had been knocked unconscious, because he had only dim recollections of events immediately preceding the moment he had sat up, groaning, in the woods ten yards from the Land Cruiser. At first his chest had been bleeding, so he had stuck leaves on the wound, and after a while it clotted. Then he had started walking around, looking for Malcolm and the kids. Grant couldn’t believe he was still alive, and as scattered images began to come back to him, he tried to make sense of them. The tyrannosaur should have killed them all easily. Why hadn’t it? “I’m hungry,” Lex said. “Me, too,” Grant said. “We’ve got to get ourselves back to civilization. And we’ve got to tell them about the ship.” “We’re the only ones who know?” Tim said. “Yes. We’ve got to get back and tell them.” “Then let’s walk down the road toward the hotel,” Tim said, pointing down the hill. “That way we’ll meet them when they come for us.” Grant considered that. And he kept thinking about one thing: the dark shape that had crossed between the Land Cruisers even before the attack started. What animal had that been? He could think of only one possibility: the little tyrannosaur. “I don’t think so, Tim. The road has high fences on both sides,” Grant said. “If one of the tyrannosaurs is farther down on the road, we’ll be trapped.” “Then should we wait here?” Tim said. “Yes,” Grant said. “Let’s just wait here until someone comes.” “I’m hungry,” Lex said. “I hope it won’t be very long,” Grant said. “I don’t want to stay here,” Lex said. Then, from the bottom of the hill, they heard the sound of a man coughing. “Stay here,” Grant said. He ran forward, to look down the hill. “Stay here,” Tim said, and he ran forward after him. Lex followed her brother. “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me here, you guys—” Grant clapped his hand over her mouth. She struggled to protest. He shook his head, and pointed over the hill, for her to look. At the bottom of the hill, Grant saw Ed Regis, standing rigid, unmoving. The forest around them had become deadly silent. The steady background drone of cicadas and frogs had ceased abruptly. There was only the faint rustle of leaves, and the whine of the wind. Lex started to speak, but Grant pulled her against the trunk of the nearest tree, ducking down among the heavy gnarled roots at the base. Tim came in right after them. Grant put his hands to his lips, signaling them to be quiet, and then he slowly looked around the tree."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c35_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The road below was dark, and as the branches of the big trees moved in the wind, the moonlight filtering through made a dappled, shifting pattern. Ed Regis was gone. It took Grant a moment to locate him. The publicist was pressed up against the trunk of a big tree, hugging it. Regis wasn’t moving at all. The forest remained silent. Lex tugged impatiently at Grant’s shirt; she wanted to know what was happening. Then, from somewhere very near, they heard a soft snorting exhalation, hardly louder than the wind. Lex heard it, too, because she stopped struggling. The sound floated toward them again, soft as a sigh. Grant thought it was almost like the breathing of a horse. Grant looked at Regis, and saw the moving shadows cast by the moonlight on the trunk of the tree. And then Grant realized there was another shadow, superimposed on the others, but not moving: a strong curved neck, and a square head. The exhalation came again. Tim leaned forward cautiously, to look. Lex did, too. They heard a crack as a branch broke, and into the path stepped a tyrannosaur. It was the juvenile: about eight feet tall, and it moved with the clumsy gait of a young animal, almost like a puppy. The juvenile tyrannosaur shuffled down the path, stopping with every step to sniff the air before moving on. It passed the tree where Regis was hiding, and gave no indication that it had seen him. Grant saw Regis’s body relax slightly. Regis turned his head, trying to watch the tyrannosaur on the far side of the tree. The tyrannosaur was now out of view down the road. Regis started to relax, releasing his grip on the tree. But the jungle remained silent. Regis remained close to the tree trunk for another half a minute. Then the sounds of the forest returned: the first tentative croak of a tree frog, the buzz of one cicada, and then the full chorus. Regis stepped away from the tree, shaking his shoulders, releasing the tension. He walked into the middle of the road, looking in the direction of the departed tyrannosaur. The attack came from the left. The juvenile roared as it swung its head forward, knocking Regis flat to the ground. He yelled and scrambled to his feet, but the tyrannosaur pounced, and it must have pinned him with its hind leg, because suddenly Regis wasn’t moving, he was sitting up in the path shouting at the dinosaur and waving his hands at it, as if he could scare it off. The young dinosaur seemed perplexed by the sounds and movement coming from its tiny prey. The juvenile bent its head over, sniffing curiously, and Regis pounded on the snout with his fists. “Get away! Back off! Go on, back off!” Regis was shouting at the top of his lungs, and the dinosaur backed away, allowing Regis to get to his feet. Regis was shouting “Yeah! You heard me! Back off!"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c35_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Get away!” as he moved away from the dinosaur. The juvenile continued to stare curiously at the odd, noisy little animal before it, but when Regis had gone a few paces, it lunged and knocked him down again. It’s playing with him, Grant thought. “Hey!” Regis shouted as he fell, but the juvenile did not pursue him, allowing him to get to his feet. He jumped to his feet, and continued backing away. “You stupid—back! Back! You heard me—back!” he shouted like a lion tamer. The juvenile roared, but it did not attack, and Regis now edged toward the trees and high foliage to the right. In another few steps he would be in hiding. “Back! You! Back!” Regis shouted, and then, at the last moment, the juvenile pounced, and knocked Regis flat on his back. “Cut that out!” Regis yelled, and the juvenile ducked his head, and Regis began to scream. No words, just a high-pitched scream. The scream cut off abruptly, and when the juvenile lifted his head, Grant saw ragged flesh in his jaws. “Oh no,” Lex said, softly. Beside her, Tim had turned away, suddenly nauseated. His night-vision goggles slipped from his forehead and landed on the ground with a metallic clink. The juvenile’s head snapped up, and it looked toward the top of the hill. Tim picked up his goggles as Grant grabbed both the children’s hands and began to run."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c36_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park CONTROL In the night, the compys scurried along the side of the road. Harding’s Jeep followed a short distance behind. Ellie pointed farther up the road. “Is that a light?” “Could be,” Harding said. “Looks almost like headlights.” The radio suddenly hummed and crackled. They heard John Arnold say, “—you there?” “Ah, there he is,” Harding said. “Finally.” He pressed the button. “Yes, John, we’re here. We’re near the river, following the compys. It’s quite interesting.” More crackling. Then: “—eed your car—” “What’d he say?” Gennaro said. “Something about a car,” Ellie said. At Grant’s dig in Montana, Ellie was the one who operated the radiophone. After years of experience, she had become skilled at picking up garbled transmissions. “I think he said he needs your car.” Harding pressed the button. “John? Are you there? We can’t read you very well. John?” There was a flash of lightning, followed by a long sizzle of radio static, then Arnold’s tense voice. “—where are—ou—” “We’re one mile north of the hypsy paddock. Near the river, following some compys.” “No—damn well—get back here—ow!” “Sounds like he’s got a problem,” Ellie said, frowning. There was no mistaking the tension in the voice. “Maybe we should go back.” Harding shrugged. “John’s frequently got a problem. You know how engineers are. They want everything to go by the book.” He pressed the button on the radio. “John? Say again, please.…” More crackling. More static. The loud crash of lightning. Then: “—Muldoo—need your car—ow—” Gennaro frowned. “Is he saying Muldoon needs our car?” “That’s what it sounded like,” Ellie said. “Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” Harding said. “—other—stuck—Muldoon wants—car—” “I get it,” Ellie said. “The other cars are stuck on the road in the storm, and Muldoon wants to go get them.” Harding shrugged. “Why doesn’t Muldoon take the other car?” He pushed the radio button. “John? Tell Muldoon to take the other car. It’s in the garage.” The radio crackled. “—not—listen—crazy bastards—car—” Harding pressed the radio button. “I said, it’s in the garage, John. The car is in the garage.” More static. “—edry has—ssing—one—” “I’m afraid this isn’t getting us anywhere,” Harding said. “All right, John. We’re coming in now.” He turned the radio off, and turned the car around. “I just wish I understood what the urgency is.” Harding put the Jeep in gear, and they rumbled down the road in the darkness. It was another ten minutes before they saw the welcoming lights of the Safari Lodge. And as Harding pulled to a stop in front of the visitor center, they saw Muldoon coming toward them. He was shouting, and waving his arms. “God damn it, Arnold, you son of a bitch! God damn it, get this park back on track! Now! Get my grandkids back here! Now!” John Hammond stood in the control room, screaming and stamping his little feet."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c36_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He had been carrying on this way for the last two minutes, while Henry Wu stood in the corner, looking stunned. “Well, Mr. Hammond,” Arnold said, “Muldoon’s on his way out right now, to do exactly that.” Arnold turned away, and lit another cigarette. Hammond was like every other management guy Arnold had ever seen. Whether it was Disney or the Navy, management guys always behaved the same. They never understood the technical issues; and they thought that screaming was the way to make things happen. And maybe it was, if you were shouting at your secretaries to get you a limousine. But screaming didn’t make any difference at all to the problems that Arnold now faced. The computer didn’t care if it was screamed at. The power network didn’t care if it was screamed at. Technical systems were completely indifferent to all this explosive human emotion. If anything, screaming was counterproductive, because Arnold now faced the virtual certainty that Nedry wasn’t coming back, which meant that Arnold himself had to go into the computer code and try and figure out what had gone wrong. It was going to be a painstaking job; he’d need to be calm and careful. “Why don’t you go downstairs to the cafeteria,” Arnold said, “and get a cup of coffee? We’ll call you when we have more news.” “I don’t want a Malcolm Effect here,” Hammond said. “Don’t worry about a Malcolm Effect,” Arnold said. “Will you let me go to work?” “God damn you,” Hammond said. “I’ll call you, sir, when I have news from Muldoon,” Arnold said. He pushed buttons on his console, and saw the familiar control screens change. */Jurassic Park Main Modules/ */ */ Call Libs Include: biostat.sys Include: sysrom.vst Include: net.sys Include: pwr.mdl */ */Initialize SetMain [42]2002/9A{total CoreSysop %4 [vig. 7*tty]} if ValidMeter(mH) (**mH). MeterVis return Term Call 909 c.lev {void MeterVis $303} Random(3#*MaxFid) on SetSystem(!Dn) set shp_val.obj to lim(Val{d}SumVal if SetMeter(mH) (**mH). ValdidMeter(Vdd) return on SetSystem(!Telcom) set mxcpl.obj to lim(Val{pd})NextVal Arnold was no longer operating the computer. He had now gone behind the scenes to look at the code—the line-by-line instructions that told the computer how to behave. Arnold was unhappily aware that the complete Jurassic Park program contained more than half a million lines of code, most of it undocumented, without explanation. Wu came forward. “What are you doing, John?” “Checking the code.” “By inspection? That’ll take forever.” “Tell me,” Arnold said. “Tell me.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c37_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park THE ROAD Muldoon took the curve very fast, the Jeep sliding on the mud. Sitting beside him, Gennaro clenched his fists. They were racing along the cliff road, high above the river, now hidden below them in darkness. Muldoon accelerated forward. His face was tense. “How much farther?” Gennaro said. “Two, maybe three miles.” Ellie and Harding were back at the visitor center. Gennaro had offered to accompany Muldoon. The car swerved. “It’s been an hour,” Muldoon said. “An hour, with no word from the other cars.” “But they have radios,” Gennaro said. “We haven’t been able to raise them,” Muldoon said. Gennaro frowned. “If I was sitting in a car for an hour in the rain, I’d sure try to use the radio to call for somebody.” “So would I,” Muldoon said. Gennaro shook his head. “You really think something could have happened to them?” “Chances are,” Muldoon said, “that they’re perfectly fine, but I’ll be happier when I finally see them. Should be any minute now.” The road curved, and then ran up a hill. At the base of the hill Gennaro saw something white, lying among the ferns by the side of the road. “Hold it,” Gennaro said, and Muldoon braked. Gennaro jumped out and ran forward in the headlights of the Jeep to see what it was. It looked like a piece of clothing, but there was— Gennaro stopped. Even from six feet away, he could see clearly what it was. He walked forward more slowly. Muldoon leaned out of the car and said, “What is it?” “It’s a leg,” Gennaro said. The flesh of the leg was pale blue-white, terminating in a ragged bloody stump where the knee had been. Below the calf he saw a white sock, and a brown slip-on shoe. It was the kind of shoe Ed Regis had been wearing. By then Muldoon was out of the car, running past him to crouch over the leg. “Jesus.” He lifted the leg out of the foliage, raising it into the light of the headlamps, and blood from the stump gushed down over his hand. Gennaro was still three feet away. He quickly bent over, put his hands on his knees, squeezed his eyes shut, and breathed deeply, trying not to be sick. “Gennaro.” Muldoon’s voice was sharp. “What?” “Move. You’re blocking the light.” Gennaro took a breath, and moved. When he opened his eyes he saw Muldoon peering critically at the stump. “Torn at the joint line,” Muldoon said. “Didn’t bite it—twisted and ripped it. Just ripped his leg off.” Muldoon stood up, holding the severed leg upside down so the remaining blood dripped onto the ferns. His bloody hand smudged the white sock as he gripped the ankle. Gennaro felt sick again. “No question what happened,” Muldoon was saying. “The T-rex got him.” Muldoon looked up the hill, then back to Gennaro. “You all right? Can you go on?” “Yes,” Gennaro said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c37_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I can go on.” Muldoon was walking back toward the Jeep, carrying the leg. “I guess we better bring this along,” he said. “Doesn’t seem right to leave it here. Christ, it’s going to make a mess of the car. See if there’s anything in the back, will you? A tarp or newspaper …” Gennaro opened the back door and rummaged around in the space behind the rear seat. He felt grateful to think about something else for a moment. The problem of how to wrap the severed leg expanded to fill his mind, crowding out all other thoughts. He found a canvas bag with a tool kit, a wheel rim, a cardboard box, and— “Two tarps,” he said. They were neatly folded plastic. “Give me one,” Muldoon said, still standing outside the car. Muldoon wrapped the leg and passed the now shapeless bundle to Gennaro. Holding it in his hand, Gennaro was surprised at how heavy it felt. “Just put it in the back,” Muldoon said. “If there’s a way to wedge it, you know, so it doesn’t roll around …” “Okay.” Gennaro put the bundle in the back, and Muldoon got behind the wheel. He accelerated, the wheels spinning in the mud, then digging in. The Jeep rushed up the hill, and for a moment at the top the headlights still pointed upward into the foliage, and then they swung down, and Gennaro could see the road before them. “Jesus,” Muldoon said. Gennaro saw a single Land Cruiser, lying on its side in the center of the road. He couldn’t see the second Land Cruiser at all. “Where’s the other car?” Muldoon looked around briefly, pointed to the left. “There.” The second Land Cruiser was twenty feet away, crumpled at the foot of a tree. “What’s it doing there?” “The T-rex threw it.” “Threw it?” Gennaro said. Muldoon’s face was grim. “Let’s get this over with,” he said, climbing out of the Jeep. They hurried forward to the second Land Cruiser. Their flashlights swung back and forth in the night. As they came closer, Gennaro saw how battered the car was. He was careful to let Muldoon look inside first. “I wouldn’t worry,” Muldoon said. “It’s very unlikely we’ll find anyone.” “No?” “No,” he said. He explained that, during his years in Africa, he had visited the scenes of a half-dozen animal attacks on humans in the bush. One leopard attack: the leopard had torn open a tent in the night and taken a three-year-old child. Then one buffalo attack in Amboseli; two lion attacks; one croc attack in the north, near Meru. In every case, there was surprisingly little evidence left behind. Inexperienced people imagined horrific proofs of an animal attack—torn limbs left behind in the tent, trails of dripping blood leading away into the bush, bloodstained clothing not far from the campsite. But the truth was, there was usually nothing at all, particularly if the victim was small, an infant or a young child."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c37_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The person just seemed to disappear, as if he had walked out into the bush and never come back. A predator could kill a child just by shaking it, snapping the neck. Usually there wasn’t any blood. And most of the time you never found any other remains of the victims. Sometimes a button from a shirt, or a sliver of rubber from a shoe. But most of the time, nothing. Predators took children—they preferred children—and they left nothing behind. So Muldoon thought it highly unlikely that they would ever find any remains of the children. But as he looked in now, he had a surprise. “I’ll be damned,” he said. Muldoon tried to put the scene together. The front windshield of the Land Cruiser was shattered, but there wasn’t much glass nearby. He had noticed shards of glass back on the road. So the windshield must have broken back there, before the tyrannosaur picked the car up and threw it here. But the car had taken a tremendous beating. Muldoon shone his light inside. “Empty?” Gennaro said, tensely. “Not quite,” Muldoon said. His flashlight glinted off a crushed radio handset, and on the floor of the car he saw something else, something curved and black. The front doors were dented and jammed shut, but he climbed in through the back door and crawled over the seat to pick up the black object. “It’s a watch,” he said, peering at it in the beam of his flashlight. A cheap digital watch with a molded black rubber strap. The LCD face was shattered. He thought the boy might have been wearing it, though he wasn’t sure. But it was the kind of watch a kid would have. “What is it, a watch?” Gennaro said. “Yes. And there’s a radio, but it’s broken.” “Is that significant?” “Yes. And there’s something else.…” Muldoon sniffed. There was a sour odor inside the car. He shone the light around until he saw the vomit dripping off the side door panel. He touched it: still fresh. “One of the kids may still be alive,” Muldoon said. Gennaro squinted at him. “What makes you think so?” “The watch,” Muldoon said. “The watch proves it.” He handed the watch to Gennaro, who held it in the glow of the flashlight, and turned it over in his hands. “Crystal is cracked,” Gennaro said. “That’s right,” Muldoon said. “And the band is uninjured.” “Which means?” “The kid took it off.” “That could have happened anytime,” Gennaro said. “Anytime before the attack.” “No,” Muldoon said. “Those LCD crystals are tough. It takes a powerful blow to break them. The watch face was shattered during the attack.” “So the kid took his watch off.” “Think about it,” Muldoon said. “If you were being attacked by a tyrannosaur, would you stop to take your watch off?” “Maybe it was torn off.” “It’s almost impossible to tear a watch off somebody’s wrist, without tearing the hand off, too. Anyway, the band is intact."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c37_r1.htm.txt", "text": "No,” Muldoon said. “The kid took it off himself. He looked at his watch, saw it was broken, and took it off. He had the time to do that.” “When?” “It could only have been after the attack,” Muldoon said. “The kid must have been in this car, after the attack. And the radio was broken, so he left it behind, too. He’s a bright kid, and he knew they weren’t useful.” “If he’s so bright,” Gennaro said, “where’d he go? Because I’d stay right here and wait to be picked up.” “Yes,” Muldoon said. “But perhaps he couldn’t stay here. Maybe the tyrannosaur came back. Or some other animal. Anyway, something made him leave.” “Then where’d he go?” Gennaro said. “Let’s see if we can determine that,” Muldoon said, and he strode off toward the main road. Gennaro watched Muldoon peering at the ground with his flashlight. His face was just inches from the mud, intent on his search. Muldoon really believed he was on to something, that at least one of the kids was still alive. Gennaro remained unimpressed. The shock of finding the severed leg had left him with a grim determination to close the park, and destroy it. No matter what Muldoon said, Gennaro suspected him of unwarranted enthusiasm, and hopefulness, and— “You notice these prints?” Muldoon asked, still looking at the ground. “What prints?” Gennaro said. “These footprints—see them, coming toward us from up the road?—and they’re adult-size prints. Some kind of rubber-sole shoe. Notice the distinctive tread pattern.…” Gennaro saw only mud. Puddles catching the light from the flashlights. “You can see,” Muldoon continued, “the adult prints come to here, where they’re joined by other prints. Small, and medium-size … moving around in circles, overlapping … almost as if they’re standing together, talking.… But now here they are, they seem to be running.…” He pointed off. “There. Into the park.” Gennaro shook his head. “You can see whatever you want in this mud.” Muldoon got to his feet and stepped back. He looked down at the ground and sighed. “Say what you like, I’ll wager one of the kids survived. And maybe both. Perhaps even an adult as well, if these big prints belong to someone other than Regis. We’ve got to search the park.” “Tonight?” Gennaro said. But Muldoon wasn’t listening. He had walked away, toward an embankment of soft earth, near a drainpipe for rain. He crouched again. “What was that little girl wearing?” “Christ,” Gennaro said. “I don’t know.” Proceeding slowly, Muldoon moved farther toward the side of the road. And then they heard a wheezing sound. It was definitely an animal sound. “Listen,” Gennaro said, feeling panic, “I think we better—” “Shhh,” Muldoon said. He paused, listening. “It’s just the wind,” Gennaro said. They heard the wheezing again, distinctly this time. It wasn’t the wind. It was coming from the foliage directly ahead of him, by the side of the road."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c37_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It didn’t sound like an animal, but Muldoon moved forward cautiously. He waggled his light and shouted, but the wheezing did not change character. Muldoon pushed aside the fronds of a palm. “What is it?” Gennaro said. “It’s Malcolm,” Muldoon said. Ian Malcolm lay on his back, his skin gray-white, mouth slackly open. His breath came in wheezing gasps. Muldoon handed the flashlight to Gennaro, and then bent to examine the body. “I can’t find the injury,” he said. “Head okay, chest, arms …” Then Gennaro shone the light on the legs. “He put a tourniquet on.” Malcolm’s belt was twisted tight over the right thigh. Gennaro moved the light down the leg. The right ankle was bent outward at an awkward angle from the leg, the trousers flattened, soaked in blood. Muldoon touched the ankle gently, and Malcolm groaned. Muldoon stepped back and tried to decide what to do next. Malcolm might have other injuries. His back might be broken. It might kill him to move him. But if they left him here, he would die of shock. It was only because he had had the presence of mind to put a tourniquet on that he hadn’t already bled to death. And probably he was doomed. They might as well move him. Gennaro helped Muldoon pick the man up, hoisting him awkwardly over their shoulders. Malcolm moaned, and breathed in ragged gasps. “Lex,” he said. “Lex … went … Lex …” “Who’s Lex?” Muldoon said. “The little girl,” Gennaro said. They carried Malcolm back to the Jeep, and wrested him into the backseat. Gennaro tightened the tourniquet around his leg. Malcolm groaned again. Muldoon slid the trouser cuff up and saw the pulpy flesh beneath, the dull white splinters of protruding bone. “We’ve got to get him back,” Muldoon said. “You going to leave here without the kids?” Gennaro said. “If they went into the park, it’s twenty square miles,” Muldoon said, shaking his head. “The only way we can find anything out there is with the motion sensors. If the kids are alive and moving around, the motion sensors will pick them up, and we can go right to them and bring them back. But if we don’t take Dr. Malcolm back right now, he’ll die.” “Then we have to go back,” Gennaro said. “Yes, I think so.” They climbed into the car. Gennaro said, “Are you going to tell Hammond the kids are missing?” “No,” Muldoon said. “You are.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c38_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park CONTROL Donald Gennaro stared at Hammond, sitting in the deserted cafeteria. The man was spooning ice cream, calmly eating it. “So Muldoon believes the children are somewhere in the park?” “He thinks so, yes.” “Then I’m sure we’ll find them.” “I hope so,” Gennaro said. He watched the old man deliberately eating, and he felt a chill. “Oh, I am sure we’ll find them. After all, I keep telling everyone, this park is made for kids.” Gennaro said, “Just so you understand that they’re missing, sir.” “Missing?” he snapped. “Of course I know they’re missing. I’m not senile.” He sighed, and changed tone again. “Look, Donald,” Hammond said. “Let’s not get carried away. We’ve had a little breakdown from the storm or whatever, and as a result we’ve suffered a regrettable, unfortunate accident. And that’s all that’s happened. We’re dealing with it. Arnold will get the computers cleaned up. Muldoon will pick up the kids, and I have no doubt he’ll be back with them by the time we finish this ice cream. So let’s just wait and see what develops, shall we?” “Whatever you say, sir,” Gennaro said. “Why?” Henry Wu said, looking at the console screen. “Because I think Nedry did something to the code,” Arnold said. “That’s why I’m checking it.” “All right,” Wu said. “But have you tried your options?” “Like what?” Arnold said. “I don’t know. Aren’t the safety systems still running?” Wu said. “Keychecks? All that?” “Jesus,” Arnold said, snapping his fingers. “They must be. Safety systems can’t be turned off except at the main panel.” “Well,” Wu said, “if Keychecks is active, you can trace what he did.” “I sure as hell can,” Arnold said. He started to press buttons. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? It was so obvious. The computer system at Jurassic Park had several tiers of safety systems built into it. One of them was a keycheck program, which monitored all the keystrokes entered by operators with access to the system. It was originally installed as a debugging device, but it was retained for its security value. In a moment, all the keystrokes that Nedry had entered into the computer earlier in the day were listed in a window on the screen: 13,​42,​121,​32,​88,​77,​19,​13,​122,​13,​44,​52,​77,​90,​13,​99,​13,​100,​13,​109,​55,​103 144,​13,​99,​87,​60,​13,​44,​12,​09,​13,​43,​63,​13,​46,​57,​89,​103,​122,​13,​44,​52,​88,​9 31,​13,​21,​13,​57,​98,​100,​102,​103,​13,​112,​13,​146,​13,​13,​13,​77,​67,​88,​23,​13,​13 system nedry goto command level nedry 040/#xy/67& mr goodbytes security keycheck off safety off sl off security whte_rbt.obj “That’s it?” Arnold said. “He was screwing around here for hours, it seemed like.” “Probably just killing time,” Wu said. “Until he finally decided to get down to it.” The initial list of numbers represented the ASCII keyboard codes for the keys Nedry had pushed at his console. Those numbers meant he was still within the standard user interface, like any ordinary user of the computer. So initially Nedry was just looking around, which you wouldn’t have expected of the programmer who had designed the system. “Maybe he was trying to see if there were changes, before he went in,” Wu said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c38_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Maybe,” Arnold said. Arnold was now looking at the list of commands, which allowed him to follow Nedry’s progression through the system, line by line. “At least we can see what he did.” system was Nedry’s request to leave the ordinary user interface and access the code itself. The computer asked for his name, and he replied: nedry. That name was authorized to access the code, so the computer allowed him into the system. Nedry asked to goto command level, the computer’s highest level of control. The command level required extra security, and asked Nedry for his name, access number, and password. nedry 040/#xy/67& mr goodbytes Those entries got Nedry into the command level. From there he wanted security. And since he was authorized, the computer allowed him to go there. Once at the security level, Nedry tried three variations: keycheck off safety off sl off “He’s trying to turn off the safety systems,” Wu said. “He doesn’t want anybody to see what he’s about to do.” “Exactly,” Arnold said. “And apparently he doesn’t know it’s no longer possible to turn the systems off except by manually flipping switches on the main board.” After three failed commands, the computer automatically began to worry about Nedry. But since he had gotten in with proper authorization, the computer would assume that Nedry was lost, trying to do something he couldn’t accomplish from where he was. So the computer asked him again where he wanted to be, and Nedry said: security. And he was allowed to remain there. “Finally,” Wu said, “here’s the kicker.” He pointed to the last of the commands Nedry had entered. whte_rbt.obj “What the hell is that?” Arnold said. “White rabbit? Is that supposed to be his private joke?” “It’s marked as an object,” Wu said. In computer terminology, an “object” was a block of code that could be moved around and used, the way you might move a chair in a room. An object might be a set of commands to draw a picture, or to refresh the screen, or to perform a certain calculation. “Let’s see where it is in the code,” Arnold said. “Maybe we can figure out what it does.” He went to the program utilities and typed: FIND WHTE_RBT.OBJ The computer flashed back: OBJECT NOT FOUND IN LIBRARIES “It doesn’t exist,” Arnold said. “Then search the code listing,” Wu said. Arnold typed: FIND/LISTINGS: WHTE_RBT.OBJ The screen scrolled rapidly, the lines of code blurring as they swept past. It continued this way for almost a minute, and then abruptly stopped. “There it is,” Wu said. “It’s not an object, it’s a command.” The screen showed an arrow pointing to a single line of code: curV = GetHandl {ssm.dt} tempRgn {itm.dd2}. curH = GetHandl {ssd.itl} tempRgn2 {itm.dd4}. on DrawMeter(!gN) set shp_val.obj to lim(Val{d})-Xval. if ValidMeter(mH) (**mH). MeterVis return. if Meterhandl(vGT) ((DrawBack(tY)) return. limitDat.4 = maxBits (%33) to {limit .04} set on. limitDat.5 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(szh)}."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c38_r1.htm.txt", "text": "→ on whte_rbt.obj call link.sst {security, perimeter} set to off. vertRange = {maxRange+setlim} tempVgn(fdn-&bb+$404). horRange = {maxRange-setlim/2} tempHgn(fdn-&dd+$105). void DrawMeter send_screen.obj print. “Son of a bitch,” Arnold said. Wu shook his head. “It isn’t a bug in the code at all.” “No,” Arnold said. “It’s a trap door. The fat bastard put in what looked like an object call, but it’s actually a command that links the security and perimeter systems and then turns them off. Gives him complete access to every place in the park.” “Then we must be able to turn them back on,” Wu said. “Yeah, we must.” Arnold frowned at the screen. “All we have to do is figure out the command. I’ll run an execution trace on the link,” he said. “We’ll see where that gets us.” Wu got up from his chair. “Meanwhile,” he said, “meanwhile, that somebody went into the freezer about an hour ago. I think I better go count my embryos.” Ellie was in her room, about to change out of her wet clothes, when there was a knock on the door. “Alan?” she said, but when she opened the door she saw Muldoon standing there, with a plastic-wrapped package under his arm. Muldoon was also soaking wet, and there were streaks of dirt on his clothes. “I’m sorry, but we need your help,” Muldoon said briskly. “The Land Cruisers were attacked an hour ago. We brought Malcolm back, but he’s in shock. He’s got a very bad injury to his leg. He’s still unconscious, but I put him in the bed in his room. Harding is on his way over.” “Harding?” she said. “What about the others?” “We haven’t found the others yet, Dr. Sattler,” Muldoon said. He was speaking slowly now. “Oh, my God.” “But we think that Dr. Grant and the children are still alive. We think they went into the park, Dr. Sattler.” “Went into the park?” “We think so. Meanwhile, Malcolm needs help. I’ve called Harding.” “Shouldn’t you call the doctor?” “There’s no doctor on the island. Harding’s the best we have.” “But surely you can call for a doctor—” she said. “No.” Muldoon shook his head. “Phone lines are down. We can’t call out.” He shifted the package in his arm. “What’s that?” she said. “Nothing. Just go to Malcolm’s room, and help Harding, if you will.” And Muldoon was gone. She sat on her bed, shocked. Ellie Sattler was not a woman disposed to unnecessary panic, and she had known Grant to get out of dangerous situations before. Once he’d been lost in the badlands for four days when a cliff gave way beneath him and his truck fell a hundred feet into a ravine. Grant’s right leg was broken. He had no water. But he walked back on a broken leg. On the other hand, the kids … She shook her head, pushing the thought away. The kids were probably with Grant."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c38_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And if Grant was out in the park, well … what better person to get them safely through Jurassic Park than a dinosaur expert?"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c39_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park IN THE PARK “I’m tired,” Lex said. “Carry me, Dr. Grant.” “You’re too big to carry,” Tim said. “But I’m tired,” she said. “Okay, Lex,” Grant said, picking her up. “Oof, you’re heavy.” It was almost 9:00 p.m. The full moon was blurred by drifting mist, and their blunted shadows led them across an open field, toward dark woods beyond. Grant was lost in thought, trying to decide where he was. Since they had originally crossed over the fence that the tyrannosaur had battered down, Grant was reasonably sure they were now somewhere in the tyrannosaur paddock. Which was a place he did not want to be. In his mind, he kept seeing the computer tracing of the tyrannosaur’s home range, the tight squiggle of lines that traced his movements within a small area. He and the kids were in that area now. But Grant also remembered that the tyrannosaurs were isolated from all the other animals, which meant they would know they had left the paddock when they crossed a barrier—a fence, or a moat, or both. He had seen no barriers, so far. The girl put her head on his shoulder, and twirled her hair in her fingers. Soon she was snoring. Tim trudged alongside Grant. “How you holding up, Tim?” “Okay,” he said. “But I think we might be in the tyrannosaur area.” “I’m pretty sure we are. I hope we get out soon.” “You going to go into the woods?” Tim said. As they came closer, the woods seemed dark and forbidding. “Yes,” Grant said. “I think we can navigate by the numbers on the motion sensors.” The motion sensors were green boxes set about four feet off the ground. Some were freestanding; most were attached to trees. None of them were working, because apparently the power was still off. Each sensor box had a glass lens mounted in the center, and a painted code number beneath that. Up ahead, in the mist-streaked moonlight, Grant could see a box marked T/S/04. They entered the forest. Huge trees loomed on all sides. In the moonlight, a low mist clung to the ground, curling around the roots of the trees. It was beautiful, but it made walking treacherous. And Grant was watching the sensors. They seemed to be numbered in descending order. He passed T/S/03, and T/S/02. Eventually they reached T/S/01. He was tired from carrying the girl, and he had hoped this would coincide with a boundary for the tyrannosaur paddock, but it was just another box in the middle of the woods. The next box after that was marked T/N/01, followed by T/N/02. Grant realized the numbers must be arranged geographically around a central point, like a compass. They were going from south to north, so the numbers got smaller as they approached the center, then got larger again. “At least we’re going the right way,” Tim said. “Good for you,” Grant said. Tim smiled, and stumbled over vines in the mist."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c39_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He got quickly to his feet. They walked on for a while. “My parents are getting a divorce,” he said. “Uh-huh,” Grant said. “My dad moved out last month. He has his own place in Mill Valley now.” “Uh-huh.” “He never carries my sister any more. He never even picks her up.” “And he says you have dinosaurs on the brain,” Grant said. Tim sighed. “Yeah.” “You miss him?” Grant said. “Not really,” Tim said. “Sometimes. She misses him more.” “Who, your mother?” “No, Lex. My mom has a boyfriend. She knows him from work.” They walked in silence for a while, passing T/N/03 and T/N/04. “Have you met him?” Grant said. “Yeah.” “How is he?” “He’s okay,” Tim said. “He’s younger than my dad, but he’s bald.” “How does he treat you?” “I don’t know. Okay. I think he just tries to get on my good side. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Sometimes my mom says we’ll have to sell the house and move. Sometimes he and my mom fight, late at night. I sit in my room and play with my computer, but I can still hear it.” “Uh-huh,” Grant said. “Are you divorced?” “No,” Grant said. “My wife died a long time ago.” “And now you’re with Dr. Sattler?” Grant smiled in the darkness. “No. She’s my student.” “You mean she’s still in school?” “Graduate school, yes.” Grant paused long enough to shift Lex to his other shoulder, and then they continued on, past T/N/05 and T/N/06. There was the rumble of thunder in the distance. The storm had moved to the south. There was very little sound in the forest except for the drone of cicadas and the soft croaking of tree frogs. “You have children?” Tim asked. “No,” Grant said. “Are you going to marry Dr. Sattler?” “No, she’s marrying a nice doctor in Chicago sometime next year.” “Oh,” Tim said. He seemed surprised to hear it. They walked along for a while. “Then who are you going to marry?” “I don’t think I’m going to marry anybody,” Grant said. “Me neither,” Tim said. They walked for a while. Tim said, “Are we going to walk all night?” “I don’t think I can,” Grant said. “We’ll have to stop, at least for a few hours.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re okay. We’ve got almost fifteen hours before we have to be back. Before the ship reaches the mainland.” “Where are we going to stop?” Tim asked, immediately. Grant was wondering the same thing. His first thought was that they might climb a tree, and sleep up there. But they would have to climb very high to get safely away from the animals, and Lex might fall out while she was asleep. And tree branches were hard; they wouldn’t get any rest. At least, he wouldn’t. They needed someplace really safe. He thought back to the plans he had seen on the jet coming down."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c39_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He remembered that there were outlying buildings for each of the different divisions. Grant didn’t know what they were like, because plans for the individual buildings weren’t included. And he couldn’t remember exactly where they were, but he remembered they were scattered all around the park. There might be buildings somewhere nearby. But that was a different requirement from simply crossing a barrier and getting out of the tyrannosaur paddock. Finding a building meant a search strategy of some kind. And the best strategies were— “Tim, can you hold your sister for me? I’m going to climb a tree and have a look around.” High in the branches, he had a good view of the forest, the tops of the trees extending away to his left and right. They were surprisingly near the edge of the forest—directly ahead the trees ended before a clearing, with an electrified fence and a pale concrete moat. Beyond that, a large open field in what he assumed was the sauropod paddock. In the distance, more trees, and misty moonlight sparkling on the ocean. Somewhere he heard the bellowing of a dinosaur, but it was far away. He put on Tim’s night-vision goggles and looked again. He followed the gray curve of the moat, and then saw what he was looking for: the dark strip of a service road, leading to the flat rectangle of a roof. The roof was barely above ground level, but it was there. And it wasn’t far. Maybe a quarter of a mile or so from the tree. When he came back down, Lex was sniffling. “What’s the matter?” “I heard an aminal.” “It won’t bother us. Are you awake now? Come on.” He led her to the fence. It was twelve feet high, with a spiral of barbed wire at the top. It seemed to stretch far above them in the moonlight. The moat was immediately on the other side. Lex looked up at the fence doubtfully. “Can you climb it?” Grant asked her. She handed him her glove, and her baseball. “Sure. Easy.” She started to climb. “But I bet Timmy can’t.” Tim spun in fury: “You shut up.” “Timmy’s afraid of heights.” “I am not.” She climbed higher. “Are so.” “Am not.” “Then come and get me.” Grant turned to Tim, pale in the darkness. The boy wasn’t moving. “You okay with the fence, Tim?” “Sure.” “Want some help?” “Timmy’s a fraidy-cat,” Lex called. “What a stupid jerk,” Tim said, and he started to climb. “It’s freezing,” Lex said. They were standing waist-deep in smelly water at the bottom of a deep concrete moat. They had climbed the fence without incident, except that Tim had torn his shirt on the coils of barbed wire at the top. Then they had all slid down into the moat, and now Grant was looking for a way out. “At least I got Timmy over the fence for you,” Lex said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c39_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“He really is scared most times.” “Thanks for your help,” Tim said sarcastically. In the moonlight, he could see floating lumps on the surface. He moved along the moat, looking at the concrete wall on the far side. The concrete was smooth; they couldn’t possibly climb it. “Eww,” Lex said, pointing to the water. “It won’t hurt you, Lex.” Grant finally found a place where the concrete had cracked and a vine grew down toward the water. He tugged on the vine, and it held his weight. “Let’s go, kids.” They started to climb the vine, back to the field above. It took only a few minutes to cross the field to the embankment leading to the below-grade service road, and the maintenance building off to the right. They passed two motion sensors, and Grant noticed with some uneasiness that the sensors were still not working, nor were the lights. More than two hours had passed since the power first went out, and it was not yet restored. Somewhere in the distance, they heard the tyrannosaur roar. “Is he around here?” Lex said. “No,” Grant said. “We’re in another section of park from him.” They slid down a grassy embankment and moved toward the concrete building. In the darkness it was forbidding, bunker-like. “What is this place?” Lex said. “It’s safe,” Grant said, hoping that was true. The entrance gate was large enough to drive a truck through. It was fitted with heavy bars. Inside, they could see, the building was an open shed, with piles of grass and bales of hay stacked among equipment. The gate was locked with a heavy padlock. As Grant was examining it, Lex slipped sideways between the bars. “Come on, you guys.” Tim followed her. “I think you can do it, Dr. Grant.” He was right; it was a tight squeeze, but Grant was able to ease his body between the bars and get into the shed. As soon as he was inside, a wave of exhaustion struck him. “I wonder if there’s anything to eat,” Lex said. “Just hay.” Grant broke open a bale, and spread it around on the concrete. The hay in the center was warm. They lay down, feeling the warmth. Lex curled up beside him, and closed her eyes. Tim put his arm around her. He heard the sauropods trumpeting softly in the distance. Neither child spoke. They were almost immediately snoring. Grant raised his arm to look at his watch, but it was too dark to see. He felt the warmth of the children against his own body. Grant closed his eyes, and slept."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c40_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park CONTROL Muldoon and Gennaro came into the control room just as Arnold clapped his hands and said, “Got you, you little son of a bitch.” “What is it?” Gennaro said. Arnold pointed to the screen: Vg1 = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp} Vg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp} if Link(Vgl, Vg2) set Lim(Vg1, Vg2) return if Link(Vg2,Vgl) set Lim(Vg2,Vg1) return → on whte_rbt.obj link set security (Vg1), perimeter (Vg2) limitDat.1 = maxBits (%22) to {limit.04} set on limitDat.2 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(dzh)} → on fini.obj call link.sst {security, perimeter} set to on → on fini.obj set link.sst {security, perimeter} restore → on fini.obj delete line rf whte_rbt.obj, fini.obj Vg1 = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp} Vg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp} limitDat.4 = maxBits (%33) to {limit .04} set on limitDat.5 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(szh)} “That’s it,” Arnold said, pleased. “That’s what?” Gennaro asked, staring at the screen. “I finally found the command to restore the original code. The command called ‘fini.obj’ resets the linked parameters, namely the fence and the power.” “Good,” Muldoon said. “But it does something else,” Arnold said. “It then erases the code lines that refer to it. It destroys all evidence it was ever there. Pretty slick.” Gennaro shook his head. “I don’t know much about computers.” Although he knew enough to know what it meant when a high-tech company went back to the source code. It meant big, big problems. “Well, watch this,” Arnold said, and he typed in the command: FINI.OBJ The screen flickered and immediately changed. Vg1 = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp} Vg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp} if Link(Vg1,Vg2) set Lim(Vg1,Vg2) return if Link(Vg2,Vg1) set Lim(Vg2,Vg1) return limitDat.1 = maxBits (%22) to {limit .04} set on limitDat.2 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(dzh)} Vg1 = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp} Vg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp} limitDat.4 = maxBits (%33) to {limit .04} set on limitDat.5 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(szh)} Muldoon pointed to the windows. “Look!” Outside, the big quartz lights were coming on throughout the park. They went to the windows and looked out. “Hot damn,” Arnold said. Gennaro said, “Does this mean the electrified fences are back on?” “You bet it does,” Arnold said. “It’ll take a few seconds to get up to full power, because we’ve got fifty miles of fence out there, and the generator has to charge the capacitors along the way. But in half a minute we’ll be back in business.” Arnold pointed to the vertical glass see-through map of the park. On the map, bright red lines were snaking out from the power station, moving throughout the park, as electricity surged through the fences. “And the motion sensors?” Gennaro said. “Yes, them, too. It’ll be a few minutes while the computer counts. But everything’s working,” Arnold said. “Half past nine, and we’ve got the whole damn thing back up and running.” Grant opened his eyes. Brilliant blue light was streaming into the building through the bars of the gate."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c40_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Quartz light: the power was back on! Groggily, he looked at his watch. It was just nine-thirty. He’d been asleep only a couple of minutes. He decided he could sleep a few minutes more, and then he would go back up to the field and stand in front of the motion sensors and wave, setting them off. The control room would spot him; they’d send a car out to pick him and the kids up, he’d tell Arnold to recall the supply ship, and they’d all finish the night in their own beds back in the lodge. He would do that right away. In just a couple of minutes. He yawned, and closed his eyes again. “Not bad,” Arnold said in the control room, staring at the glowing map. “There’s only three cutouts in the whole park. Much better than I hoped for.” “Cutouts?” Gennaro said. “The fence automatically cuts out short-circuited sections,” he explained. “You can see a big one here, in sector twelve, near the main road.” “That’s where the rex knocked the fence down,” Muldoon said. “Exactly. And another one is here in sector eleven. Near the sauropod maintenance building.” “Why would that section be out?” Gennaro said. “God knows,” Arnold said. “Probably storm damage or a fallen tree. We can check it on the monitor in a while. The third one is over there by the jungle river. Don’t know why that should be out, either.” As Gennaro looked, the map became more complex, filling with green spots and numbers. “What’s all this?” “The animals. The motion sensors are working again, and the computer’s starting to identify the location of all the animals in the park. And anybody else, too.” Gennaro stared at the map. “You mean Grant and the kids …” “Yes. We’ve reset our search number above four hundred. So, if they’re out there moving around,” Arnold said, “the motion sensors will pick them up as additional animals.” He stared at the map. “But I don’t see any additionals yet.” “Why does it take so long?” Gennaro said. “You have to realize, Mr. Gennaro,” Arnold said, “that there’s a lot of extraneous movement out there. Branches blowing in the wind, birds flying around, all kinds of stuff. The computer has to eliminate all the background movement. It may take—ah. Okay. Count’s finished.” Gennaro said, “You don’t see the kids?” Arnold twisted in his chair, and looked back to the map. “No,” he said, “at the moment, there are no additionals on the map at all. Everything out there has been accounted for as a dinosaur. They’re probably up in a tree, or somewhere else where we can’t see them. I wouldn’t worry yet. Several animals haven’t shown up, like the big rex. That’s probably because it’s sleeping somewhere and not moving. The people may be sleeping, too. We just don’t know.” Muldoon shook his head. “We better get on with it,” he said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c40_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“We need to repair the fences, and get the animals back into their paddocks. According to that computer, we’ve got five to herd back to the proper paddocks. I’ll take the maintenance crews out now.” Arnold turned to Gennaro. “You may want to see how Dr. Malcolm is doing. Tell Dr. Harding that Muldoon will need him in about an hour to supervise the herding. And I’ll notify Mr. Hammond that we’re starting our final cleanup.” Gennaro passed through the iron gates and went in the front door of the Safari Lodge. He saw Ellie Sattler coming down the hallway, carrying towels and a pan of steaming water. “There’s a kitchen at the other end,” she said. “We’re using that to boil water for the dressings.” “How is he?” Gennaro asked. “Surprisingly good,” she said. Gennaro followed Ellie down to Malcolm’s room, and was startled to hear the sound of laughter. The mathematician lay on his back in the bed, with Harding adjusting an IV line. “So the other man says, ‘I’ll tell you frankly, I didn’t like it, Bill. I went back to toilet paper!’ ” Harding was laughing. “It’s not bad, is it?” Malcolm said, smiling. “Ah, Mr. Gennaro. You’ve come to see me. Now you know what happens from trying to get a leg up on the situation.” Gennaro came in, tentatively. Harding said, “He’s on fairly high doses of morphine.” “Not high enough, I can tell you,” Malcolm said. “Christ, he’s stingy with his drugs. Did they find the others yet?” “No, not yet,” Gennaro said. “But I’m glad to see you doing so well.” “How else should I be doing,” Malcolm said, “with a compound fracture of the leg that is likely septic and beginning to smell rather, ah, pungent? But I always say, if you can’t keep a sense of humor …” Gennaro smiled. “Do you remember what happened?” “Of course I remember,” Malcolm said. “Do you think you could be bitten by a Tyrannosaurus rex and it would escape your mind? No indeed, I’ll tell you, you’d remember it for the rest of your life. In my case, perhaps not a terribly long time. But, still—yes, I remember.” Malcolm described running from the Land Cruiser in the rain, and being chased down by the rex. “It was my own damned fault, he was too close, but I was panicked. In any case, he picked me up in his jaws.” “How?” Gennaro said. “Torso,” Malcolm said, and lifted his shirt. A broad semicircle of bruised punctures ran from his shoulder to his navel. “Lifted me up in his jaws, shook me bloody hard, and threw me down. And I was fine—terrified of course, but, still and all, fine—right up to the moment he threw me. I broke the leg in the fall. But the bite was not half bad.” He sighed. “Considering.” Harding said, “Most of the big carnivores don’t have strong jaws. The real power is in the neck musculature."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c40_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The jaws just hold on, while they use the neck to twist and rip. But with a small creature like Dr. Malcolm, the animal would just shake him, and then toss him.” “I’m afraid that’s right,” Malcolm said. “I doubt I’d have survived, except the big chap’s heart wasn’t in it. To tell the truth, he struck me as a rather clumsy attacker of anything less than an automobile or a small apartment building.” “You think he attacked halfheartedly?” “It pains me to say it,” Malcolm said, “but I don’t honestly feel I had his full attention. He had mine, of course. But, then, he weighs eight tons. I don’t.” Gennaro turned to Harding and said, “They’re going to repair the fences now. Arnold says Muldoon will need your help herding animals.” “Okay,” Harding said. “So long as you leave me Dr. Sattler, and ample morphine,” Malcolm said. “And so long as we do not have a Malcolm Effect here.” “What’s a Malcolm Effect?” Gennaro said. “Modesty forbids me,” Malcolm said, “from telling you the details of a phenomenon named after me.” He sighed again, and closed his eyes. In a moment, he was sleeping. Ellie walked out into the hallway with Gennaro. “Don’t be fooled,” she said. “It’s a great strain on him. When will you have a helicopter here?” “A helicopter?” “He needs surgery on that leg. Make sure they send for a helicopter, and get him off this island.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c41_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park THE PARK The portable generator sputtered and roared to life, and the quartz floodlights glowed at the ends of their telescoping arms. Muldoon heard the soft gurgle of the jungle river a few yards to the north. He turned back to the maintenance van and saw one of the workmen coming out with a big power saw. “No, no,” he said. “Just the ropes, Carlos. We don’t need to cut it.” He turned back to look at the fence. They had difficulty finding the shorted section at first, because there wasn’t much to see: a small protocarpus tree was leaning against the fence. It was one of several that had been planted in this region of the park, their feathery branches intended to conceal the fence from view. But this particular tree had been tied down with guy wires and turnbuckles. The wires had broken free in the storm, and the metal turnbuckles had blown against the fence and shorted it out. Of course, none of this should have happened; grounds crews were supposed to use plastic-coated wires and ceramic turnbuckles near fences. But it had happened anyway. In any case, it wasn’t going to be a big job. All they had to do was pull the tree off the fence, remove the metal fittings, and mark it for the gardeners to fix in the morning. It shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. And that was just as well, because Muldoon knew the dilophosaurs always stayed close to the river. Even though the workmen were separated from the river by the fence, the dilos could spit right through it, delivering their blinding poison. Ramón, one of the workmen, came over. “Señor Muldoon,” he said, “did you see the lights?” “What lights?” Muldoon said. Ramón pointed to the east, through the jungle. “I saw it as we were coming out. It is there, very faint. You see it? It looks like the lights of a car, but it is not moving.” Muldoon squinted. It probably was just a maintenance light. After all, power was back on. “We’ll worry about it later,” he said. “Right now let’s just get that tree off the fence.” Arnold was in an expansive mood. The park was almost back in order. Muldoon was repairing the fences. Hammond had gone off to supervise the transfer of the animals with Harding. Although he was tired, Arnold was feeling good; he was even in a mood to indulge the lawyer, Gennaro. “The Malcolm Effect?” Arnold said. “You worried about that?” “I’m just curious,” Gennaro said. “You mean you want me to tell you why Ian Malcolm is wrong?” “Sure.” Arnold lit another cigarette. “It’s technical.” “Try me.” “Okay,” Arnold said. “Chaos theory describes nonlinear systems. It’s now become a very broad theory that’s been used to study everything from the stock market to heart rhythms. A very fashionable theory. Very trendy to apply it to any complex system where there might be unpredictability. Okay?” “Okay,” Gennaro said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c41_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Ian Malcolm is a mathematician specializing in chaos theory. Quite amusing and personable, but basically what he does, besides wear black, is use computers to model the behavior of complex systems. And John Hammond loves the latest scientific fad, so he asked Malcolm to model the system at Jurassic Park. Which Malcolm did. Malcolm’s models are all phase-space shapes on a computer screen. Have you seen them?” “No,” Gennaro said. “Well, they look like a weird twisted ship’s propeller. According to Malcolm, the behavior of any system follows the surface of the propeller. You with me?” “Not exactly,” Gennaro said. Arnold held his hand in the air. “Let’s say I put a drop of water on the back of my hand. That drop is going to run off my hand. Maybe it’ll run toward my wrist. Maybe it’ll run toward my thumb, or down between my fingers. I don’t know for sure where it will go, but I know it will run somewhere along the surface of my hand. It has to.” “Okay,” Gennaro said. “Chaos theory treats the behavior of a whole system like a drop of water moving on a complicated propeller surface. The drop may spiral down, or slip outward toward the edge. It may do many different things, depending. But it will always move along the surface of the propeller.” “Okay.” “Malcolm’s models tend to have a ledge, or a sharp incline, where the drop of water will speed up greatly. He modestly calls this speeding-up movement the Malcolm Effect. The whole system could suddenly collapse. And that was what he said about Jurassic Park. That it had inherent instability.” “Inherent instability,” Gennaro said. “And what did you do when you got his report?” “We disagreed with it, and ignored it, of course,” Arnold said. “Was that wise?” “It’s self-evident,” Arnold said. “We’re dealing with living systems, after all. This is life, not computer models.” In the harsh quartz lights, the hypsilophodont’s green head hung down out of the sling, the tongue dangling, the eyes dull. “Careful! Careful!” Hammond shouted, as the crane began to lift. Harding grunted and eased the head back onto the leather straps. He didn’t want to impede circulation through the carotid artery. The crane hissed as it lifted the animal into the air, onto the waiting flatbed truck. The hypsy was a small dryosaur, seven feet long, weighing about five hundred pounds. She was dark green with mottled brown spots. She was breathing slowly, but she seemed all right. Harding had shot her a few moments before with the tranquilizer gun, and apparently he had guessed the correct dose. There was always a tense moment dosing these big animals. Too little and they would run off into the forest, collapsing where you couldn’t get to them. Too much and they went into terminal cardiac arrest. This one had taken a single bounding leap and keeled over. Perfectly dosed. “Watch it! Easy!” Hammond was shouting to the workmen. “Mr. Hammond,” Harding said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c41_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Please.” “Well, they should be careful—” “They are being careful,” Harding said. He climbed up onto the back of the flatbed as the hypsy came down, and he set her into the restraining harness. Harding slipped on the cardiogram collar that monitored heartbeat, then picked up the big electronic thermometer the size of a turkey baster and slipped it into the rectum. It beeped: 96.2 degrees. “How is she?” Hammond asked fretfully. “She’s fine,” Harding said. “She’s only dropped a degree and a half.” “That’s too much,” Hammond said. “Too deep.” “You don’t want her waking up and jumping off the truck,” Harding snapped. Before coming to the park, Harding had been the chief of veterinary medicine at the San Diego Zoo, and the world’s leading expert on avian care. He flew all over the world, consulting with zoos in Europe, India, and Japan on the care of exotic birds. He’d had no interest when this peculiar little man showed up, offering him a position in a private game park. But when he learned what Hammond had done … It was impossible to pass up. Harding had an academic bent, and the prospect of writing the first Textbook of Veterinary Internal Medicine: Diseases of Dinosauria was compelling. In the late twentieth century, veterinary medicine was scientifically advanced; the best zoos ran clinics little different from hospitals. New textbooks were merely refinements of old. For a world-class practitioner, there were no worlds left to conquer. But to be the first to care for a whole new class of animals: that was something! And Harding had never regretted his decision. He had developed considerable expertise with these animals. And he didn’t want to hear from Hammond now. The hypsy snorted and twitched. She was still breathing shallowly; there was no ocular reflex yet. But it was time to get moving. “All aboard,” Harding shouted. “Let’s get this girl back to her paddock.” “Living systems,” Arnold said, “are not like mechanical systems. Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they’re not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse.” Gennaro was frowning. “But lots of things don’t change; body temperature doesn’t change, all kinds of other—” “Body temperature changes constantly,” Arnold said. “Constantly. It changes cyclically over twenty-four hours, lowest in the morning, highest in the afternoon. It changes with mood, with disease, with exercise, with outside temperature, with food. It continuously fluctuates up and down. Tiny jiggles on a graph. Because, at any moment, some forces are pushing temperature up, and other forces are pulling it down. It is inherently unstable. And every other aspect of living systems is like that, too.” “So you’re saying …” “Malcolm’s just another theoretician,” Arnold said. “Sitting in his office, he made a nice mathematical model, and it never occurred to him that what he saw as defects were actually necessities."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c41_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Look: when I was working on missiles, we dealt with something called ‘resonant yaw.’ Resonant yaw meant that, even though a missile was only slightly unstable off the pad, it was hopeless. It was inevitably going to go out of control, and it couldn’t be brought back. That’s a feature of mechanical systems. A little wobble can get worse until the whole system collapses. But those same little wobbles are essential to a living system. They mean the system is healthy and responsive. Malcolm never understood that.” “Are you sure he didn’t understand that? He seems pretty clear on the difference between living and nonliving—” “Look,” Arnold said. “The proof is right here.” He pointed to the screens. “In less than an hour,” he said, “the park will all be back on line. The only thing I’ve got left to clear is the telephones. For some reason, they’re still out. But everything else will be working. And that’s not theoretical. That’s a fact.” The needle went deep into the neck, and Harding injected the medrine into the anesthetized female dryosaur as she lay on her side on the ground. Immediately the animal began to recover, snorting and kicking her powerful hind legs. “Back, everybody,” Harding said, scrambling away. “Get back.” The dinosaur staggered to her feet, standing drunkenly. She shook her lizard head, stared at the people standing back in the quartz lights, and blinked. “She’s drooling,” Hammond said, worried. “Temporary,” Harding said. “It’ll stop.” The dryosaur coughed, and then moved slowly across the field, away from the lights. “Why isn’t she hopping?” “She will,” Harding said. “It’ll take her about an hour to recover fully. She’s fine.” He turned back to the car. “Okay, boys, let’s go deal with the stego.” Muldoon watched as the last of the stakes was pounded into the ground. The lines were pulled taut, and the protocarpus tree was lifted clear. Muldoon could see the blackened, charred streaks on the silver fence where the short had occurred. At the base of the fence, several ceramic insulators had burst. They would have to be replaced. But before that could be done, Arnold would have to shut down all the fences. “Control. This is Muldoon. We’re ready to begin repair.” “All right,” Arnold said. “Shutting out your section now.” Muldoon glanced at his watch. Somewhere in the distance, he heard soft hooting. It sounded like owls, but he knew it was the dilophosaurs. He went over to Ramón and said, “Let’s finish this up. I want to get to those other sections of fence.” An hour went by. Donald Gennaro stared at the glowing map in the control room as the spots and numbers flickered and changed. “What’s happening now?” Arnold worked at the console. “I’m trying to get the phones back. So we can call about Malcolm.” “No, I mean out there.” Arnold glanced up at the board. “It looks as if they’re about done with the animals, and the two sections."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c41_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Just as I told you, the park is back in hand. With no catastrophic Malcolm Effect. In fact, there’s just that third section of fence.…” “Arnold.” It was Muldoon’s voice. “Yes?” “Have you seen this bloody fence?” “Just a minute.” On one of the monitors, Gennaro saw a high angle down on a field of grass, blowing in the wind. In the distance was a low concrete roof. “That’s the sauropod maintenance building,” Arnold explained. “It’s one of the utility structures we use for equipment, feed storage, and so on. We have them all around the park, in each of the paddocks.” On the monitor, the video image panned. “We’re turning the camera now to get a look at the fence.…” Gennaro saw a shining wall of metallic mesh in the light. One section had been trampled, knocked flat. Muldoon’s Jeep and work crew were there. “Huh,” Arnold said. “Looks like the rex went into the sauropod paddock.” Muldoon said, “Fine dining tonight.” “We’ll have to get him out of there,” Arnold said. “With what?” Muldoon said. “We haven’t got anything to use on a rex. I’ll fix this fence, but I’m not going in there until daylight.” “Hammond won’t like it.” “We’ll discuss it when I get back,” Muldoon said. “How many sauropods will the rex kill?” Hammond said, pacing around the control room. “Probably just one,” Harding said. “Sauropods are big; the rex can feed off a single kill for several days.” “We have to go out and get him tonight,” Hammond said. Muldoon shook his head. “I’m not going in there until daylight.” Hammond was rising up and down on the balls of his feet, the way he did whenever he was angry. “Are you forgetting you work for me?” “No, Mr. Hammond, I’m not forgetting. But that’s a full-grown adult tyrannosaur out there. How do you plan to get him?” “We have tranquilizer guns.” “We have tranquilizer guns that shoot a twenty-cc dart,” Muldoon said. “Fine for an animal that weighs four or five hundred pounds. That tyrannosaur weighs eight tons. It wouldn’t even feel it.” “You ordered a larger weapon.…” “I ordered three larger weapons, Mr. Hammond, but you cut the requisition, so we got only one. And it’s gone. Nedry took it when he left.” “That was pretty stupid. Who let that happen?” “Nedry’s not my problem, Mr. Hammond,” Muldoon said. “You’re saying,” Hammond said, “that, as of this moment, there is no way to stop the tyrannosaur?” “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Muldoon said. “That’s ridiculous,” Hammond said. “It’s your park, Mr. Hammond. You didn’t want anybody to be able to injure your precious dinosaurs. Well, now you’ve got a rex in with the sauropods, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.” He left the room. “Just a minute,” Hammond said, hurrying after him. Gennaro stared at the screens, and listened to the shouted argument in the hallway outside."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c41_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He said to Arnold, “I guess you don’t have control of the park yet, after all.” “Don’t kid yourself,” Arnold said, lighting another cigarette. “We have the park. It’ll be dawn in a couple of hours. We may lose a couple of dinos before we get the rex out of there, but, believe me, we have the park.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c42_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park DAWN Grant was awakened by a loud grinding sound, followed by a mechanical clanking. He opened his eyes and saw a bale of hay rolling past him on a conveyor belt, up toward the ceiling. Two more bales followed it. Then the clanking stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and the concrete building was silent again. Grant yawned. He stretched sleepily, winced in pain, and sat up. Soft yellow light came through the side windows. It was morning: he had slept the whole night! He looked quickly at his watch: 5:00 a.m. Still almost six hours to go before the boat had to be recalled. He rolled onto his back, groaning. His head throbbed, and his body ached as if he had been beaten up. From around the corner, he heard a squeaking sound, like a rusty wheel. And then Lex giggling. Grant stood slowly, and looked at the building. Now that it was daylight, he could see it was some kind of a maintenance building, with stacks of hay and supplies. On the wall he saw a gray metal box and a stenciled sign: SAUROPOD MAINTENANCE BLDG (04). This must be the sauropod paddock, as he had thought. He opened the box and saw a telephone, but when he lifted the receiver he heard only hissing static. Apparently the phones weren’t working yet. “Chew your food,” Lex was saying. “Don’t be a piggy, Ralph.” Grant walked around the corner and found Lex by the bars, holding out handfuls of hay to an animal outside that looked like a large pink pig and was making the squeaking sounds Grant had heard. It was actually an infant triceratops, about the size of a pony. The infant didn’t have horns on its head yet, just a curved bony frill behind big soft eyes. It poked its snout through the bars toward Lex, its eyes watching her as she fed it more hay. “That’s better,” Lex said. “There’s plenty of hay, don’t worry.” She patted the baby on the head. “You like hay, don’t you, Ralph?” Lex turned back and saw him. “This is Ralph,” Lex said. “He’s my friend. He likes hay.” Grant took a step and stopped, wincing. “You look pretty bad,” Lex said. “I feel pretty bad.” “Tim, too. His nose is all swollen up.” “Where is Tim?” “Peeing,” she said. “You want to help me feed Ralph?” The baby triceratops looked at Grant. Hay stuck out of both sides of its mouth, dropping on the floor as it chewed. “He’s a very messy eater,” Lex said. “And he’s very hungry.” The baby finished chewing and licked its lips. It opened its mouth, waiting for more. Grant could see the slender sharp teeth, and the beaky upper jaw, like a parrot. “Okay, just a minute,” Lex said, scooping up more straw from the concrete floor. “Honestly, Ralph,” she said, “you’d think your mother never fed you.” “Why is his name Ralph?” “Because he looks like Ralph."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c42_r1.htm.txt", "text": "At school.” Grant came closer and touched the skin of the neck gently. “It’s okay, you can pet him,” Lex said. “He likes it when you pet him, don’t you, Ralph?” The skin felt dry and warm, with the pebbled texture of a football. Ralph gave a little squeak as Grant petted it. Outside the bars, its thick tail swung back and forth with pleasure. “He’s pretty tame.” Ralph looked from Lex to Grant as it ate, and showed no sign of fear. It reminded Grant that the dinosaurs didn’t have ordinary responses to people. “Maybe I can ride him,” Lex said. “Let’s not.” “I bet he’d let me,” Lex said. “It’d be fun to ride a dinosaur.” Grant looked out the bars past the animal, to the open fields of the sauropod compound. It was growing lighter every minute. He should go outside, he thought, and set off one of the motion sensors on the field above. After all, it might take the people in the control room an hour to get out here to him. And he didn’t like the idea that the phones were still down.… He heard a deep snorting sound, like the snort of a very large horse, and suddenly the baby became agitated. It tried to pull its head back through the bars, but got caught on the edge of its frill, and it squeaked in fright. The snorting came again. It was closer this time. Ralph reared up on its hind legs, frantic to get out from between the bars. It wriggled its head back and forth, rubbing against the bars. “Ralph, take it easy,” Lex said. “Push him out,” Grant said. He reached up to Ralph’s head and leaned against it, pushing the animal sideways and backward. The frill popped free and the baby fell outside the bars, losing its balance and flopping on its side. Then the baby was covered in shadow, and a huge leg came into view, thicker than a tree trunk. The foot had five curved toenails, like an elephant’s. Ralph looked up and squeaked. A head came down into view: six feet long, with three long white horns, one above each of the large brown eyes and a smaller horn at the tip of the nose. It was a full-grown triceratops. The big animal peered at Lex and Grant, blinking slowly, and then turned its attention to Ralph. A tongue came out and licked the baby. Ralph squeaked and rubbed up against the big leg happily. “Is that his mom?” Lex said. “Looks like it,” Grant said. “Should we feed the mom, too?” Lex said. But the big triceratops was already nudging Ralph with her snout, pushing the baby away from the bars. “Guess not.” The infant turned away from the bars and walked off. From time to time, the big mother nudged her baby, guiding it away, as they both walked out into the fields. “Good-bye, Ralph,” Lex said, waving."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c42_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Tim came out of the shadows of the building. “Tell you what,” Grant said. “I’m going up on the hill to set off the motion sensors, so they’ll know to come get us. You two stay here and wait for me.” “No,” Lex said. “Why? Stay here. It’s safe here.” “You’re not leaving us,” she said. “Right, Timmy?” “Right,” Tim said. “Okay,” Grant said. They crawled through the bars, stepping outside. It was just before dawn. The air was warm and humid, the sky soft pink and purple. A white mist clung low to the ground. Some distance away, they saw the mother triceratops and the baby moving away toward a herd of large duckbilled hadrosaurs, eating foliage from trees at the edge of the lagoon. Some of the hadrosaurs stood knee-deep in the water. They drank, lowering their flat heads, meeting their own reflections in the still water. Then they looked up again, their heads swiveling. At the water’s edge, one of the babies ventured out, squeaked, and scrambled back while the adults watched indulgently. Farther south, other hadrosaurs were eating the lower vegetation. Sometimes they reared up on their hind legs, resting their forelegs on the tree trunks, so they could reach the leaves on higher branches. And in the far distance, a giant apatosaur stood above the trees, the tiny head swiveling on the long neck. The scene was so peaceful Grant found it hard to imagine any danger. “Yow!” Lex shouted, ducking. Two giant red dragonflies with six-foot wingspans hummed past them. “What was that?” “Dragonflies,” he said. “The Jurassic was a time of huge insects.” “Do they bite?” Lex said. “I don’t think so,” Grant said. Tim held out his hand. One of the dragonflies lighted on it. He could feel the weight of the huge insect. “He’s going to bite you,” Lex warned. But the dragonfly just slowly flapped its red-veined transparent wings, and then, when Tim moved his arm, flew off again. “Which way do we go?” Lex said. “There.” They started walking across the field. They reached a black box mounted on a heavy metal tripod, the first of the motion sensors. Grant stopped and waved his hand in front of it back and forth, but nothing happened. If the phones didn’t work, perhaps the sensors didn’t work, either. “We’ll try another one,” he said, pointing across the field. Somewhere in the distance, they heard the roar of a large animal. “Ah hell,” Arnold said. “I just can’t find it.” He sipped coffee and stared bleary-eyed at the screens. He had taken all the video monitors off line. In the control room, he was searching the computer code. He was exhausted; he’d been working for twelve straight hours. He turned to Wu, who had come up from the lab. “Find what?” “The phones are still out. I can’t get them back on. I think Nedry did something to the phones.” Wu lifted one phone, heard hissing."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c42_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Sounds like a modem.” “But it’s not,” Arnold said. “Because I went down into the basement and shut off all the modems. What you’re hearing is just white noise that sounds like a modem transmitting.” “So the phone lines are jammed?” “Basically, yes. Nedry jammed them very well. He’s inserted some kind of a lockout into the program code, and now I can’t find it, because I gave that restore command which erased part of the program listings. But apparently the command to shut off the phones is still resident in the computer memory.” Wu shrugged. “So? Just reset: shut the system down and you’ll clear memory.” “I’ve never done it before,” Arnold said. “And I’m reluctant to do it. Maybe all the systems will come back on start-up—but maybe they won’t. I’m not a computer expert, and neither are you. Not really. And without an open phone line, we can’t talk to anybody who is.” “If the command is RAM-resident, it won’t show up in the code. You can do a RAM dump and search that, but you don’t know what you’re searching for. I think all you can do is reset.” Gennaro stormed in. “We still don’t have any telephones.” “Working on it.” “You’ve been working on it since midnight. And Malcolm is worse. He needs medical attention.” “It means I’ll have to shut down,” Arnold said. “I can’t be sure everything will come back on.” Gennaro said, “Look. There’s a sick man over in that lodge. He needs a doctor or he’ll die. You can’t call for a doctor unless you have a phone. Four people have probably died already. Now, shut down and get the phones working!” Arnold hesitated. “Well?” Gennaro said. “Well, it’s just … the safety systems don’t allow the computer to be shut down, and—” “Then turn the goddamn safety systems off! Can’t you get it through your head that he’s going to die unless he gets help?” “Okay,” Arnold said. He got up and went to the main panel. He opened the doors, and uncovered the metal swing-latches over the safety switches. He popped them off, one after another. “You asked for it,” Arnold said. “And you got it.” He threw the master switch. The control room was dark. All the monitors were black. The three men stood there in the dark. “How long do we have to wait?” Gennaro said. “Thirty seconds,” Arnold said. “P-U!” Lex said, as they crossed the field. “What?” Grant said. “That smell!” Lex said. “It stinks like rotten garbage.” Grant hesitated. He stared across the field toward the distant trees, looking for movement. He saw nothing. There was hardly a breeze to stir the branches. It was peaceful and silent in the early morning. “I think it’s your imagination,” he said. “Is not—” Then he heard the honking sound. It came from the herd of duckbilled hadrosaurs behind them. First one animal, then another and another, until the whole herd had taken up the honking cry."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c42_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The duckbills were agitated, twisting and turning, hurrying out of the water, circling the young ones to protect them.… They smell it, too, Grant thought. With a roar, the tyrannosaur burst from the trees fifty yards away, near the lagoon. It rushed out across the open field with huge strides. It ignored them, heading toward the herd of hadrosaurs. “I told you!” Lex screamed. “Nobody listens to me!” In the distance, the duckbills were honking and starting to run. Grant could feel the earth shake beneath his feet. “Come on, kids!” He grabbed Lex, lifting her bodily off the ground, and ran with Tim through the grass. He had glimpses of the tyrannosaur down by the lagoon, lunging at the hadrosaurs, which swung their big tails in defense and honked loudly and continuously. He heard the crashing of foliage and trees, and when he looked over again, the duckbills were charging. In the darkened control room, Arnold checked his watch. Thirty seconds. The memory should be cleared by now. He pushed the main power switch back on. Nothing happened. Arnold’s stomach heaved. He pushed the switch off, then on again. Still nothing happened. He felt sweat on his brow. “What’s wrong?” Gennaro said. “Oh hell,” Arnold said. Then he remembered you had to turn the safety switches back on before you restarted the power. He flipped on the three safeties, and covered them again with the latch covers. Then he held his breath, and turned the main power switch. The room lights came on. The computer beeped. The screens hummed. “Thank God,” Arnold said. He hurried to the main monitor. There were rows of labels on the screen: Gennaro reached for the phone, but it was dead. No static hissing this time—just nothing at all. “What’s this?” “Give me a second,” Arnold said. “After a reset, all the system modules have to be brought on line manually.” Quickly, he went back to work. “Why manually?” Gennaro said. “Will you just let me work, for Christ’s sake?” Wu said, “The system is not intended to ever shut down. So, if it does shut down, it assumes that there is a problem somewhere. It requires you to start up everything manually. Otherwise, if there were a short somewhere, the system would start up, short out, start up again, short out again, in an endless cycle.” “Okay,” Arnold said. “We’re going.” Gennaro picked up the phone and started to dial, when he suddenly stopped. “Jesus, look at that,” he said. He pointed to one of the video monitors. But Arnold wasn’t listening. He was staring at the map, where a tight cluster of dots by the lagoon had started to move in a coordinated way. Moving fast, in a kind of swirl. “What’s happening?” Gennaro said. “The duckbills,” Arnold said tonelessly. “They’ve stampeded.” The duckbills charged with surprising speed, their enormous bodies in a tight cluster, honking and roaring, the infants squealing and trying to stay out from underfoot."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c42_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The herd raised a great cloud of yellow dust. Grant couldn’t see the tyrannosaur. The duckbills were running right toward them. Still carrying Lex, he ran with Tim toward a rocky outcrop, with a stand of big conifers. They ran hard, feeling the ground shake beneath their feet. The sound of the approaching herd was deafening, like the sound of jets at an airport. It filled the air, and hurt their ears. Lex was shouting something, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying, and as they scrambled onto the rocks, the herd closed in around them. Grant saw the immense legs of the first hadrosaurs that charged past, each animal weighing five tons, and then they were enveloped in a cloud so dense he could see nothing at all. He had the impression of huge bodies, giant limbs, bellowing cries of pain as the animals wheeled and circled. One duckbill struck a boulder and it rolled past them, out into the field beyond. In the dense cloud of dust, they could see almost nothing beyond the rocks. They clung to the boulders, listening to the screams and honks, the menacing roar of the tyrannosaur. Lex dug her fingers into Grant’s shoulder. Another hadrosaur slammed its big tail against the rocks, leaving a splash of hot blood. Grant waited until the sounds of the fighting had moved off to the left, and then he pushed the kids to start climbing the largest tree. They climbed swiftly, feeling for the branches, as the animals stampeded all around them in the dust. They went up twenty feet, and then Lex clutched at Grant and refused to go farther. Tim was tired, too, and Grant thought they were high enough. Through the dust, they could see the broad backs of the animals below as they wheeled and honked. Grant propped himself against the coarse bark of the trunk, coughed in the dust, closed his eyes, and waited. Arnold adjusted the camera as the herd moved away. The dust slowly cleared. He saw that the hadrosaurs had scattered, and the tyrannosaur had stopped running, which could only mean it had made a kill. The tyrannosaur was now near the lagoon. Arnold looked at the video monitor and said, “Better get Muldoon to go out there and see how bad it is.” “I’ll get him,” Gennaro said, and left the room."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c43_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park THE PARK A faint crackling sound, like a fire in a fireplace. Something warm and wet tickled Grant’s ankle. He opened his eyes and saw an enormous beige head. The head tapered to a flat mouth shaped like the bill of a duck. The eyes, protruding above the flat duckbill, were gentle and soft like a cow’s. The duck mouth opened and chewed branches on the limb where Grant was sitting. He saw large flat teeth in the cheek. The warm lips touched his ankle again as the animal chewed. A duckbilled hadrosaur. He was astonished to see it up close. Not that he was afraid; all the species of duckbilled dinosaurs were herbivorous, and this one acted exactly like a cow. Even though it was huge, its manner was so calm and peaceful Grant didn’t feel threatened. He stayed where he was on the branch, careful not to move, and watched as it ate. The reason Grant was astonished was that he had a proprietary feeling about this animal: it was probably a maiasaur, from the late Cretaceous in Montana. With John Horner, Grant had been the first to describe the species. Maiasaurs had an upcurved lip, which gave them the appearance of smiling. The name meant “good mother lizard”; maiasaurs were thought to protect their eggs until the babies were born and could take care of themselves. Grant heard an insistent chirping, and the big head swung down. He moved just enough to see the baby hadrosaur scampering around the feet of the adult. The baby was dark beige with black spots. The adult bent her head low to the ground and waited, unmoving, while the baby stood up on its hind legs, resting its front legs on the mother’s jaw, and ate the branches that protruded from the side of the mother’s mouth. The mother waited patiently until the baby had finished eating, and dropped back down to all fours again. Then the big head came back up toward Grant. The hadrosaur continued to eat, just a few feet from him. Grant looked at the two elongated airholes on top of the flat upper bill. Apparently the dinosaur couldn’t smell Grant. And even though the left eye was looking right at him, for some reason the hadrosaur didn’t react to him. He remembered how the tyrannosaur had failed to see him, the previous night. Grant decided on an experiment. He coughed. Instantly the hadrosaur froze, the big head suddenly still, the jaws no longer chewing. Only the eye moved, looking for the source of the sound. Then, after a moment, when there seemed to be no danger, the animal resumed chewing. Amazing, Grant thought. Sitting in his arms, Lex opened her eyes and said, “Hey, what’s that?” The hadrosaur trumpeted in alarm, a loud resonant honk that so startled Lex that she nearly fell out of the tree. The hadrosaur pulled its head away from the branch and trumpeted again."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c43_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Don’t make her mad,” Tim said, from the branch above. The baby chirped and scurried beneath the mother’s legs as the hadrosaur stepped away from the tree. The mother cocked her head and peered inquisitively at the branch where Grant and Lex were sitting. With its upturned smiling lips, the dinosaur had a comical appearance. “Is it dumb?” Lex said. “No,” Grant said. “You just surprised her.” “Well,” Lex said, “is she going to let us get down, or what?” The hadrosaur had backed ten feet away from the tree. She honked again. Grant had the impression she was trying to frighten them away. But the dinosaur didn’t really seem to know what to do. She acted confused and uneasy. They waited in silence, and after a minute the hadrosaur approached the branch again, jaws moving in anticipation. She was clearly going to resume eating. “Forget it,” Lex said. “I’m not staying here.” She started to climb down the branches. At her movement, the hadrosaur trumpeted in fresh alarm. Grant was amazed. He thought, It really can’t see us when we don’t move. And after a minute it literally forgets that we’re here. This was just like the tyrannosaur—another classic example of an amphibian visual cortex. Studies of frogs had shown that amphibians only saw moving things, like insects. If something didn’t move, they literally didn’t see it. The same thing seemed to be true of dinosaurs. In any case, the maiasaur now seemed to find these strange creatures climbing down the tree too upsetting. With a final honk, she nudged her baby, and lumbered slowly away. She paused once, and looked back at them, then continued on. They reached the ground. Lex shook herself off. Both children were covered in a layer of fine dust. All around them, the grass had been flattened. There were streaks of blood, and a sour smell. Grant looked at his watch. “We better get going, kids,” he said. “Not me,” Lex said. “I’m not walking out there any more.” “We have to.” “Why?” “Because,” Grant said, “we have to tell them about the boat. Since they can’t seem to see us on the motion sensors, we have to go all the way back ourselves. It’s the only way.” “Why can’t we take the raft?” Tim said. “What raft?” Tim pointed to the low concrete maintenance building with the bars, where they had spent the night. It was twenty yards away, across the field. “I saw a raft back there,” he said. Grant immediately understood the advantages. It was now seven o’clock in the morning. They had at least eight miles to go. If they could take a raft along the river, they would make much faster progress than going overland. “Let’s do it,” Grant said. Arnold punched the visual search mode and watched as the monitors began to scan throughout the park, the images changing every two seconds."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c43_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It was tiring to watch, but it was the fastest way to find Nedry’s Jeep, and Muldoon had been adamant about that. He had gone out with Gennaro to look at the stampede, but now that it was daylight, he wanted the car found. He wanted the weapons. His intercom clicked. “Mr. Arnold, may I have a word with you, please?” It was Hammond. He sounded like the voice of God. “You want to come here, Mr. Hammond?” “No, Mr. Arnold,” Hammond said. “Come to me. I’m in the genetics lab with Dr. Wu. We’ll be waiting for you.” Arnold sighed, and stepped away from the screens. Grant stumbled deep in the gloomy recesses of the building. He pushed past five-gallon containers of herbicide, tree-pruning equipment, spare tires for a Jeep, coils of cyclone fencing, hundred-pound fertilizer bags, stacks of brown ceramic insulators, empty motor-oil cans, work lights and cables. “I don’t see any raft.” “Keep going.” Bags of cement, lengths of copper pipe, green mesh … and two plastic oars hung on clips on the concrete wall. “Okay,” he said, “but where’s the raft?” “It must be here somewhere,” Tim said. “You never saw a raft?” “No, I just assumed it was here.” Poking among the junk, Grant found no raft. But he did find a set of plans, rolled up and speckled with mold from humidity, stuck back in a metal cabinet on the wall. He spread the plans on the floor, brushing away a big spider. He looked at them for a long time. “I’m hungry.…” “Just a minute.” They were detailed topographical charts for the main area of the island, where they now were. According to this, the lagoon narrowed into the river they had seen earlier, which twisted northward … right through the aviary … and on to within a half-mile of the visitor lodge. He flipped back through the pages. How to get to the lagoon? According to the plans, there should be a door at the back of the building they were in. Grant looked up, and saw it, recessed back in the concrete wall. The door was wide enough for a car. Opening it, he saw a paved road running straight down toward the lagoon. The road was dug below ground level, so it couldn’t be seen from above. It must be another service road. And it led to a dock at the edge of the lagoon. And clearly stenciled on the dock was RAFT STORAGE. “Hey,” Tim said, “look at this.” He held out a metal case to Grant. Opening it, Grant found a compressed-air pistol and a cloth belt that held darts. There were six darts in all, each as thick as his finger. Labeled MORO-709. “Good work, Tim.” He slung the belt around his shoulder, and stuck the gun in his trousers. “Is it a tranquilizer gun?” “I’d say so.” “What about the boat?” Lex said. “I think it’s on the dock,” Grant said. They started down the road."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c43_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Grant carried the oars on his shoulder. “I hope it’s a big raft,” Lex said, “because I can’t swim.” “Don’t worry,” he said. “Maybe we can catch some fish,” she said. They walked down the road with the sloping embankment rising up on both sides of them. They heard a deep rhythmic snorting sound, but Grant could not see where it was coming from. “Are you sure there’s a raft down here?” Lex said, wrinkling her nose. “Probably,” Grant said. The rhythmic snorting became louder as they walked, but they also heard a steady droning, buzzing sound. When they reached the end of the road, at the edge of the small concrete dock, Grant froze in shock. The tyrannosaur was right there. It was sitting upright in the shade of a tree, its hind legs stretched out in front. Its eyes were open but it was not moving, except for its head, which lifted and fell gently with each snorting sound. The buzzing came from the clouds of flies that surrounded it, crawling over its face and slack jaws, its bloody fangs, and the red haunch of a killed hadrosaur that lay on its side behind the tyrannosaur. The tyrannosaur was only twenty yards away. Grant felt sure it must have seen him, but the big animal did not respond. It just sat there. It took him a moment to realize: the tyrannosaur was asleep. Sitting up, but asleep. He signaled to Tim and Lex to stay where they were. Grant walked slowly forward onto the dock, in full view of the tyrannosaur. The big animal continued to sleep, snoring softly. Near the end of the dock, a wooden shed was painted green to blend with the foliage. Grant quietly unlatched the door and looked inside. He saw a half-dozen orange life vests hanging on the wall, several rolls of wire-mesh fencing, some coils of rope, and two big rubber cubes sitting on the floor. The cubes were strapped tight with flat rubber belts. Rafts. He looked back at Lex. She mouthed: No boat. He nodded, Yes. The tyrannosaur raised its forelimb to swipe at the flies buzzing around its snout. But otherwise it did not move. Grant pulled one of the cubes out onto the dock. It was surprisingly heavy. He freed the straps, found the inflation cylinder. With a loud hiss, the rubber began to expand, and then with a hiss-whap! it popped fully open on the dock. The sound was fearfully loud in their ears. Grant turned, stared up at the dinosaur. The tyrannosaur grunted, and snorted. It began to move. Grant braced himself to run, but the animal shifted its ponderous bulk and then it settled back against the tree trunk and gave a long, growling belch. Lex looked disgusted, waving her hand in front of her face. Grant was soaked in sweat from the tension. He dragged the rubber raft across the dock. It flopped into the water with a loud splash."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c43_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The dinosaur continued to sleep. Grant tied the boat up to the dock, and returned to the shed to take out two life preservers. He put these in the boat, and then waved for the kids to come out onto the dock. Pale with fear, Lex waved back, No. He gestured: Yes. The tyrannosaur continued to sleep. Grant stabbed in the air with an emphatic finger. Lex came silently, and he gestured for her to get into the raft; then Tim got in, and they both put on their life vests. Grant got in and pushed off. The raft drifted silently out into the lagoon. Grant picked up his paddles and fitted them into the oarlocks. They moved farther from the dock. Lex sat back, and sighed loudly with relief. Then she looked stricken, and put her hand over her mouth. Her body shook, with muffled sounds: she was suppressing a cough. She always coughed at the wrong times! “Lex,” Tim whispered fiercely, looking back toward the shore. She shook her head miserably, and pointed to her throat. He knew what she meant: a tickle in her throat. What she needed was a drink of water. Grant was rowing, and Tim leaned over the side of the raft and scooped his hand in the lagoon, holding his cupped hand toward her. Lex coughed loudly, explosively. In Tim’s ears, the sound echoed across the water like a gunshot. The tyrannosaur yawned lazily, and scratched behind its ear with its hind foot, just like a dog. It yawned again. It was groggy after its big meal, and it woke up slowly. On the boat, Lex was making little gargling sounds. “Lex, shut up!” Tim said. “I can’t help it,” she whispered, and then she coughed again. Grant rowed hard, moving the raft powerfully into the center of the lagoon. On the shore, the tyrannosaur stumbled to its feet. “I couldn’t help it, Timmy!” Lex shrieked miserably. “I couldn’t help it!” “Shhhh!” Grant was rowing as fast as he could. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re far enough away. He can’t swim.” “Of course he can swim, you little idiot!” Tim shouted at her. On the shore, the tyrannosaur stepped off the dock and plunged into the water. It moved strongly into the lagoon after them. “Well, how should I know?” she said. “Everybody knows tyrannosaurs can swim! It’s in all the books! Anyway, all reptiles can swim!” “Snakes can’t.” “Of course snakes can. You idiot!” “Settle down,” Grant said. “Hold on to something!” Grant was watching the tyrannosaur, noticing how the animal swam. The tyrannosaur was now chest-deep in the water, but it could hold its big head high above the surface. Then Grant realized the animal wasn’t swimming, it was walking, because moments later only the very top of the head—the eyes and nostrils—protruded above the surface."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c43_r1.htm.txt", "text": "By then it looked like a crocodile, and it swam like a crocodile, swinging its big tail back and forth, so the water churned behind it. Behind the head, Grant saw the hump of the back, and the ridges along the length of tail, as it occasionally broke the surface. Exactly like a crocodile, he thought unhappily. The biggest crocodile in the world. “I’m sorry, Dr. Grant!” Lex wailed. “I didn’t mean it!” Grant glanced over his shoulder. The lagoon was no more than a hundred yards wide here, and they had almost reached the center. If he continued, the water would become shallow again. The tyrannosaur would be able to walk again, and he would move faster in shallow water. Grant swung the boat around, and began to row north. “What are you doing?” The tyrannosaur was now just a few yards away. Grant could hear its sharp snorting breaths as it came closer. Grant looked at the paddles in his hands, but they were light plastic—not weapons at all. The tyrannosaur threw its head back and opened its jaws wide, showing rows of curved teeth, and then in a great muscular spasm lunged forward to the raft, just missing the rubber gunwale, the huge skull slapping down, the raft rocking away on the crest of the splash. The tyrannosaur sank below the surface, leaving gurgling bubbles. The lagoon was still. Lex gripped the gunwale handles and looked back. “Did he drown?” “No,” Grant said. He saw bubbles—then a faint ripple along the surface—coming toward the boat— “Hang on!” he shouted, as the head bucked up beneath the rubber, bending the boat and lifting it into the air, spinning them crazily before it splashed down again. “Do something!” Alexis screamed. “Do something!” Grant pulled the air pistol out of his belt. It looked pitifully small in his hands, but there was the chance that, if he shot the animal in a sensitive spot, in the eye or the nose— The tyrannosaur surfaced beside the boat, opened its jaws, and roared. Grant aimed, and fired. The dart flashed in the light, and smacked into the cheek. The tyrannosaur shook its head, and roared again. And suddenly they heard an answering roar, floating across the water toward them. Looking back, Grant saw the juvenile T-rex on the shore, crouched over the killed sauropod, claiming the kill as its own. The juvenile slashed at the carcass, then raised its head high and bellowed. The big tyrannosaur saw it, too, and the response was immediate—it turned back to protect its kill, swimming strongly toward the shore. “He’s going away!” Lex squealed, clapping her hands. “He’s going away! Naah-naah-na-na-naah! Stupid dinosaur!” From the shore, the juvenile roared defiantly. Enraged, the big tyrannosaur burst from the lagoon at full speed, water streaming from its enormous body as it raced up the hill past the dock. The juvenile ducked its head and fled, its jaws still filled with ragged flesh."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c43_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The big tyrannosaur chased it, racing past the dead sauropod, disappearing over the hill. They heard its final threatening bellow, and then the raft moved to the north, around a bend in the lagoon, to the river. Exhausted from rowing, Grant collapsed back, his chest heaving. He couldn’t catch his breath. He lay gasping in the raft. “Are you okay, Dr. Grant?” Lex asked. “From now on, will you just do what I tell you?” “Oh-kay,” she sighed, as if he had just made the most unreasonable demand in the world. She trailed her arm in the water for a while. “You stopped rowing,” she said. “I’m tired,” Grant said. “Then how come we’re still moving?” Grant sat up. She was right. The raft drifted steadily north. “There must be a current.” The current was carrying them north, toward the hotel. He looked at his watch and was astonished to see it was fifteen minutes past seven. Only fifteen minutes had passed since he had last looked at his watch. It seemed like two hours. Grant lay back against the rubber gunwales, closed his eyes, and slept."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c44_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park SEARCH Gennaro sat in the Jeep and listened to the buzzing of the flies, and stared at the distant palm trees wavering in the heat. He was astonished by what looked like a battleground: the grass was trampled flat for a hundred yards in every direction. One big palm tree was uprooted from the ground. There were great washes of blood in the grass, and on the rocky outcropping to their right. Sitting beside him, Muldoon said, “No doubt about it. Rexy’s been among the hadrosaurs.” He took another drink of whiskey, and capped the bottle. “Damn lot of flies,” he said. They waited, and watched. Gennaro drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “What are we waiting for?” Muldoon didn’t answer immediately. “The rex is out there somewhere,” he said, squinting at the landscape in the morning sun. “And we don’t have any weapons worth a damn.” “We’re in a Jeep.” “Oh, he can outrun the Jeep, Mr. Gennaro,” Muldoon said, shaking his head. “Once we leave this road and go onto open terrain, the best we can do in a four-wheel drive is thirty, forty miles an hour. He’ll run us right down. No problem for him.” Muldoon sighed. “But I don’t see much moving out there now. You ready to live dangerously?” “Sure,” Gennaro said. Muldoon started the engine, and at the sudden sound, two small othnielians leapt up from the matted grass directly ahead. Muldoon put the car in gear. He drove in a wide circle around the trampled site, and then moved inward, driving in decreasing concentric circles until he finally came to the place in the field where the little othnielians had been. Then he got out and walked forward in the grass, away from the Jeep. He stopped as a dense cloud of flies lifted into the air. “What is it?” Gennaro called. “Bring the radio,” Muldoon said. Gennaro climbed out of the Jeep and hurried forward. Even from a distance he could smell the sour-sweet odor of early decay. He saw a dark shape in the grass, crusted with blood, legs askew. “Young hadrosaur,” Muldoon said, staring down at the carcass. “The whole herd stampeded, and the young one got separated, and the T-rex brought it down.” “How do you know?” Gennaro said. The flesh was ragged from many bites. “You can tell from the excreta,” Muldoon said. “See those chalky white bits there in the grass? That’s hadro spoor. Uric acid makes it white. But you look there”—he pointed to a large mound, rising knee-high in the grass—“that’s tyrannosaur spoor.” “How do you know the tyrannosaur didn’t come later?” “The bite pattern,” Muldoon said. “See those little ones there?” He pointed along the belly. “Those are from the othys. Those bites haven’t bled. They’re postmortem, from scavengers. Othys did that."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c44_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But the hadro was brought down by a bite on the neck—you see the big slash there, above the shoulder blades—and that’s the T-rex, no question.” Gennaro bent over the carcass, staring at the awkward, trampled limbs with a sense of unreality. Beside him, Muldoon flicked on his radio. “Control.” “Yes,” John Arnold said, over the radio. “We got another hadro dead. Juvenile.” Muldoon bent down among the flies and checked the skin on the sole of the right foot. A number was tattooed there. “Specimen is number HD/09.” The radio crackled. “I’ve got something for you,” Arnold said. “Oh? What’s that?” “I found Nedry.” The Jeep burst through the line of palm trees along the east road and came out into a narrower service road, leading toward the jungle river. It was hot in this area of the park, the jungle close and fetid around them. Muldoon was fiddling with the computer monitor in the Jeep, which now showed a map of the resort with overlaid grid lines. “They found him up on remote video,” he said. “Sector 1104 is just ahead.” Farther up the road, Gennaro saw a concrete barrier, and the Jeep parked alongside it. “He must have taken the wrong turnoff,” Muldoon said. “The little bastard.” “What’d he take?” Gennaro asked. “Wu says fifteen embryos. Know what that’s worth?” Gennaro shook his head. “Somewhere between two and ten million,” Muldoon said. He shook his head. “Big stakes.” As they came closer, Gennaro saw the body lying beside the car. The body was indistinct and green—but then green shapes scattered away, as the Jeep pulled to a stop. “Compys,” Muldoon said. “The compys found him.” A dozen procompsognathids, delicate little predators no larger than ducks, stood at the edge of the jungle, chittering excitedly as the men climbed out of the car. Dennis Nedry lay on his back, the chubby boyish face now red and bloated. Flies buzzed around the gaping mouth and thick tongue. His body was mangled—the intestines torn open, one leg chewed through. Gennaro turned away quickly, to look at the little compys, which squatted on their hind legs a short distance away and watched the men curiously. The little dinosaurs had five-fingered hands, he noticed. They wiped their faces and chins, giving them an eerily human quality which— “I’ll be damned,” Muldoon said. “Wasn’t the compys.” “What?” Muldoon was shaking his head. “See these blotches? On his shirt and his face? Smell that sweet smell like old, dried vomit?” Gennaro rolled his eyes. He smelled it. “That’s dilo saliva,” Muldoon said. “Spit from the dilophosaurs. You see the damage on the corneas, all that redness. In the eyes it’s painful but not fatal. You’ve got about two hours to wash it out with the antivenin; we keep it all around the park, just in case. Not that it mattered to this bastard. They blinded him, then ripped him down the middle. Not a nice way to go."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c44_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Maybe there’s justice in the world after all.” The procompsognathids squeaked and hopped up and down as Gennaro opened the back door and took out gray metal tubing and a stainless-steel case. “It’s all still there,” he said. He handed two dark cylinders to Gennaro. “What’re these?” Gennaro said. “Just what they look like,” Muldoon said. “Rockets.” As Gennaro backed away, he said, “Watch it—you don’t want to step in something.” Gennaro stepped carefully over Nedry’s body. Muldoon carried the tubing to the other Jeep, and placed it in the back. He climbed behind the wheel. “Let’s go.” “What about him?” Gennaro said, pointing to the body. “What about him?” Muldoon said. “We’ve got things to do.” He put the car in gear. Looking back, Gennaro saw the compys resume their feeding. One jumped up and squatted on Nedry’s open mouth as it nibbled the flesh of his nose. The jungle river became narrower. The banks closed in on both sides until the trees and foliage overhanging the banks met high above to block out the sun. Tim heard the cry of birds, and saw small chirping dinosaurs leaping among the branches. But mostly it was silent, the air hot and still beneath the canopy of trees. Grant looked at his watch. It was eight o’clock. They drifted along peacefully, among dappled patches of light. If anything, they seemed to be moving faster than before. Awake now, Grant lay on his back and stared up at the branches overhead. In the bow, he saw her reaching up. “Hey, what’re you doing?” he said. “You think we can eat these berries?” She pointed to the trees. Some of the overhanging branches were close enough to touch. Tim saw clusters of bright red berries on the branches. “No,” Grant said. “Why? Those little dinosaurs are eating them.” She pointed to small dinosaurs, scampering in the branches. “No, Lex.” She sighed, dissatisfied with his authority. “I wish Daddy was here,” she said. “Daddy always knows what to do.” “What’re you talking about?” Tim said. “He never knows what to do.” “Yes, he does,” she sighed. Lex stared at the trees as they slid past, their big roots twisting toward the water’s edge. “Just because you’re not his favorite …” Tim turned away, said nothing. “But don’t worry, Daddy likes you, too. Even if you’re into computers and not sports.” “Dad’s a real sports nut,” Tim explained to Grant. Grant nodded. Up in the branches, small pale yellow dinosaurs, barely two feet tall, hopped from tree to tree. They had beaky heads, like parrots. “You know what they call those?” Tim said. “Microceratops.” “Big deal,” Lex said. “I thought you might be interested.” “Only very young boys,” she said, “are interested in dinosaurs.” “Says who?” “Daddy.” Tim started to yell, but Grant raised his hand. “Kids,” he said, “shut up.” “Why?” Lex said, “I can do what I want, if I—” Then she fell silent, because she heard it, too."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c44_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It was a bloodcurdling shriek, from somewhere downriver. “Well, where the hell is the damn rex?” Muldoon said, talking into the radio. “Because we don’t see him here.” They were back at the sauropod compound, looking out at the trampled grass where the hadrosaurs had stampeded. The tyrannosaur was nowhere to be found. “Checking now,” Arnold said, and clicked off. Muldoon turned to Gennaro. “Checking now,” he repeated sarcastically. “Why the hell didn’t he check before? Why didn’t he keep track of him?” “I don’t know,” Gennaro said. “He’s not showing up,” Arnold said, a moment later. “What do you mean, he’s not showing up?” “He’s not on the monitors. Motion sensors aren’t finding him.” “Hell,” Muldoon said. “So much for the motion sensors. You see Grant and the kids?” “Motion sensors aren’t finding them, either.” “Well, what are we supposed to do now?” Muldoon said. “Wait,” Arnold said. “Look! Look!” Directly ahead, the big dome of the aviary rose above them. Grant had seen it only from a distance; now he realized it was enormous—a quarter of a mile in diameter or more. The pattern of geodesic struts shone dully through the light mist, and his first thought was that the glass must weigh a ton. Then, as they came closer, he saw there wasn’t any glass—just struts. A thin mesh hung inside the elements. “It isn’t finished,” Lex said. “I think it’s meant to be open like that,” Grant said. “Then all the birds can fly out.” “Not if they’re big birds,” Grant said. The river carried them beneath the edge of the dome. They stared upward. Now they were inside the dome, still drifting down the river. But within minutes the dome was so high above them that it was hardly visible in the mist. Grant said, “I seem to remember there’s a second lodge here.” Moments later, he saw the roof of a building over the tops of the trees to the north. “You want to stop?” Tim said. “Maybe there’s a phone. Or motion sensors.” Grant steered toward the shore. “We need to try to contact the control room. It’s getting late.” They clambered out, slipping on the muddy bank, and Grant hauled the raft out of the water. Then he tied the rope to a tree and they set off, through a dense forest of palm trees."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c45_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park AVIARY “I just don’t understand,” John Arnold said, speaking into the phone. “I don’t see the rex, and I don’t see Grant and the kids anywhere, either.” He sat in front of the consoles and gulped another cup of coffee. All around him, the control room was strewn with paper plates and half-eaten sandwiches. Arnold was exhausted. It was 8:00 a.m. on Saturday. In the fourteen hours since Nedry destroyed the computer that ran Jurassic Park, Arnold had patiently pulled systems back on line, one after another. “All the park systems are back, and functioning correctly. The phones are working. I’ve called for a doctor for you.” On the other end of the line, Malcolm coughed. Arnold was talking to him in his room at the lodge. “But you’re having trouble with the motion sensors?” “Well, I’m not finding what I am looking for.” “Like the rex?” “He’s not reading at all now. He started north about twenty minutes ago, following along the edge of the lagoon, and then I lost him. I don’t know why, unless he’s gone to sleep again.” “And you can’t find Grant and the kids?” “No.” “I think it’s quite simple,” Malcolm said. “The motion sensors cover an inadequate area.” “Inadequate?” Arnold bristled. “They cover ninety-two—” “Ninety-two percent of the land area, I remember,” Malcolm said. “But if you put the remaining areas up on the board, I think you’ll find that the eight percent is topologically unified, meaning that those areas are contiguous. In essence, an animal can move freely anywhere in the park and escape detection, by following a maintenance road or the jungle river or the beaches or whatever.” “Even if that were so,” Arnold said, “the animals are too stupid to know that.” “It’s not clear how stupid the animals are,” Malcolm said. “You think that’s what Grant and the kids are doing?” Arnold said. “Definitely not,” Malcolm said, coughing again. “Grant’s no fool. He clearly wants to be detected by you. He and the kids are probably waving at every motion sensor in sight. But maybe they have other problems we don’t know about. Or maybe they’re on the river.” “I can’t imagine they’d be on the river. The banks are very narrow. It’s impossible to walk along there.” “Would the river bring them all the way back here?” “Yes, but it’s not the safest way to go, because it passes through the aviary.…” “Why wasn’t the aviary on the tour?” Malcolm said. “We’ve had problems setting it up. Originally the park was intended to have a treetop lodge built high above the ground, where visitors could observe the pterodactyls at flight level. We’ve got four dactyls in the aviary now—actually, they’re cearadactyls, which are big fish-eating dactyls.” “What about them?” “Well, while we finished the lodge, we put the dactyls in the aviary to acclimate them. But that was a big mistake. It turns out our fish-hunters are territorial.” “Territorial?” “Fiercely territorial,” Arnold said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c45_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“They fight among themselves for territory—and they’ll attack any other animal that comes into the area they’ve marked out.” “Attack?” “It’s impressive,” Arnold said. “The dactyls glide to the top of the aviary, fold up their wings, and dive. A thirty-pound animal will strike a man on the ground like a ton of bricks. They were knocking the workmen unconscious, cutting them up pretty badly.” “That doesn’t injure the dactyls?” “Not so far.” “So, if those kids are in the aviary …” “They’re not,” Arnold said. “At least, I hope they’re not.” “Is that the lodge?” Lex said. “What a dump.” Beneath the aviary dome, Pteratops Lodge was built high above the ground, on big wooden pylons, in the middle of a stand of fir trees. But the building was unfinished and unpainted; the windows were boarded up. The trees and the lodge were splattered with broad white streaks. “I guess they didn’t finish it, for some reason,” Grant said, hiding his disappointment. He glanced at his watch. “Come on, let’s go back to the boat.” The sun came out as they walked along, making the morning more cheerful. Grant looked at the latticework shadows on the ground from the dome above. He noticed that the ground and the foliage were spattered with broad streaks of the same white chalky substance that had been on the building. And there was a distinctive, sour odor in the morning air. “Stinks here,” Lex said. “What’s all the white stuff?” “Looks like reptile droppings. Probably from the birds.” “How come they didn’t finish the lodge?” “I don’t know.” They entered a clearing of low grass, dotted with wild flowers. They heard a long, low whistle. Then an answering whistle, from across the forest. “What’s that?” “I don’t know.” Then Grant saw the dark shadow of a cloud on the grassy field ahead. The shadow was moving fast. In moments, it had swept over them. He looked up and saw an enormous dark shape gliding above them, blotting out the sun. “Yow!” Lex said. “Is it a pterodactyl?” “Yes,” Tim said. Grant didn’t answer. He was entranced by the sight of the huge flying creature. In the sky above, the pterodactyl gave a low whistle and wheeled gracefully, turning back toward them. “How come they’re not on the tour?” Tim said. Grant was wondering the same thing. The flying dinosaurs were so beautiful, so graceful as they moved through the air. As Grant watched, he saw a second pterodactyl appear in the sky, and a third, and a fourth. “Maybe because they didn’t finish the lodge,” Lex said. Grant was thinking these weren’t ordinary pterodactyls. They were too large. They must be cearadactyls, big flying reptiles from the early Cretaceous. When they were high, these looked like small airplanes. When they came lower, he could see the animals had fifteen-foot wingspans, furry bodies, and heads like crocodiles’. They ate fish, he remembered. South America and Mexico."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c45_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lex shaded her eyes and looked up at the sky. “Can they hurt us?” “I don’t think so. They eat fish.” One of the dactyls spiraled down, a flashing dark shadow that whooshed past them with a rush of warm air and a lingering sour odor. “Wow!” Lex said. “They’re really big.” And then she said, “Are you sure they can’t hurt us?” “Pretty sure.” A second dactyl swooped down, moving faster than the first. It came from behind, streaked over their heads. Grant had a glimpse of its toothy beak and the furry body. It looked like a huge bat, he thought. But Grant was impressed with the frail appearance of the animals. Their huge wingspans—the delicate pink membranes stretched across them—so thin they were translucent—everything reinforced the delicacy of the dactyls. “Ow!” Lex shouted, grabbing her hair. “He bit me!” “He what?” Grant said. “He bit me! He bit me!” When she took her hand away, he saw blood on her fingers. Up in the sky, two more dactyls folded their wings, collapsing into small dark shapes that plummeted toward the ground. They made a kind of scream as they hurtled downward. “Come on!” Grant said, grabbing their hands. They ran across the meadow, hearing the approaching scream, and he flung himself on the ground at the last moment, pulling the kids down with him, as the two dactyls whistled and squeaked past them, flapping their wings. Grant felt claws tear the shirt along his back. Then he was up, pulling Lex back onto her feet, and running with Tim a few feet forward while overhead two more birds wheeled and dove toward them, screaming. At the last moment, he pushed the kids to the ground, and the big shadows flapped past. “Uck,” Lex said, disgusted. He saw that she was streaked with white droppings from the birds. Grant scrambled to his feet. “Come on!” He was about to run when Lex shrieked in terror. He turned back and saw that one of the dactyls had grabbed her by the shoulders with its hind claws. The animal’s huge leathery wings, translucent in the sunlight, flapped broadly on both sides of her. The dactyl was trying to take off, but Lex was too heavy, and while it struggled it repeatedly jabbed at her head with its long pointed jaw. Lex was screaming, waving her arms wildly. Grant did the only thing he could think to do. He ran forward and jumped up, throwing himself against the body of the dactyl. He knocked it onto its back on the ground, and fell on top of the furry body. The animal screamed and snapped; Grant ducked his head away from the jaws and pushed back, as the giant wings beat around his body. It was like being in a tent in a windstorm. He couldn’t see; he couldn’t hear; there was nothing but the flapping and shrieking and the leathery membranes. The clawed legs scratched frantically at his chest."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c45_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lex was screaming. Grant pushed away from the dactyl and it squeaked and gibbered as it flapped its wings and struggled to turn over, to right itself. Finally it pulled in its wings like a bat and rolled over, lifted itself up on its little wing claws, and began to walk that way. He paused, astonished. It could walk on its wings! Lederer’s speculation was right! But then the other dactyls were diving down at them and Grant was dizzy, off balance, and in horror he saw Lex run away, her arms over her head … Tim shouting at the top of his lungs.… The first of them swooped down and she threw something and suddenly the dactyl whistled and climbed. The other dactyls immediately climbed and chased the first into the sky. The fourth dactyl flapped awkwardly into the air to join the others. Grant looked upward, squinting to see what had happened. The three dactyls chased the first, screaming angrily. They were alone in the field. “What happened?” Grant said. “They got my glove,” Lex said. “My Darryl Strawberry special.” They started walking again. Tim put his arm around her shoulders. “Are you all right?” “Of course, stupid,” she said, shaking him off. She looked upward. “I hope they choke and die,” she said. “Yeah,” Tim said. “Me, too.” Up ahead, they saw the boat on the shore. Grant looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty. He now had two and a half hours to get back. Lex cheered as they drifted beyond the silver aviary dome. Then the banks of the river closed in on both sides, the trees meeting overhead once more. The river was narrower than ever, in some places only ten feet wide, and the current flowed very fast. Lex reached up to touch the branches as they went past. Grant sat back in the raft and listened to the gurgle of the water through the warm rubber. They were moving faster now, the branches overhead slipping by more rapidly. It was pleasant. It gave a little breeze in the hot confines of the overhanging branches. And it meant they would get back that much sooner. Grant couldn’t guess how far they had come, but it must be several miles at least from the sauropod building where they had spent the night. Perhaps four or five miles. Maybe even more. That meant they might be only an hour’s walk from the hotel, once they left the raft. But after the aviary, Grant was in no hurry to leave the river again. For the moment, they were making good time. “I wonder how Ralph is,” Lex said. “He’s probably dead or something.” “I’m sure he’s fine.” “I wonder if he’d let me ride him.” She sighed, sleepy in the sun. “That would be fun, to ride Ralph.” Tim said to Grant, “Remember back at the stegosaurus? Last night?” “Yes.” “How come you asked them about frog DNA?” “Because of the breeding,” Grant said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c45_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“They can’t explain why the dinosaurs are breeding, since they irradiate them, and since they’re all females.” “Right.” “Well, irradiation is notoriously unreliable and probably doesn’t work. I think that’ll eventually be shown here. But there is still the problem of the dinosaurs’ being female. How can they breed when they’re all female?” “Right,” Tim said. “Well, across the animal kingdom, sexual reproduction exists in extraordinary variety.” “Tim’s very interested in sex,” Lex said. They both ignored her. “For example,” Grant said, “many animals have sexual reproduction without ever having what we would call sex. The male releases a spermatophore, which contains the sperm, and the female picks it up at a later time. This kind of exchange does not require quite as much physical differentiation between male and female as we usually think exists. Male and female are more alike in some animals than they are in human beings.” Tim nodded. “But what about the frogs?” Grant heard sudden shrieks from the trees above, as the microceratopsians scattered in alarm, shaking the branches. The big head of the tyrannosaur lunged through the foliage from the left, the jaws snapping at the raft. Lex howled in terror, and Grant paddled away toward the opposite bank, but the river here was only ten feet wide. The tyrannosaur was caught in the heavy growth; it butted and twisted its head, and roared. Then it pulled its head back. Through the trees that lined the riverbank, they saw the huge dark form of the tyrannosaur, moving north, looking for a gap in the trees that lined the bank. The microceratopsians had all gone to the opposite bank, where they shrieked and scampered and jumped up and down. In the raft, Grant, Tim, and Lex stared helplessly as the tyrannosaur tried to break through again. But the trees were too dense along the banks of the river. The tyrannosaur again moved downstream, ahead of the boat, and tried again, shaking the branches furiously. But again it failed. Then it moved off, heading farther downstream. “I hate him,” Lex said. Grant sat back in the boat, badly shaken. If the tyrannosaur had broken through, there was nothing he could have done to save them. The river was so narrow that it was hardly wider than the raft. It was like being in a tunnel. The rubber gunwales often scraped on the mud as the boat was pulled along by the swift current. He glanced at his watch. Almost nine. The raft continued down-stream. “Hey,” Lex said, “listen!” He heard snarling, interspersed by a repeated hooting cry. The cries were coming from beyond a curve, farther downriver. He listened, and heard the hooting again. “What is it?” Lex said. “I don’t know,” Grant said. “But there’s more than one of them.” He paddled the boat to the opposite bank, grabbed a branch to stop the raft. The snarling was repeated. Then more hooting. “It sounds like a bunch of owls,” Tim said. Malcolm groaned."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c45_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Isn’t it time for more morphine yet?” “Not yet,” Ellie said. Malcolm sighed. “How much water have we got here?” “I don’t know. There’s plenty of running water from the tap—” “No, I mean, how much stored? Any?” Ellie shrugged. “None.” “Go into the rooms on this floor,” Malcolm said, “and fill the bathtubs with water.” Ellie frowned. “Also,” Malcolm said, “have we got any walkie-talkies? Flashlights? Matches? Sterno stoves? Things like that?” “I’ll look around. You planning for an earthquake?” “Something like that,” Malcolm said. “Malcolm Effect implies catastrophic changes.” “But Arnold says all the systems are working perfectly.” “That’s when it happens,” Malcolm said. Ellie said, “You don’t think much of Arnold, do you?” “He’s all right. He’s an engineer. Wu’s the same. They’re both technicians. They don’t have intelligence. They have what I call ‘thintelligence.’ They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it ‘being focused.’ They don’t see the surround. They don’t see the consequences. That’s how you get an island like this. From thintelligent thinking. Because you cannot make an animal and not expect it to act alive. To be unpredictable. To escape. But they don’t see that.” “Don’t you think it’s just human nature?” Ellie said. “God, no,” Malcolm said. “That’s like saying scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast is human nature. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s uniquely Western training, and much of the rest of the world is nauseated by the thought of it.” He winced in pain. “The morphine’s making me philosophical.” “You want some water?” “No. I’ll tell you the problem with engineers and scientists. Scientists have an elaborate line of bullshit about how they are seeking to know the truth about nature. Which is true, but that’s not what drives them. Nobody is driven by abstractions like ‘seeking truth.’ “Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something. They conveniently define such considerations as pointless. If they don’t do it, someone else will. Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That’s the game in science. Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act. It takes big equipment, and it literally changes the world afterward. Particle accelerators scar the land, and leave radioactive byproducts. Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always. “The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can’t just watch. They can’t just appreciate. They can’t just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist’s job, and now we have whole societies that try to be scientific.” He sighed, and sank back."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c45_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Ellie said, “Don’t you think you’re overstating—” “What does one of your excavations look like a year later?” “Pretty bad,” she admitted. “You don’t replant, you don’t restore the land after you dig?” “No.” “Why not?” She shrugged. “There’s no money, I guess.…” “There’s only enough money to dig, but not to repair?” “Well, we’re just working in the badlands.…” “Just the badlands,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. “Just trash. Just byproducts. Just side effects… I’m trying to tell you that scientists want it this way. They want byproducts and trash and scars and side effects. It’s a way of reassuring themselves. It’s built into the fabric of science, and it’s increasingly a disaster.” “Then what’s the answer?” “Get rid of the thintelligent ones. Take them out of power.” “But then we’d lose all the advances—” “What advances?” Malcolm said irritably. “The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics … Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?” Ellie said nothing. “Because there haven’t been any advances,” Malcolm said. “Not really. Thirty thousand years ago; when men were doing cave paintings at Lascaux, they worked twenty hours a week to provide themselves with food and shelter and clothing. The rest of the time, they could play, or sleep, or do whatever they wanted. And they lived in a natural world, with clean air, clean water, beautiful trees and sunsets. Think about it. Twenty hours a week. Thirty thousand years ago.” Ellie said, “You want to turn back the clock?” “No,” Malcolm said. “I want people to wake up. We’ve had four hundred years of modern science, and we ought to know by now what it’s good for, and what it’s not good for. It’s time for a change.” “Before we destroy the planet?” she said. He sighed, and closed his eyes. “Oh dear,” he said. “That’s the last thing I would worry about.” In the dark tunnel of the jungle river, Grant went hand over hand, holding branches, moving the raft cautiously forward. He still heard the sounds. And finally he saw the dinosaurs. “Aren’t those the ones that are poison?” “Yes,” Grant said. “Dilophosaurus.” Standing on the riverbank were two dilophosaurs. The ten-foot-tall bodies were spotted yellow and black. Underneath, the bellies were bright green, like lizards. Twin red curving crests ran along the top of the head from the eyes to the nose, making a V shape above the head. The bird-like quality was reinforced by the way they moved, bending to drink from the river, then rising to snarl and hoot. Lex whispered, “Should we get out and walk?” Grant shook his head no. The dilophosaurs were smaller than the tyrannosaur, small enough to slip through the dense foliage at the banks of the river. And they seemed quick, as they snarled and hooted at each other."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c45_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“But we can’t get past them in the boat,” Lex said. “They’re poison.” “We have to,” Grant said. “Somehow.” The dilophosaurs continued to drink and hoot. They seemed to be interacting with each other in a strangely ritualistic, repetitive way. The animal on the left would bend to drink, opening its mouth to bare long rows of sharp teeth, and then it would hoot. The animal on the right would hoot in reply and bend to drink, in a mirror image of the first animal’s movements. Then the sequence would be repeated, exactly the same way. Grant noticed that the animal on the right was smaller, with smaller spots on its back, and its crest was a duller red— “I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s a mating ritual.” “Can we get past them?” Tim asked. “Not the way they are now. They’re right by the edge of the water.” Grant knew animals often performed such mating rituals for hours at a time. They went without food, they paid attention to nothing else.… He glanced at his watch. Nine-twenty. “What do we do?” Tim said. Grant sighed. “I have no idea.” He sat down in the raft, and then the dilophosaurs began to honk and roar repeatedly, in agitation. He looked up. The animals were both facing away from the river. “What is it?” Lex said. Grant smiled. “I think we’re finally getting some help.” He pushed off from the bank. “I want you two kids to lie flat on the rubber. We’ll go past as fast as we can. But just remember: whatever happens, don’t say anything, and don’t move. Okay?” The raft began to drift downstream, toward the hooting dilophosaurs. It gained speed. Lex lay at Grant’s feet, staring at him with frightened eyes. They were coming closer to the dilophosaurs, which were still turned away from the river. But he pulled out his air pistol, checked the chamber. The raft continued on, and they smelled a peculiar odor, sweet and nauseating at the same time. It smelled like dried vomit. The hooting of the dilophosaurs was louder. The raft came around a final bend and Grant caught his breath. The dilophosaurs were just a few feet away, honking at the trees beyond the river. As Grant had suspected, they were honking at the tyrannosaur. The tyrannosaur was trying to break through the foliage, and the dilos hooted and stomped their feet in the mud. The raft drifted past them. The smell was nauseating. The tyrannosaur roared, probably because it saw the raft. But in another moment… A thump. The raft stopped moving. They were aground, against the riverbank, just a few feet downstream from the dilophosaurs. Lex whispered, “Oh, great.” There was a long slow scraping sound of the raft against the mud. Then the raft was moving again. They were going down the river. The tyrannosaur roared a final time and moved off; one dilophosaur looked surprised, then hooted. The other dilophosaur hooted in reply."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c45_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The raft floated downriver."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c46_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park TYRANNOSAUR The Jeep bounced along in the glaring sun. Muldoon was driving, with Gennaro at his side. They were in an open field, moving away from the dense line of foliage and palm trees that marked the course of the river, a hundred yards to the east. They came to a rise, and Muldoon stopped the car. “Christ, it’s hot,” he said, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. He drank from the bottle of whiskey between his knees, then offered it to Gennaro. Gennaro shook his head. He stared at the landscape shimmering in the morning heat. Then he looked down at the onboard computer and video monitor mounted in the dashboard. The monitor showed views of the park from remote cameras. Still no sign of Grant and the children. Or of the tyrannosaur. The radio crackled. “Muldoon.” Muldoon picked up the handset. “Yeah.” “You got your onboards? I found the rex. He’s in grid 442. Going to 443.” “Just a minute,” Muldoon said, adjusting the monitor. “Yeah. I got him now. Following the river.” The animal was slinking along the foliage that lined the banks of the river, going north. “Take it easy with him. Just immobilize him.” “Don’t worry,” Muldoon said, squinting in the sun. “I won’t hurt him.” “Remember,” Arnold said, “the tyrannosaur’s our main tourist attraction.” Muldoon turned off his radio with a crackle of static. “Bloody fool,” he said. “They’re still talking about tourists.” Muldoon started the engine. “Let’s go see Rexy and give him a dose.” The Jeep jolted over the terrain. “You’re looking forward to this,” Gennaro said. “I’ve wanted to put a needle in this big bastard for a while,” Muldoon said. “And there he is.” They came to a wrenching stop. Through the windshield, Gennaro saw the tyrannosaur directly ahead of them, moving among the palm trees along the river. Muldoon drained the whiskey bottle and threw it in the backseat. He reached back for his tubing. Gennaro looked at the video monitor, which showed their Jeep and the tyrannosaur. There must be a closed-circuit camera in the trees somewhere behind. “You want to help,” Muldoon said, “you can break out those canisters by your feet.” Gennaro bent over and opened a stainless-steel Halliburton case. It was padded inside with foam. Four cylinders, each the size of a quart milk bottle, were nestled in the foam. They were all labeled MORO-709. He took one out. “You snap off the tip and screw on a needle,” Muldoon explained. Gennaro found a plastic package of large needles, each the diameter of his fingertip. He screwed one onto the canister. The opposite end of the canister had a circular lead weight. “That’s the plunger. Compresses on impact.” Muldoon sat forward with the air rifle across his knees. It was made of heavy gray tubular metal and looked to Gennaro like a bazooka or a rocket launcher. “What’s MORO-709?” “Standard animal trank,” Muldoon said. “Zoos around the world use it."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c46_r1.htm.txt", "text": "We’ll try a thousand cc’s to start.” Muldoon cracked open the chamber, which was large enough to insert his fist. He slipped the canister into the chamber and closed it. “That should do it,” Muldoon said. “Standard elephant gets about two hundred cc’s, but they’re only two or three tons each. Tyrannosaurus rex is eight tons, and a lot meaner. That matters to the dose.” “Why?” “Animal dose is partly body weight and partly temperament. You shoot the same dose of 709 into an elephant, a hippo, and a rhino—you’ll immobilize the elephant, so it just stands there like a statue. You’ll slow down the hippo, so it gets kind of sleepy but it keeps moving. And the rhino will just get fighting mad. But, on the other hand, you chase a rhino for more than five minutes in a car and he’ll drop dead from adrenaline shock. Strange combination of tough and delicate.” Muldoon drove slowly toward the river, moving closer to the tyrannosaur. “But those are all mammals. We know a lot about handling mammals, because zoos are built around the big mammalian attractions—lions, tigers, bears, elephants. We know a lot less about reptiles. And nobody knows anything about dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are new animals.” “You consider them reptiles?” Gennaro said. “No,” Muldoon said, shifting gears. “Dinosaurs don’t fit existing categories.” He swerved to avoid a rock. “Actually, what we find is, the dinosaurs were as variable as mammals are today. Some dinos are tame and cute, and some are mean and nasty. Some of them see well, and some of them don’t. Some of them are stupid, and some of them are very, very intelligent.” “Like the raptors?” Gennaro said. Muldoon nodded. “Raptors are smart. Very smart. Believe me, all the problems we have so far,” he said, “are nothing compared with what we’d have if the raptors ever got out of their holding pen. Ah. I think this is as close as we can get to our Rexy.” Up ahead, the tyrannosaur was poking its head through the branches, peering toward the river. Trying to get through. Then the animal moved a few yards downstream, to try again. “Wonder what he sees in there?” Gennaro said. “Hard to know,” Muldoon said. “Maybe he’s trying to get to the microceratopsians that scramble around in the branches. They’ll run him a merry chase.” Muldoon stopped the Jeep about fifty yards away from the tyrannosaur, and turned the vehicle around. He left the motor running. “Get behind the wheel,” Muldoon said. “And put your seat belt on.” He took another canister and hooked it onto his shirt. Then he got out. Gennaro slid behind the wheel. “You done this very often before?” Muldoon belched. “Never. I’ll try to get him just behind the auditory meatus. We’ll see how it goes from there.” He walked ten yards behind the Jeep and crouched down in the grass on one knee."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c46_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He steadied the big gun against his shoulder, and flipped up the thick telescopic sight. Muldoon aimed at the tyrannosaur, which still ignored them. There was a burst of pale gas, and Gennaro saw a white streak shoot forward in the air toward the tyrannosaur. But nothing seemed to happen. Then the tyrannosaur turned slowly, curiously, to peer at them. It moved its head from side to side, as if looking at them with alternate eyes. Muldoon had taken down the launcher, and was loading the second canister. “You hit him?” Gennaro said. Muldoon shook his head. “Missed. Damn laser sights … See if there’s a battery in the case.” “A what?” Gennaro said. “A battery,” Muldoon said. “It’s about as big as your finger. Gray markings.” Gennaro bent over to look in the steel case. He felt the vibration of the Jeep, heard the motor ticking over. He didn’t see a battery. The tyrannosaur roared. To Gennaro it was a terrifying sound, rumbling from the great chest cavity of the animal, bellowing out over the landscape. He sat up sharply and reached for the steering wheel, put his hand on the gearshift. On the radio, he heard a voice say, “Muldoon. This is Arnold. Get out of there. Over.” “I know what I’m doing,” Muldoon said. The tyrannosaur charged. Muldoon stood his ground. Despite the creature racing toward him, he slowly and methodically raised his launcher, aimed, and fired. Once again, Gennaro saw the puff of smoke, and the white streak of the canister going toward the animal. Nothing happened. The tyrannosaur continued to charge. Now Muldoon was on his feet and running, shouting, “Go! Go!” Gennaro put the Jeep in gear and Muldoon threw himself onto the side door as the Jeep lurched forward. The tyrannosaur was closing rapidly, and Muldoon swung the door open and climbed inside. “Go, damn it! Go!” Gennaro floored it. The Jeep bounced precariously, the front end nosing so high they saw only sky through the windshield, then slamming down again toward the ground and racing forward again. Gennaro headed for a stand of trees to the left until, in the rearview mirror, he saw the tyrannosaur give a final roar and turn away. Gennaro slowed the car. “Jesus.” Muldoon was shaking his head. “I could have sworn I hit him the second time.” “I’d say you missed,” Gennaro said. “Needle must have broken off before the plunger injected.” “Admit it, you missed.” “Yeah,” Muldoon said. He sighed. “I missed. Battery was dead in the damned laser sights. My fault. I should have checked it, after it was out all last night. Let’s go back and get more canisters.” The Jeep headed north, toward the hotel. Muldoon picked up the radio. “Control.” “Yes,” Arnold said. “We’re heading back to base.” The river was now very narrow, and flowing swiftly. The raft was going faster all the time. It was starting to feel like an amusement park ride."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c46_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Whee!” Lex yelled, holding on to the gunwale. “Faster, faster!” Grant squinted, looking forward. The river was still narrow and dark, but farther ahead he could see the trees ended, and there was bright sunlight beyond, and a distant roaring sound. The river seemed to end abruptly in a peculiar flat line.… The raft was going still faster, rushing forward. Grant grabbed for his paddles. “What is it?” “It’s a waterfall,” Grant said. The raft swept out of the overhanging darkness into brilliant morning sunlight, and raced forward on the swift current toward the lip of the waterfall. The roar was loud in their ears. Grant paddled as strongly as he could, but he only succeeded in spinning the boat in circles. It continued inexorably toward the lip. Lex leaned toward him. “I can’t swim!” Grant saw that she did not have her life vest clasped, but there was nothing he could do about it; with frightening speed, they came to the edge, and the roar of the waterfall seemed to fill the world. Grant jammed his oar deep into the water, felt it catch and hold, right at the lip; the rubber raft shuddered in the current, but they did not go over. Grant strained against the oar and, looking over the edge, saw the sheer drop of fifty feet down to the surging pool below. And standing in the surging pool, waiting for them, was the tyrannosaur. Lex was screaming in panic, and then the boat spun, and the rear end dropped away, spilling them out into air and roaring water, and they fell sickeningly. Grant flailed his arms in the air, and the world went suddenly silent and slow. It seemed to him he fell for long minutes; he had time to observe Lex, clutching her orange jacket, falling alongside him; he had time to observe Tim, looking down at the bottom; he had time to observe the frozen white sheet of the waterfall; he had time to observe the bubbling pool beneath him as he fell slowly, silently toward it. Then, with a stinging slap, Grant plunged into cold water, surrounded by white boiling bubbles. He tumbled and spun and glimpsed the leg of the tyrannosaur as he was swirled past it, swept down through the pool and out into the stream beyond. Grant swam for the shore, clutched warm rocks, slipped off, caught a branch, and finally pulled himself out of the main current. Gasping, he dragged himself on his belly onto the rocks, and looked at the river just in time to see the brown rubber raft tumble past him. Then he saw Tim, battling the current, and he reached out and pulled him, coughing and shivering, onto the shore beside him. Grant turned back to the waterfall, and saw the tyrannosaur plunge its head straight down into the water of the pool at his feet. The great head shook, splashing water to either side. It had something between its teeth."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c46_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And then the tyrannosaur lifted its head back up. Dangling from the jaws was Lex’s orange life vest. A moment later, Lex bobbed to the surface beside the dinosaur’s long tail. She lay facedown in the water, her little body swept downstream by the current. Grant plunged into the water after her, was again immersed in the churning torrent. A moment later, he pulled her up onto the rocks, a heavy, lifeless weight. Her face was gray. Water poured from her mouth. Grant bent over her to give her mouth-to-mouth but she coughed. Then she vomited yellow-green liquid and coughed again. Her eyelids fluttered. “Hi,” she said. She smiled weakly. “We did it.” Tim started to cry. She coughed again. “Will you stop it? What’re you crying for?” “Because.” “We were worried about you,” Grant said. Small flecks of white were drifting down the river. The tyrannosaur was tearing up the life vest. Still turned away from them, facing the waterfall. But at any minute the animal might turn and see them.… “Come on, kids,” he said. “Where are we going?” Lex said, coughing. “Come on.” He was looking for a hiding place. Downstream he saw only an open grassy plain, affording no protection. Upstream was the dinosaur. Then Grant saw a dirt path by the river. It seemed to lead up toward the waterfall. And in the dirt he saw the clear imprint of a man’s shoe. Leading up the path. The tyrannosaur finally turned around, growling and looking out toward the grassy plain. It seemed to have figured out that they had gotten away. It was looking for them downstream. Grant and the kids ducked among the big ferns that lined the riverbanks. Cautiously, he led them upstream. “Where are we going?” Lex said. “We’re going back.” “I know.” They were closer to the waterfall now, the roar much louder. The rocks became slippery, the path muddy. There was a constant hanging mist. It was like moving through a cloud. The path seemed to lead right into the rushing water, but as they came closer, they saw that it actually went behind the waterfall. The tyrannosaur was still looking downstream, its back turned to them. They hurried along the path to the waterfall, and had almost moved behind the sheet of falling water when Grant saw the tyrannosaur turn. Then they were completely behind the waterfall, and Grant was unable to see out through the silver sheet. Grant looked around in surprise. There was a little recess here, hardly larger than a closet, and filled with machinery: humming pumps and big filters and pipes. Everything was wet, and cold. “Did he see us?” Lex said. She had to shout over the noise of the falling water. “Where are we? What is this place? Did he see us?” “Just a minute,” Grant said. He was looking at the equipment. This was clearly park machinery."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c46_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And there must be electricity to run it, so perhaps there was also a telephone for communication. He poked among the filters and pipes. “What are you doing?” Lex shouted. “Looking for a telephone.” It was now nearly 10:00 a.m. They had just a little more than an hour to contact the ship before it reached the mainland. In the back of the recess he found a metal door marked MAINT 04, but it was firmly locked. Next to it was a slot for a security card. Alongside the door he saw a row of metal boxes. He opened the boxes one after another, but they contained only switches and timers. No telephone. And nothing to open the door. He almost missed the box to the left of the door. On opening it, he found a nine-button keypad, covered with spots of green mold. But it looked as if it was a way to open the door, and he had the feeling that on the other side of that door was a phone. Scratched in the metal of the box was the number 1023. He punched it in. With a hiss, the door came open. Gaping darkness beyond, concrete steps leading downward. On the back wall he saw stenciled MAINT VEHICLE 04/22 CHARGER and an arrow pointing down the stairs. Could it really mean there was a car? “Come on, kids.” “Forget it,” Lex said. “I’m not going in there.” “Come on, Lex,” Tim said. “Forget it,” Lex said. “There’s no lights or anything. I’m not going.” “Never mind,” Grant said. There wasn’t time to argue. “Stay here, and I’ll be right back.” “Where’re you going?” Lex said, suddenly alarmed. Grant stepped through the door. It gave an electronic beep, and snapped shut behind him, on a spring. Grant was plunged into total darkness. After a moment of surprise, he turned to the door and felt its damp surface. There was no knob, no latch. He turned to the walls on either side of the door, feeling for a switch, a control box, anything at all.… There was nothing. He was fighting panic when his fingers closed over a cold metal cylinder. He ran his hands over a swelling edge, a flat surface … a flashlight! He clicked it on, and the beam was surprisingly bright. He looked back at the door, but saw that it would not open. He would have to wait for the kids to unlock it. Meantime … He started for the steps. They were damp and slippery with mold, and he went down carefully. Partway down the stairs, he heard a sniffing and the sound of claws scratching on concrete. He took out his dart pistol, and proceeded cautiously. The steps bent around the corner, and as he shone his light, an odd reflection glinted back, and then, a moment later, he saw it: a car!"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c46_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It was an electric car, like a golf cart, and it faced a long tunnel that seemed to stretch away for miles. A bright red light glowed by the steering wheel of the car, so perhaps it was charged. Grant heard the sniffing again, and he wheeled and saw a pale shape rise up toward him, leaping through the air, its jaws open, and without thinking Grant fired. The animal landed on him, knocking him down, and he rolled away in fright, his flashlight swinging wildly. But the animal didn’t get up, and he felt foolish when he saw it. It was a velociraptor, but very young, less than a year old. It was about two feet tall, the size of a medium dog, and it lay on the ground, breathing shallowly, the dart sticking from beneath its jaw. There was probably too much anesthetic for its body weight, and Grant pulled the dart out quickly. The velociraptor looked at him with slightly glazed eyes. Grant had a clear feeling of intelligence from this creature, a kind of softness which contrasted strangely with the menace he had felt from the adults in the pen. He stroked the head of the velociraptor, hoping to calm it. He looked down at the body, which was shivering slightly as the tranquilizer took hold. And then he saw it was a male. A young juvenile, and a male. There was no question what he was seeing. This velociraptor had been bred in the wild. Excited by this development, he hurried back up the stairs to the door. With his flashlight, he scanned the flat, featureless surface of the door, and the interior walls. As he ran his hands over the door, it slowly dawned on him that he was locked inside, and unable to open it, unless the kids had the presence of mind to open it for him. He could hear them, faintly, on the other side of the door. “Dr. Grant!” Lex shouted, pounding the door. “Dr. Grant!” “Take it easy,” Tim said. “He’ll be back.” “But where did he go?” “Listen, Dr. Grant knows what he’s doing,” Tim said. “He’ll be back in a minute.” “He should come back now,” Lex said. She bunched her fists on her hips, pushed her elbows wide. She stamped her foot angrily. And then, with a roar, the tyrannosaur’s head burst through the waterfall toward them. Tim stared in horror as the big mouth gaped wide. Lex shrieked and threw herself on the ground. The head swung back and forth, and pulled out again. But Tim could see the shadow of the animal’s head on the sheet of falling water. He pulled Lex deeper into the recess, just as the jaws burst through again, roaring, the thick tongue flicking in and out rapidly. Water sprayed in all directions from the head. Then it pulled out again. Lex huddled next to Tim, shivering. “I hate him,” she said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c46_r1.htm.txt", "text": "She huddled back, but the recess was only a few feet deep, and crammed with machinery. There wasn’t any place for them to hide. The head came through the water again, but slowly this time, and the jaw came to rest on the ground. The tyrannosaur snorted, flaring its nostrils, breathing the air. But the eyes were still outside the sheet of water. Tim thought: He can’t see us. He knows we’re in here, but he can’t see through the water. The tyrannosaur sniffed. “What is he doing?” Lex said again. “Sshhhh.” With a low growl, the jaws slowly opened, and the tongue snaked out. It was thick and blue-black, with a little forked indentation at the tip. It was four feet long, and easily reached back to the far wall of the recess. The tongue slid with a rasping scrape over the filter cylinders. Tim and Lex pressed back against the pipes. The tongue moved slowly to the left, then to the right, slapping wetly against the machinery. The tip curled around the pipes and valves, sensing them. Tim saw that the tongue had muscular movements, like an elephant’s trunk. The tongue drew back along the right side of the recess. It dragged against Lex’s legs. “Eeww,” Lex said. The tongue stopped. It curled, then began to rise like a snake up the side of her body— “Don’t move,” Tim whispered. … past her face, then up along Tim’s shoulder, and finally wrapping around his head. Tim squeezed his eyes shut as the slimy muscle covered his face. It was hot and wet and it stunk like urine. Wrapped around him, the tongue began to drag him, very slowly, toward the open jaws. “Timmy …” Tim couldn’t answer; his mouth was covered by the flat black tongue. He could see, but he couldn’t talk. Lex tugged at his hand. “Come on, Timmy!” The tongue dragged him toward the snorting mouth. He felt the hot panting breath on his legs. Lex was tugging at him but she was no match for the muscular power that held him. Tim let go of her and pressed the tongue with both hands, trying to shove it over his head. He couldn’t move it. He dug his heels into the muddy ground but he was dragged forward anyway. Lex had wrapped her arms around his waist and was pulling backward, shouting to him, but he was powerless to do anything. He was beginning to see stars. A kind of peacefulness overcame him, a sense of peaceful inevitability as he was dragged along. “Timmy?” And then suddenly the tongue relaxed, and uncoiled. Tim felt it slipping off his face. His body was covered in disgusting white foamy slime, and the tongue fell limply to the ground. The jaws slapped shut, biting down on the tongue. Dark blood gushed out, mixing with the mud. The nostrils still snorted in ragged breaths. “What’s he doing?” Lex cried."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c46_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And then slowly, very slowly, the head began to slide backward, out of the recess, leaving a long scrape in the mud. And finally it disappeared entirely, and they could see only the silver sheet of falling water."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c47_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park CONTROL “Okay,” Arnold said, in the control room. “The rex is down.” He pushed back in his chair, and grinned as he lit a final cigarette and crumpled the pack. That did it: the final step in putting the park back in order. Now all they had to do was go out and move it. “Son of a bitch,” Muldoon said, looking at the monitor. “I got him after all.” He turned to Gennaro. “It just took him an hour to feel it.” Henry Wu frowned at the screen. “But he could drown, in that position.…” “He won’t drown,” Muldoon said. “Never seen an animal that was harder to kill.” “I think we have to go out and move him,” Arnold said. “We will,” Muldoon said. He didn’t sound enthusiastic. “That’s a valuable animal.” “I know it’s a valuable animal,” Muldoon said. Arnold turned to Gennaro. He couldn’t resist a moment of triumph. “I’d point out to you,” he said, “that the park is now completely back to normal. Whatever Malcolm’s mathematical model said was going to happen. We are completely under control again.” Gennaro pointed to the screen behind Arnold’s head and said, “What’s that?” Arnold turned. It was the system status box, in the upper corner of the screen. Ordinarily it was empty. Arnold was surprised to see that it was now blinking yellow: AUX PWR LOW. For a moment, he didn’t understand. Why should auxiliary power be low? They were running on main power, not auxiliary power. He thought perhaps it was just a routine status check on the auxiliary power, perhaps a check on the fuel tank levels or the battery charge.… “Henry,” Arnold said to Wu. “Look at this.” Wu said, “Why are you running on auxiliary power?” “I’m not,” Arnold said. “It looks like you are.” “I can’t be.” “Print the system status log,” Wu said. The log was a record of the system over the last few hours. Arnold pressed a button, and they heard the hum of a printer in the corner. Wu walked over to it. Arnold stared at the screen. The box now turned from flashing yellow to red, and the message now read: AUX PWR FAIL. Numbers began to count backward from twenty. “What the hell is going on?” Arnold said. Cautiously, Tim moved a few yards out along the muddy path, into the sunshine. He peered around the waterfall, and saw the tyrannosaur lying on its side, floating in the pool of water below. “I hope he’s dead,” Lex said. Tim could see he wasn’t: the dinosaur’s chest was still moving, and one forearm twitched in spasms. But something was wrong with him. Then Tim saw the white canister sticking in the back of the head, by the indentation of the ear. “He’s been shot with a dart,” Tim said. “Good,” Lex said. “He practically ate us.” Tim watched the labored breathing. He felt unexpectedly distressed to see the huge animal humbled like this."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c47_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He didn’t want it to die. “It’s not his fault,” he said. “Oh sure,” Lex said. “He practically ate us and it’s not his fault.” “He’s a carnivore. He was just doing what he does.” “You wouldn’t say that,” Lex said, “if you were in his stomach right now.” Then the sound of the waterfall changed. From a deafening roar, it became softer, quieter. The thundering sheet of water thinned, became a trickle … And stopped. “Timmy. The waterfall stopped,” Lex said. It was now just dripping like a tap that wasn’t completely turned off. The pool at the base of the waterfall was still. They stood near the top, in the cave-like indentation filled with machinery, looking down. “Waterfalls aren’t supposed to stop,” Lex said. Tim shook his head. “It must be the power.… Somebody turned off the power.” Behind them, all the pumps and filters were shutting down one after another, the lights blinking off, and the machinery becoming quiet. And then there was the thunk of a solenoid releasing, and the door marked MAINT 04 swung slowly open. Grant stepped out, blinking in the light, and said, “Good work, kids. You got the door open.” “We didn’t do anything,” Lex said. “The power went out,” Tim said. “Never mind that,” Grant said. “Come and see what I’ve found.” Arnold stared in shock. One after another, the monitors went black, and then the room lights went out, plunging the control room into darkness and confusion. Everyone started yelling at once. Muldoon opened the blinds and let light in, and Wu brought over the printout. “Look at this,” Wu said. Wu said, “You shut down at five-thirteen this morning, and when you started back up, you started with auxiliary power.” “Jesus,” Arnold said. Apparently, main power had not been on since shutdown. When he powered back up, only the auxiliary power came on. Arnold was thinking that was strange, when he suddenly realized that that was normal. That was what was supposed to happen. It made perfect sense: the auxiliary generator fired up first, and it was used to turn on the main generator, because it took a heavy charge to start the main power generator. That was the way the system was designed. But Arnold had never before had occasion to turn the main power off. And when the lights and screens came back on in the control room, it never occurred to him that main power hadn’t also been restored. But it hadn’t, and all during the time since then, while they were looking for the rex, and doing one thing and another, the park had been running on auxiliary power. And that wasn’t a good idea. In fact, the implications were just beginning to hit him— “What does this line mean?” Muldoon said, pointing to the list. 05:14:57 Warning: Fence Status [NB] Operative - Aux Power [AV09] “It means a system status warning was sent to the monitors in the control room,” Arnold said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c47_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Concerning the fences.” “Did you see that warning?” Arnold shook his head. “No. I must have been talking to you in the field. Anyway, no, I didn’t see it.” “What does it mean, ‘Warning: Fence Status’?” “Well, I didn’t know it at the time, but we were running on backup power,” Arnold said. “And backup doesn’t generate enough amperage to power the electrified fences, so they were automatically kept off.” Muldoon scowled. “The electrified fences were off?” “Yes.” “All of them? Since five this morning? For the last five hours?” “Yes.” “Including the velociraptor fences?” Arnold sighed. “Yes.” “Jesus Christ,” Muldoon said. “Five hours. Those animals could be out.” And then, from somewhere in the distance, they heard a scream. Muldoon began to talk very fast. He went around the room, handing out the portable radios. “Mr. Arnold is going to the maintenance shed to turn on main power. Dr. Wu, stay in the control room. You’re the only other one who can work the computers. Mr. Hammond, go back to the lodge. Don’t argue with me. Go now. Lock the gates, and stay behind them until you hear from me. I’ll help Arnold deal with the raptors.” He turned to Gennaro. “Like to live dangerously again?” “Not really,” Gennaro said. He was very pale. “Fine. Then go with the others to the lodge.” Muldoon turned away. “That’s it, everybody. Now move.” Hammond whined, “But what are you going to do to my animals?” “That’s not really the question, Mr. Hammond,” Muldoon said. “The question is, what are they going to do to us?” He went through the door, and hurried down the hall toward his office. Gennaro fell into step alongside him. “Change your mind?” Muldoon growled. “You’ll need help,” Gennaro said. “I might.” Muldoon went into the room marked ANIMAL SUPERVISOR, picked up the gray shoulder launcher, and unlocked a panel in the wall behind his desk. There were six cylinders and six canisters. “The thing about these damn dinos,” Muldoon said, “is that they have distributed nervous systems. They don’t die fast, even with a direct hit to the brain. And they’re built solidly; thick ribs make a shot to the heart dicey, and they’re difficult to cripple in the legs or hindquarters. Slow bleeders, slow to die.” He was opening the cylinders one after another and dropping in the canisters. He tossed a thick webbed belt to Gennaro. “Put that on.” Gennaro tightened the belt, and Muldoon passed him the shells. “About all we can hope to do is blow them apart. Unfortunately we’ve only got six shells here. There’s eight raptors in that fenced compound. Let’s go. Stay close. You have the shells.” Muldoon went out and ran along the hallway, looking down over the balcony to the path leading toward the maintenance shed. Gennaro was puffing alongside him. They got to the ground floor and went out through the glass doors, and Muldoon stopped. Arnold was standing with his back to the maintenance shed."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c47_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Three raptors approached him. Arnold had picked up a stick, and he was waving it at them, shouting. The raptors fanned out as they came closer, one staying in the center, the other two moving to each side. Coordinated. Smooth. Gennaro shivered. Pack behavior. Muldoon was already crouching, setting the launcher on his shoulder. “Load,” he said. Gennaro slipped the shell in the back of the launcher. There was an electric sizzle. Nothing happened. “Christ, you’ve got it in backward,” Muldoon said, tilting the barrel so the shell fell into Gennaro’s hands. Gennaro loaded again. The raptors were snarling at Arnold when the animal on the left simply exploded, the upper part of the torso flying into the air, blood spattering like a burst tomato on the walls of the building. The lower torso collapsed on the ground, the legs kicking in the air, the tail flopping. “That’ll wake ’em up,” Muldoon said. Arnold ran for the door of the maintenance shed. The velociraptors turned, and started toward Muldoon and Gennaro. They fanned out as they came closer. In the distance, somewhere near the lodge, he heard screams. Gennaro said, “This could be a disaster.” “Load,” Muldoon said. Henry Wu heard the explosions and looked toward the door of the control room. He circled around the consoles, then paused. He wanted to go out, but he knew he should stay in the room. If Arnold was able to get the power back on—if only for a minute—then Wu could restart the main generator. He had to stay in the room. He heard someone screaming. It sounded like Muldoon. Muldoon felt a wrenching pain in his ankle, tumbled down an embankment, and hit the ground running. Looking back, he saw Gennaro running in the other direction, into the forest. The raptors were ignoring Gennaro but pursuing Muldoon. They were now less than twenty yards away. Muldoon screamed at the top of his lungs as he ran, wondering vaguely where the hell he could go. Because he knew he had perhaps ten seconds before they got him. Ten seconds. Maybe less. Ellie had to help Malcolm turn over as Harding jabbed the needle and injected morphine. Malcolm sighed and collapsed back. It seemed he was growing weaker by the minute. Over the radio, they heard tinny screaming, and muffled explosions coming from the visitor center. Hammond came into the room and said, “How is he?” “He’s holding,” Harding said. “A bit delirious.” “I am nothing of the sort,” Malcolm said. “I am utterly clear.” They listened to the radio. “It sounds like a war out there.” “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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c47_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c47_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c47_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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 with 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c47_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c47_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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 hands 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 something—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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c47_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“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 Godel’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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c47_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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?”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park 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 he 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 stacked 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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. “What kind of a distraction?” “Go to … the fence.…” “Yes? And do what?” Malcolm grinned weakly. “Stick … your hands through.” “Oh Christ,” Muldoon said, turning away. “Wait a minute,” Wu said. “He’s right. There are only two raptors here. Which means there are at least four more out there. We could go out and provide a distraction.” “And then what?” “And then Grant would be free to go to the maintenance building and turn on the generator.” “And then go back to the control room and start up the system?” “Exactly.” “No time,” Muldoon said. “No time.” “But if we can lure the raptors down here,” Wu said, “maybe even get them away from that skylight … It might work. Worth a try.” “Bait,” Muldoon said. “Exactly.” “Who’s going to be the bait? I’m no good. My ankle’s shot.” “I’ll do it,” Wu said. “No,” Muldoon said. “You’re the only one who knows what to do about the computer. You need to talk Grant through the start-up.” “Then I’ll do it,” Harding said. “No,” Ellie said. “Malcolm needs you. I’ll do it.” “Hell, I don’t think so,” Muldoon said. “You’d have raptors all around you, raptors on the roof.…” But she was already bending over, lacing her running shoes. “Just don’t tell Grant,” she said. “It’ll make him nervous.” The lobby was quiet, chilly fog drifting past them. The radio had been silent for several minutes. Tim said, “Why aren’t they talking to us?” “I’m hungry,” Lex said. “They’re trying to plan,” Grant said. The radio crackled. “Grant, are you—nry Wu speaking. Are you there?” “I’m here,” Grant said. “Listen,” Wu said. “Can you see to the rear of the visitor building from where you are?” Grant looked through the rear glass doors, to the palm trees and the fog. “Yes,” Grant said. Wu said, “There’s a path straight through the palm trees to the maintenance building. That’s where the power equipment and generators are."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I believe you saw the maintenance building yesterday?” “Yes,” Grant said. Though he was momentarily puzzled. Was it yesterday that he had looked into the building? It seemed like years ago. “Now, listen,” Wu said. “We think we can get all the raptors down here by the lodge, but we aren’t sure. So be careful. Give us five minutes.” “Okay,” Grant said. “You can leave the kids in the cafeteria, and they should be all right. Take the radio with you when you go.” “Okay.” “Turn it off before you leave, so it doesn’t make any noise outside. And call me when you get to the maintenance building.” “Okay.” Grant turned the radio off. Lex crawled back. “Are we going to the cafeteria?” she said. “Yes,” Grant said. They got up, and started walking through the blowing mist in the lobby. “I want a hamburger,” Lex said. “I don’t think there’s any electricity to cook with.” “Then ice cream.” “Tim, you’ll have to stay with her and help her.” “I will.” “I’ve got to leave for a while,” Grant said. “I know.” They moved to the cafeteria entrance. On opening the door, Grant saw square dining-room tables and chairs, swinging stainless-steel doors beyond. Nearby, a cash register and a rack with gum and candy. “Okay, kids. I want you to stay here no matter what. Got it?” “Leave us the radio,” Lex said. “I can’t. I need it. Just stay here. I’ll only be gone about five minutes. Okay?” “Okay.” Grant closed the door. The cafeteria became completely dark. Lex clutched his hand. “Turn on the lights,” she said. “I can’t,” Tim said. “There’s no electricity.” But he pulled down his night-vision goggles. “That’s fine for you. What about me?” “Just hold my hand. We’ll get some food.” He led her forward. In phosphorescent green he saw the tables and chairs. To the right, the glowing green cash register, and the rack with gum and candy. He grabbed a handful of candy bars. “I told you,” Lex said. “I want ice cream, not candy.” “Take these anyway.” “Ice cream, Tim.” “Okay, okay.” Tim stuffed the candy bars in his pocket, and led Lex deeper into the dining room. She tugged on his hand. “I can’t see spit,” she said. “Just walk with me. Hold my hand.” “Then slow down.” Beyond the tables and chairs was a pair of swinging doors with little round windows in them. They probably led to the kitchen. He pushed one door open and it held wide. Ellie Sattler stepped outside the front door to the lodge, and felt the chilly mist on her face and legs. Her heart was thumping, even though she knew she was completely safe behind the fence. Directly ahead, she saw the heavy bars in the fog. But she couldn’t see much beyond the fence. Another twenty yards before the landscape turned milky white. And she didn’t see any raptors at all."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "In fact, the gardens and trees were almost eerily silent. “Hey!” she shouted into the fog, tentatively. Muldoon leaned against the door frame. “I doubt that’ll do it,” he said. “You’ve got to make a noise.” He hobbled out carrying a steel rod from the construction inside. He banged the rod against the bars like a dinner gong. “Come and get it! Dinner is served!” “Very amusing,” Ellie said. She glanced nervously toward the roof. She saw no raptors. “They don’t understand English.” Muldoon grinned. “But I imagine they get the general idea.…” She was still nervous, and found his humor annoying. She looked toward the visitor building, cloaked in the fog. Muldoon resumed banging on the bars. At the limit of her vision, almost lost in the fog, she saw a ghostly pale animal. A raptor. “First customer,” Muldoon said. The raptor disappeared, a white shadow, and then came back, but it did not approach any closer, and it seemed strangely incurious about the noise coming from the lodge. She was starting to worry. Unless she could attract the raptors to the lodge, Grant would be in danger. “You’re making too much noise,” Ellie said. “Bloody hell,” Muldoon said. “Well, you are.” “I know these animals—” “You’re drunk,” she said. “Let me handle it.” “And how will you do that?” She didn’t answer him. She went to the gate. “They say the raptors are intelligent.” “They are. At least as intelligent as chimps.” “They have good hearing?” “Yes, excellent.” “Maybe they’ll know this sound,” she said, and opened the gate. The metal hinges, rusted from the constant mist, creaked loudly. She closed it again, opened it with another creak. She left it open. “I wouldn’t do that,” Muldoon said. “You’re going to do that, let me get the launcher.” “Get the launcher.” He sighed, remembering. “Gennaro has the shells.” “Well, then,” she said. “Keep an eye out.” And she went through the gate, stepping outside the bars. Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely feel her feet on the dirt. She moved away from the fence, and it disappeared frighteningly fast in the fog. Soon it was lost behind her. Just as she expected, Muldoon began shouting to her in drunken agitation. “God damn it, girl, don’t you do that,” he bellowed. “Don’t call me ‘girl,’ ” she shouted back. “I’ll call you any damn thing I want,” Muldoon shouted. She wasn’t listening. She was turning slowly, her body tense, watching from all sides. She was at least twenty yards from the fence now, and she could see the mist drifting like a light rain past the foliage. She stayed away from the foliage. She moved through a world of shades of gray. The muscles in her legs and shoulders ached from the tension. Her eyes strained to see. “Do you hear me, damn it?” Muldoon bellowed. How good are these animals? she wondered. Good enough to cut off my retreat?"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "There wasn’t much distance back to the fence, not really— They attacked. There was no sound. The first animal charged from the foliage at the base of a tree to the left. It sprang forward and she turned to run. The second attacked from the other side, clearly intending to catch her as she ran, and it leapt into the air, claws raised to attack, and she darted like a broken field runner, and the animal crashed down in the dirt. Now she was running flat out, not daring to look back, her breath coming in deep gasps, seeing the bars of the fence emerge from the haze, seeing Muldoon throw the gate wide, seeing him reaching for her, shouting to her, grabbing her arm and pulling her through so hard she was yanked off her feet and fell to the ground. And she turned in time to see first one, then two—then three—animals hit the fence and snarl. “Good work,” Muldoon shouted. He was taunting the animals now, snarling back, and it drove them wild. They flung themselves at the fence, leaping forward, and one of them nearly made it over the top. “Christ, that was close! These bastards can jump!” She got to her feet, looking at the scrapes and bruises, the blood running down her leg. All she could think was: three animals here. And two on the roof. That meant one was still missing, somewhere. “Come on, help me,” Muldoon said. “Let’s keep ’em interested!” Grant left the visitor center and moved quickly forward, into the mist. He found the path among the palm trees and followed it north. Up ahead, the rectangular maintenance shed emerged from the fog. There was no door that he could see at all. He walked on, around the corner. At the back, screened by planting, Grant saw a concrete loading dock for trucks. He scrambled up to face a vertical rolling door of corrugated steel; it was locked. He jumped down again and continued around the building. Farther ahead, to his right, Grant saw an ordinary door. It was propped open with a man’s shoe. Grant stepped inside and squinted in the darkness. He listened, heard nothing. He picked up his radio and turned it on. “This is Grant,” he said. “I’m inside.” Wu looked up at the skylight. The two raptors still peered down into Malcolm’s room, but they seemed distracted by the noises outside. He went to the lodge window. Outside, the three velociraptors continued to charge the fence. Ellie was running back and forth, safely behind the bars. But the raptors no longer seemed to be seriously trying to get her. Now they almost seemed to be playing, circling back from the fence, rearing up and snarling, then dropping down low, to circle again and finally charge. Their behavior had taken on the distinct quality of display, rather than serious attack. “Like birds,” Muldoon said. “Putting on a show.” Wu nodded. “They’re intelligent."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "They see they can’t get her. They’re not really trying.” The radio crackled. “—side.” Wu gripped the radio. “Say again, Dr. Grant?” “I’m inside,” Grant said. “Dr. Grant, you’re in the maintenance building?” “Yes,” Grant said. And he added, “Maybe you should call me Alan.” “All right, Alan. If you’re standing just inside the east door, you see a lot of pipes and tubing.” Wu closed his eyes, visualizing it. “Straight ahead is a big recessed well in the center of the building that goes two stories underground. To your left is a metal walkway with railings.” “I see it.” “Go along the walkway.” “I’m going.” Faintly, the radio carried the clang of his footsteps on metal. “After you go twenty or thirty feet, you will see another walkway going right.” “I see it,” Grant said. “Follow that walkway.” “Okay.” “As you continue,” Wu said, “you will come to a ladder on your left. Going down into the pit.” “I see it.” “Go down the ladder.” There was a long pause. Wu ran his fingers through his damp hair. Muldoon frowned tensely. “Okay, I’m down the ladder,” Grant said. “Good,” Wu said. “Now, straight ahead of you should be two large yellow tanks that are marked ‘Flammable.’ ” “They say ‘In-flammable.’ And then something underneath. In Spanish.” “Those are the ones,” Wu said. “Those are the two fuel tanks for the generator. One of them has been run dry, and so we have to switch over to the other. If you look at the bottom of the tanks, you’ll see a white pipe coming out.” “Four-inch PVC?” “Yes. PVC. Follow that pipe as it goes back.” “Okay. I’m following it.… Ow!” “What happened?” “Nothing. I hit my head.” There was a pause. “Are you all right?” “Yeah, fine. Just … hurt my head. Stupid.” “Keep following the pipe.” “Okay, okay,” Grant said. He sounded irritable. “Okay. The pipe goes to a big aluminum box with air vents in the sides. Says ‘Honda.’ It looks like the generator.” “Yes,” Wu said. “That’s the generator. If you walk around to the side, you’ll see a panel with two buttons.” “I see them. Yellow and red?” “That’s right,” Wu said. “Press the yellow one first, and while you hold it down, press the red one.” “Right.” There was another pause. It lasted almost a minute. Wu and Muldoon looked at each other. “Alan?” “It didn’t work,” Grant said. “Did you hold down the yellow first and then press the red?” Wu asked. “Yes, I did,” Grant said. He sounded annoyed. “I did exactly what you told me to do. There was a hum, and then a click, click, click, very fast, and then the hum stopped, and nothing after that.” “Try it again.” “I already did,” Grant said. “It didn’t work.” “Okay, just a minute.” Wu frowned. “It sounds like the generator is trying to fire up but it can’t for some reason."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Alan?” “I’m here.” “Go around to the back of the generator, to where the plastic pipe runs in.” “Okay.” A pause; then Grant said, “The pipe goes into a round black cylinder that looks like a fuel pump.” “That’s right,” Wu said. “That’s exactly what it is. It’s the fuel pump. Look for a little valve at the top.” “A valve?” “It should be sticking up at the top, with a little metal tab that you can turn.” “I found it. But it’s on the side, not the top.” “Okay. Twist it open.” “Air is coming out.” “Good. Wait until—” “—now liquid is coming out. It smells like gas.” “Okay. Close the valve.” Wu turned to Muldoon, shaking his head. “Pump lost its prime. Alan?” “Yes.” “Try the buttons again.” A moment later, Wu heard the faint coughing and sputtering as the generator turned over, and then the steady chugging sound as it caught. “It’s on,” Grant said. “Good work, Alan! Good work!” “Now what?” Grant said. He sounded flat, dull. “The lights haven’t even come on in here.” “Go back to the control room, and I’ll talk you through restoring the systems manually.” “That’s what I have to do now?” “Yes.” “Okay,” Grant said. “I’ll call you when I get there.” There was a final hiss, and silence. “Alan?” The radio was dead. Tim went through the swinging doors at the back of the dining room and entered the kitchen. A big stainless-steel table in the center of the room, a big stove with lots of burners to the left, and, beyond that, big walk-in refrigerators. Tim started opening the refrigerators, looking for ice cream. Smoke came out in the humid air as he opened each one. “How come the stove is on?” Lex said, releasing his hand. “It’s not on.” “They all have little blue flames.” “Those’re pilot lights.” “What’re pilot lights?” They had an electric stove at home. “Never mind,” Tim said, opening another refrigerator. “But it means I can cook you something.” In this next refrigerator, he found all kinds of stuff, cartons of milk, and piles of vegetables, and a stack of T-bone steaks, fish—but no ice cream. “You still want ice cream?” “I told you, didn’t I?” The next refrigerator was huge. A stainless-steel door, with a wide horizontal handle. He tugged on the handle, pulled it open, and saw a walk-in freezer. It was a whole room, and it was freezing cold. “Timmy …” “Will you wait a minute?” he said, annoyed. “I’m trying to find your ice cream.” “Timmy … something’s here.” She was whispering, and for a moment the last two words didn’t register. Then Tim hurried back out of the freezer, seeing the edge of the door wreathed in glowing green smoke. Lex stood by the steel worktable. She was looking back to the kitchen door. He heard a low hissing sound, like a very large snake. The sound rose and fell softly. It was hardly audible."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It might even be the wind, but he somehow knew it wasn’t. “Timmy,” she whispered, “I’m scared.…” He crept forward to the kitchen door and looked out. In the darkened dining room, he saw the orderly green rectangular pattern of the tabletops. And moving smoothly among them, silent as a ghost except for the hissing of its breath, was a velociraptor. In the darkness of the maintenance room, Grant felt along the pipes, moving back toward the ladder. It was difficult to make his way in the dark, and somehow he found the noise of the generator disorienting. He came to the ladder, and had started back up when he realized there was something else in the room besides generator noise. Grant paused, listening. It was a man shouting. It sounded like Gennaro. “Where are you?” Grant shouted. “Over here,” Gennaro said. “In the truck.” Grant couldn’t see any truck. He squinted in the darkness. He looked out of the corner of his eye. He saw green glowing shapes, moving in the darkness. Then he saw the truck, and he turned toward it. Tim found the silence chilling. The velociraptor was six feet tall, and powerfully built, although its strong legs and tail were hidden by the tables. Tim could see only the muscular upper torso, the two forearms held tightly alongside the body, the claws dangling. He could see the iridescent speckled pattern on the back. The velociraptor was alert; as it came forward, it looked from side to side, moving its head with abrupt, bird-like jerks. The head also bobbed up and down as it walked, and the long straight tail dipped, which heightened the impression of a bird. A gigantic, silent bird of prey. The dining room was dark, but apparently the raptor could see well enough to move steadily forward. From time to time, it would bend over, lowering its head below the tables. Tim heard a rapid sniffing sound. Then the head would snap up, alertly, jerking back and forth like a bird’s. Tim watched until he was sure the velociraptor was coming toward the kitchen. Was it following their scent? All the books said dinosaurs had a poor sense of smell, but this one seemed to do just fine. Anyway, what did books know? Here was the real thing. Coming toward him. He ducked back into the kitchen. “Is something out there?” Lex said. Tim didn’t answer. He pushed her under a table in the corner, behind a large waste bin. He leaned close to her and whispered fiercely: “Stay here!” And then he ran for the refrigerator. He grabbed a handful of cold steaks and hurried back to the door. He quietly placed the first of the steaks on the floor, then moved back a few steps, and put down the second.… Through his goggles, he saw Lex peeping around the bin. He waved her back. He placed the third steak, and the fourth, moving deeper into the kitchen."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The hissing was louder, and then the clawed hand gripped the door, and the big head peered cautiously around. The velociraptor paused at the entrance to the kitchen. Tim stood in a half-crouch at the back of the room, near the far leg of the steel worktable. But he had not had time to conceal himself; his head and shoulders still protruded over the tabletop. He was in clear view of the velociraptor. Slowly, Tim lowered his body, sinking beneath the table.… The velociraptor jerked its head around, looking directly at Tim. Tim froze. He was still exposed, but he thought, Don’t move. The velociraptor stood motionless in the doorway. Sniffing. It’s darker here, Tim thought. He can’t see so well. It’s making him cautious. But now he could smell the musty odor of the big reptile, and through his goggles he saw the dinosaur silently yawn, throwing back its long snout, exposing rows of razor-sharp teeth. The velociraptor stared forward again, jerking its head from side to side. The big eyes swiveled in the bony sockets. Tim felt his heart pounding. Somehow it was worse to be confronted by an animal like this in a kitchen, instead of the open forest. The size, the quick movements, the pungent odor, the hissing breath … Up close, it was a much more frightening animal than the tyrannosaur. The tyrannosaur was huge and powerful, but it wasn’t especially smart. The velociraptor was man-size, and it was clearly quick and intelligent; Tim feared the searching eyes almost as much as the sharp teeth. The velociraptor sniffed. It stepped forward—moving directly toward Lex! It must smell her, somehow! Tim’s heart thumped. The velociraptor stopped. It bent over slowly. He’s found the steak. Tim wanted to bend down, to look below the table, but he didn’t dare move. He stood frozen in a half-crouch, listening to the crunching sound. The dinosaur was eating it. Bones and all. The raptor raised its slender head, and looked around. It sniffed. It saw the second steak. It moved quickly forward. It bent down. Silence. The raptor didn’t eat it. The head came back up. Tim’s legs burned from the crouch, but he didn’t move. Why hadn’t the animal eaten the second steak? A dozen ideas flashed through his mind—it didn’t like the taste of beef, it didn’t like the coldness, it didn’t like the fact that the meat wasn’t alive, it smelled a trap, it smelled Lex, it smelled Tim, it saw Tim— The velociraptor moved very quickly now. It found the third steak, dipped its head, looked up again, and moved on. Tim held his breath. The dinosaur was now just a few feet from him. Tim could see the small twitches in the muscles of the flanks. He could see the crusted blood on the claws of the hand. He could see the fine pattern of striations within the spotted pattern, and the folds of skin in the neck below the jaw. The velociraptor sniffed."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It jerked its head, and looked right at Tim. Tim nearly gasped with fright. Tim’s body was rigid, tense. He watched as the reptile eye moved, scanning the room. Another sniff. He’s got me, Tim thought. Then the head jerked back to look forward, and the animal went on, toward the fifth steak. Tim thought, Lex please don’t move please don’t move whatever you do please don’t … The velociraptor sniffed the steak, and moved on. It was now at the open door to the freezer. Tim could see the smoke billowing out, curling along the floor toward the animal’s feet. One big clawed foot lifted, then came down again, silently. The dinosaur hesitated. Too cold, Tim thought. He won’t go in there, it’s too cold, he won’t go in he won’t go in he won’t go in.… The dinosaur went in. The head disappeared, then the body, then the stiff tail. Tim sprinted, flinging his weight against the stainless-steel door of the locker, slamming it shut. It slammed on the tip of the tail! The door wouldn’t shut! The velociraptor roared, a terrifying loud sound. Inadvertently, Tim took a step back—the tail was gone! He slammed the door shut and heard it click! Closed! “Lex! Lex!” he was screaming. He heard the raptor pounding against the door, felt it thumping the steel. He knew there was a flat steel knob inside, and if the raptor hit that, it would knock the door open. They had to get the door locked. “Lex!” Lex was by his side. “What do you want!” Tim leaned against the horizontal door handle, holding it shut. “There’s a pin! A little pin! Get the pin!” The velociraptor roared like a lion, the sound muffled by the thick steel. It crashed its whole body against the door. “I can’t see anything!” Lex shouted. The pin was dangling beneath the door handle, swinging on a little metal chain. “It’s right there!” “I can’t see it!” she screamed, and then Tim realized she wasn’t wearing the goggles. “Feel for it!” He saw her little hand reaching up, touching his, groping for the pin, and with her so close to him he could feel how frightened she was, her breath in little panicky gasps as she felt for the pin, and the velociraptor slammed against the door and it opened—God, it opened—but the animal hadn’t expected that and had already turned back for another try and Tim slammed the door shut again. Lex scrambled back, reached up in the darkness. “I have it!” Lex cried, clutching the pin in her hand, and she pushed it through the hole. It slid out again. “From the top, put it in from the top!” She held it again, lifting it on the chain, swinging it over the handle, and down. Into the hole. Locked. The velociraptor roared. Tim and Lex stepped back from the door as the dinosaur slammed into it again."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "With each impact, the heavy steel wall hinges creaked, but they held. Tim didn’t think the animal could possibly open the door. The raptor was locked in. He gave a long sigh. “Let’s go,” he said. He took her hand, and they ran. “You should have seen them,” Gennaro said, as Grant led him back out of the maintenance building. “There must have been two dozen of them. Compys. I had to crawl into the truck to get away from them. They were all over the windshield. Just squatting there, waiting like buzzards. But they ran away when you came over.” “Scavengers,” Grant said. “They won’t attack anything that’s moving or looks strong. They attack things that are dead, or almost dead. Anyway, unmoving.” They were going up the ladder now, back toward the entrance door. “What happened to the raptor that attacked you?” Grant said. “I don’t know,” Gennaro said. “Did it leave?” “I didn’t see. I got away, I think because it was injured. I think Muldoon shot it in the leg and it was bleeding while it was in here. Then … I don’t know. Maybe it went back outside. Maybe it died in here. I didn’t see.” “And maybe it’s still in here,” Grant said. Wu stared out the lodge window at the raptors beyond the fence. They still seemed playful, making mock attacks at Ellie. The behavior had continued for a long time now, and it occurred to him that it might be too long. It almost seemed as if they were trying to keep Ellie’s attention, in the same way that she was trying to keep theirs. The behavior of the dinosaurs had always been a minor consideration for Wu. And rightly so: behavior was a second-order effect of DNA, like protein enfolding. You couldn’t really predict behavior, and you couldn’t really control it, except in very crude ways, like making an animal dependent on a dietary substance by withholding an enzyme. But, in general, behavioral effects were simply beyond the reach of understanding. You couldn’t look at a DNA sequence and predict behavior. It was impossible. And that had made Wu’s DNA work purely empirical. It was a matter of tinkering, the way a modem workman might repair an antique grandfather clock. You were dealing with something out of the past, something constructed of ancient materials and following ancient rules. You couldn’t be certain why it worked as it did; and it had been repaired and modified many times already, by forces of evolution, over eons of time. So, like the workman who makes an adjustment and then sees if the clock runs any better, Wu would make an adjustment and then see if the animals behaved any better. And he only tried to correct gross behavior: uncontrolled butting of the electrical fences, or rubbing the skin raw on tree trunks. Those were the behaviors that sent him back to the drawing board."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And the limits of his science had left him with a mysterious feeling about the dinosaurs in the park. He was never sure, never really sure at all, whether the behavior of the animals was historically accurate or not. Were they behaving as they really had in the past? It was an open question, ultimately unanswerable. And though Wu would never admit it, the discovery that the dinosaurs were breeding represented a tremendous validation of his work. A breeding animal was demonstrably effective in a fundamental way; it implied that Wu had put all the pieces together correctly. He had re-created an animal millions of years old, with such precision that the creature could even reproduce itself. But, still, looking at the raptors outside, he was troubled by the persistence of their behavior. Raptors were intelligent, and intelligent animals got bored quickly. Intelligent animals also formed plans, and— Harding came out into the hallway from Malcolm’s room. “Where’s Ellie?” “Still outside.” “Better get her in. The raptors have left the skylight.” “When?” Wu said, moving to the door. “Just a moment ago,” Harding said. Wu threw open the front door. “Ellie! Inside, now!” She looked over at him, puzzled. “There’s no problem, everything’s under control.…” “Now!” She shook her head. “I know what I’m doing,” she said. “Now, Ellie, damn it!” Muldoon didn’t like Wu standing there with the door open, and he was about to say so, when he saw a shadow descend from above, and he realized at once what had happened. Wu was yanked bodily out the door, and Muldoon heard Ellie screaming. Muldoon got to the door and looked out and saw that Wu was lying on his back, his body already torn open by the big claw, and the raptor was jerking its head, tugging at Wu’s intestines even though Wu was still alive, still feebly reaching up with his hands to push the big head away, he was being eaten while he was still alive, and then Ellie stopped screaming and started to run along the inside of the fence, and Muldoon slammed the door shut, dizzy with horror. It had happened so fast! Harding said, “He jumped down from the roof?” Muldoon nodded. He went to the window and looked out, and he saw that the three raptors outside the fence were now running away. But they weren’t following Ellie. They were going back, toward the visitor center. Grant came to the edge of the maintenance building and peered forward, in the fog. He could hear the snarls of the raptors, and they seemed to be coming closer. Now he could see their bodies running past him. They were going to the visitor center. He looked back at Gennaro. Gennaro shook his head, no. Grant leaned close and whispered in his ear. “No choice. We’ve got to turn on the computer.” Grant set out in the fog. After a moment, Gennaro followed. Ellie didn’t stop to think."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "When the raptors dropped inside the fence to attack Wu, she just turned and ran, as fast as she could, toward the far end of the lodge. There was a space fifteen feet wide between the fence and the lodge. She ran, not hearing the animals pursuing her, just hearing her own breath. She rounded the corner, saw a tree growing by the side of the building, and leapt, grabbing a branch, swinging up. She didn’t feel panic. She felt a kind of exhilaration as she kicked and saw her legs rise up in front of her face, and she hooked her legs over a branch farther up, tightened her gut, and pulled up quickly. She was already twelve feet off the ground, and the raptors still weren’t following her, and she was beginning to feel pretty good, when she saw the first animal at the base of the tree. Its mouth was bloody, and bits of stringy flesh hung from its jaws. She continued to go up fast, hand over hand, just reaching and going, and she could almost see the top of the building. She looked down again. The two raptors were climbing the tree. Now she was at the level of the rooftop, she could see the gravel only four feet away, and the glass pyramids of the skylights, sticking up in the mist. There was a door on the roof; she could get inside. In a single heaving effort she flung herself through the air, and landed sprawling on the gravel. She scraped her face, but somehow the only sensation was exhilaration, as if it were a kind of game she was playing, a game she intended to win. She ran for the door that led to the stairwell. Behind her, she could hear the raptors shaking the branches of the tree. They were still in the tree. She reached the door, and twisted the knob. The door was locked. It took a moment for the meaning of that to cut through her euphoria. The door was locked. She was on the roof and she couldn’t get down. The door was locked. She pounded on the door in frustration, and then she ran for the far side of the roof, hoping to see a way down, but there was only the green outline of the swimming pool through the blowing mist. All around the pool was concrete decking. Ten, twelve feet of concrete. Too much for her to jump across. No other trees to climb down. No stairs. No fire escape. Nothing. Ellie turned back, and saw the raptors jumping easily to the roof. She ran to the far end of the building, hoping there might be another door there, but there wasn’t. The raptors came slowly toward her, stalking her, slipping silently among the glass pyramids. She looked down. The edge of the pool was ten feet away. Too far."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The raptors were closer, starting to move apart, and illogically she thought: Isn’t this always the way? Some little mistake screws it all up. She still felt giddy, still felt exhilaration, and she somehow couldn’t believe these animals were going to get her, she couldn’t believe that now her life was going to end like this. It didn’t seem possible. She was enveloped in a kind of protective cheerfulness. She just didn’t believe it would happen. The raptors snarled. Ellie backed away, moving to the far end of the roof. She took a breath, and then began to sprint toward the edge. As she raced toward the edge, she saw the swimming pool, and she knew it was too far away but she thought, What the hell, and leapt into space. And fell. And with a stinging shock, she felt herself enveloped in coldness. She was underwater. She had done it! She came to the surface and looked up at the roof, and saw the raptors looking down at her. And she knew that, if she could do it, the raptors could do it, too. She splashed in the water and thought, Can raptors swim? But she was sure they could. They could probably swim like crocodiles. The raptors turned away from the edge of the roof. And then she heard Harding calling “Sattler?” and she realized he had opened the roof door. The raptors were going toward him. Hurriedly, she climbed out of the pool and ran toward the lodge. Harding had gone up the steps to the roof two at a time, and he had flung open the door without thinking. “Sattler!” he shouted. And then he stopped. Mist blew among the pyramids on the roof. The raptors were not in sight. “Sattler!” He was so preoccupied with Sattler that it was a moment before he realized his mistake. He should be able to see the animals, he thought. In the next instant the clawed forearm smashed around the side of the door, catching him in the chest with a tearing pain, and it took all of his effort to pull himself backward and close the door on the arm, and from downstairs he heard Muldoon shouting, “She’s here, she’s already inside.” From the other side of the door, the raptor snarled, and Harding slammed the door again, and the claws pulled back, and he closed the door with a metallic clang and sank coughing to the floor. “Where are we going?” Lex said. They were on the second floor of the visitor center. A glass-walled corridor ran the length of the building. “To the control room,” Tim said. “Where’s that?” “Down here someplace.” Tim looked at the names stenciled on the doors as he went past them."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "These seemed to be offices: PARK WARDEN … GUEST SERVICES … GENERAL MANAGER … COMPTROLLER … They came to a glass partition marked with a sign: CLOSED AREAAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLYBEYOND THIS POINT There was a slot for a security card, but Tim just pushed the door open. “How come it opened?” “The power is out,” Tim said. “Why’re we going to the control room?” she asked. “To find a radio. We need to call somebody.” Beyond the glass door the hallway continued. Tim remembered this area; he had seen it earlier, during the tour. Lex trotted along at his side. In the distance, they heard the snarling of raptors. The animals seemed to be approaching. Then Tim heard them slamming against the glass downstairs. “They’re out there …” Lex whispered. “Don’t worry.” “What are they doing here?” Lex said. “Never mind now.” PARK SUPERVISOR … OPERATIONS … MAIN CONTROL … “Here,” Tim said. He pushed open the door. The main control room was as he had seen it before. In the center of the room was a console with four chairs and four computer monitors. The room was entirely dark except for the monitors, which all showed a series of colored rectangles. “So where’s a radio?” Lex said. But Tim had forgotten all about a radio. He moved forward, staring at the computer screens. The screens were on! That could only mean— “The power must be back on.…” “Ick,” Lex said, shifting her body. “What.” “I was standing on somebody’s ear,” she said. Tim hadn’t seen a body when they came in. He looked back and saw there was just an ear, lying on the floor. “That is really disgusting,” Lex said. “Never mind.” He turned to the monitors. “Where’s the rest of him?” she said. “Never mind that now.” He peered closely at the monitor. There were rows of colored labels on the screen: “You better not fool around with that, Timmy,” she said. “Don’t worry, I won’t.” He had seen complicated computers before, like the ones that were installed in the buildings his father worked on. Those computers controlled everything from the elevators and security to the heating and cooling systems. They looked basically like this—a lot of colored labels—but they were usually simpler to understand. And almost always there was a help label, if you needed to learn about the system. But he saw no help label here. He looked again, to be sure. But then he saw something else: numerals clicking in the upper left corner of the screen. They read 10:47:22. Then Tim realized it was the time. There were only thirteen minutes left for the boat—but he was more worried about the people in the lodge. There was a static crackle. He turned, and saw Lex holding a radio. She was twisting the knobs and dials. “How does it work?” she said. “I can’t make it work.” “Give me that!” “It’s mine!"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I found it!” “Give it to me, Lex!” “I get to use it first!” “Lex!” Suddenly, the radio crackled. “What the hell is going on!” said Muldoon’s voice. Surprised, Lex dropped the radio on the floor. Grant ducked back, crouching among the palm trees. Through the mist ahead he could see the raptors hopping and snarling and butting their heads against the glass of the visitor center. But, between snarls, they would fall silent and cock their heads, as if listening to something distant. And then they would make little whimpering sounds. “What’re they doing?” Gennaro said. “It looks like they’re trying to get into the cafeteria,” Grant said. “What’s in the cafeteria?” “I left the kids there …” Grant said. “Can they break through that glass?” “I don’t think so, no.” Grant watched, and now he heard the crackle of a distant radio, and the raptors began hopping in a more agitated way. One after another, they began jumping higher and higher, until finally he saw the first of them leap lightly onto the second-floor balcony, and from there move inside the second floor of the visitor center. In the control room on the second floor, Tim snatched up the radio which Lex had dropped. He pressed the button. “Hello? Hello?” “—s that you, Tim?” It was Muldoon’s voice. “It’s me, yes.” “Where are you?” “In the control room. The power is on!” “That’s great, Tim,” Muldoon said. “If someone will tell me how to turn the computer on, I’ll do it.” There was a silence. “Hello?” Tim said. “Did you hear me?” “Ah, we have a problem about that,” Muldoon said. “Nobody, ah, who is here knows how to do that. How to turn the computer on.” Tim said, “What, are you kidding? Nobody knows?” It seemed incredible. “No.” A pause. “I think it’s something about the main grid. Turning on the main grid … You know anything about computers, Tim?” Tim stared at the screen. Lex nudged him. “Tell him no, Timmy,” she said. “Yes, some. I know something,” Tim said. “Might as well try,” Muldoon said. “Nobody here knows what to do. And Grant doesn’t know about computers.” “Okay,” Tim said. “I’ll try.” He clicked off the radio and stared at the screen, studying it. “Timmy,” Lex said. “You don’t know what to do.” “Yes I do.” “If you know, then do it,” Lex said. “Just a minute.” As a way to get started, he pulled the chair close to the keyboard and pressed the cursor keys. Those were the keys that moved the cursor around on the screen. But nothing happened. Then he pushed other keys. The screen remained unchanged. “Well?” she said. “Something’s wrong,” Tim said, frowning. “You just don’t know, Timmy,” she said. He examined the computer again, looking at it carefully. The keyboard had a row of function keys at the top, just like a regular PC keyboard, and the monitor was big and in color."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But the monitor housing was sort of unusual. Tim looked at the edges of the screen and saw lots of faint pinpoints of red light. Red light, all around the borders of the screen … What could that be? He moved his finger toward the light and saw the soft red glow on his skin. He touched the screen and heard a beep. A moment later, the message box disappeared, and the original screen flashed back up. “What happened?” Lex said. “What did you do? You touched something.” Of course! he thought. He had touched the screen. It was a touch screen! The red lights around the edges must be infrared sensors. Tim had never seen such a screen, but he’d read about them in magazines. He touched RESET/REVERT. Instantly the screen changed. He got a new message: THE COMPUTER IS NOW RESETMAKE YOUR SELECTION FROM THE MAIN SCREEN Over the radio, they heard the sound of raptors snarling. “I want to see,” Lex said. “You should try VIEW.” “No, Lex.” “Well, I want VIEW,” she said. And before he could grab her hand, she had pressed VIEW. The screen changed. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Lex, will you cut it out?” “Look!” she said. “It worked! Ha!” Around the room, the monitors showed quickly changing views of different parts of the park. Most of the images were misty gray, because of the exterior fog, but one showed the outside of the lodge, with a raptor on the roof, and then another switched to an image in bright sunlight, showing the bow of a ship, bright sunlight— “What was that?” Tim said, leaning forward. “What?” “That picture!” But the image had already changed, and now they were seeing the inside of the lodge, one room after another, and then he saw Malcolm, lying in a bed— “Stop it,” Lex said. “I see them!” Tim touched the screen in several places, and got submenus. Then more submenus. “Wait,” Lex said. “You’re confusing it.…” “Will you shut up! You don’t know anything about computers!” Now he had a list of monitors on the screen. One of them was marked Safari Lodge: LV2–4. Another was REMOTE: SHIPBOARD (VND). He pressed the screen several times. Video images came up on monitors around the room. One showed the bow of the supply ship, and the ocean ahead. In the distance, Tim saw land—buildings along a shore, and a harbor. He recognized the harbor because he had flown over it in the helicopter the day before. It was Puntarenas. The ship seemed to be just minutes from landing. But his attention was drawn by the next screen, which showed the roof of the safari lodge, in gray mist. The raptors were mostly hidden behind the pyramids, but their heads bobbed up and down, coming into view. And then, on the third monitor, he could see inside a room. Malcolm was lying in a bed, and Ellie stood next to him. They were both looking upward."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.19", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c48_r1.htm.txt", "text": "As they watched, Muldoon walked into the room, and joined them, looking up with an expression of concern. “They see us,” Lex said. “I don’t think so.” The radio crackled. On the screen, Muldoon lifted the radio to his lips. “Hello, Tim?” “I’m here,” Tim said. “Ah, we haven’t got a whole lot of time,” Muldoon said, dully. “Better get that power grid on.” And then Tim heard the raptors snarl, and saw one of the long heads duck down through the glass, briefly entering the picture from the top, snapping its jaws. “Hurry, Timmy!” Lex said. “Get the power on!”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c49_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park THE GRID Tim suddenly found himself lost in a tangled series of monitor control screens, as he tried to get back to the main screen. Most systems had a single button or a single command to return to the previous screen, or to the main menu. But this system did not—or at least he didn’t know it. Also, he was certain that help commands had been built into the system, but he couldn’t find them either, and Lex was jumping up and down and shouting in his ear, making him nervous. Finally he got the main screen back. He wasn’t sure what he had done, but it was back. He paused, looking for a command. “Do something, Timmy!” “Will you shut up? I’m trying to get help.” He pushed TEMPLATE-MAIN. The screen filled with a complicated diagram, with interconnecting boxes and arrows. No good. No good. He pushed COMMON INTERFACE. The screen shifted: “What’s that?” Lex said. “Why aren’t you turning on the power, Timmy?” He ignored her. Maybe help on this system was called “info.” He pushed INFO. “Tim-ee,” Lex wailed, but he had already pushed FIND. He got another useless window. He pushed GO BACK. On the radio, he heard Muldoon say, “How’s it coming, Tim?” He didn’t bother to answer. Frantic, he pushed buttons one after another. Suddenly, without warning, the main screen was back. He studied the screen. ELECTRICAL MAIN and SETGRIDS DNL both looked like they might have something to do with grids. He noticed that SAFETY/HEALTH and CRITICAL LOCKS might be important, too. He heard the growl of the raptors. He had to make a choice. He pressed SETGRIDS DNL, and groaned when he saw it: He didn’t know what to do. He pushed STANDARD PARAMETERS. Tim shook his head in frustration. It took him a moment to realize that he had just gotten valuable information. He now knew the grid coordinates for the lodge! He pushed grid F4. POWER GRID F4 (SAFARI LODGE) COMMAND CANNOT BE EXECUTED. ERROR-505 (Power Incompatible with Command Error. Ref Manual Pages 4.09–4.11) “It’s not working,” Lex said. “I know!” He pushed another button. The screen flashed again. POWER GRID F4 (SAFARI LODGE) COMMAND CANNOT BE EXECUTED. ERROR-505 (Power Incompatible with Command Error. Ref Manual Pages 4.09–4.11) Tim tried to stay calm, to think it through. For some reason he was getting a consistent error message whenever he tried to turn on a grid. It was saying the power was incompatible with the command he was giving. But what did that mean? Why was power in compatible? “Timmy …” Lex said, tugging at his arm. “Not now, Lex.” “Yes, now,” she said, and she pulled him away from the screen and the console. And then he heard the snarling of raptors. It was coming from the hallway. In the skylight above Malcolm’s bed, the raptors had almost bitten through the second metal bar."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c49_r1.htm.txt", "text": "They could now poke their heads entirely through the shattered glass, and lunge and snarl at the people below. Then after a moment they would pull back, and resume chewing on the metal. Malcolm said, “It won’t be long now. Three, four minutes.” He pressed the button on the radio: “Tim, are you there? Tim?” There was no answer. Tim slipped out the door and saw the velociraptor, down at the far end of the corridor, standing by the balcony. He stared in astonishment. How had it gotten out of the freezer? Then, as he watched, a second raptor suddenly appeared on the balcony, and he understood. The raptor hadn’t come from the freezer at all. It had come from outside. It had jumped from the ground below. The second raptor landed silently, perfectly balanced on the railing. Tim couldn’t believe it. The big animal had jumped ten feet straight up. More than ten feet. Their legs must be incredibly powerful. Lex whispered, “I thought you said they couldn’t—” “Ssshh.” Tim was trying to think, but he watched with a kind of fascinated dread as the third raptor leapt to the balcony. The animals milled aimlessly in the corridor for a moment, and then they began to move forward in single file. Coming toward him and Lex. Quietly, Tim pushed against the door at his back, to re-enter the control room. But the door was stuck. He pushed harder. “We’re locked out,” Lex whispered. “Look.” She pointed to the slot for the security card alongside the door. A bright red dot glowed. Somehow the security doors had been activated. “You idiot, you locked us out!” Tim looked down the corridor. He saw several more doors, but each had a red light glowing alongside. That meant all the doors were locked. There was nowhere they could go. Then he saw a slumped shape on the floor at the far end of the corridor. It was a dead guard. A white security card was clipped to his belt. “Come on,” he whispered. They ran for the guard. Tim got the card, and turned back. But of course the raptors had seen them. They snarled, and blocked the way back to the control room. They began to spread apart, fanning out in the hallway to surround Tim and Lex. Their heads began to duck rhythmically. They were going to attack. Tim did the only thing he could do. Using the card, he opened the nearest door off the hallway and pushed Lex through. As the door began to close slowly behind them, the raptors hissed and charged."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c50_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park LODGE Ian Malcolm drew each breath as if it might be his last. He watched the raptors with dull eyes. Harding took his blood pressure, frowned, took it again. Ellie Sattler was wrapped in a blanket, shivering and cold. Muldoon sat on the floor, propped against the wall. Hammond was staring upward, not speaking. They all listened to the radio. “What happened to Tim?” Hammond said. “Still no word?” “I don’t know.” Malcolm said, “Ugly, aren’t they. Truly ugly.” Hammond shook his head. “Who could have imagined it would turn out this way.” Ellie said, “Apparently Malcolm did.” “I didn’t imagine it,” Malcolm said. “I calculated it.” Hammond sighed. “No more of this, please. He’s been saying ‘I told you so’ for hours. But nobody ever wanted this to happen.” “It isn’t a matter of wanting it or not,” Malcolm said, eyes closed. He spoke slowly, through the drugs. “It’s a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest to seek food for his family, does he expect to control nature? No. He imagines that nature is beyond him. Beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. Maybe he prays to nature, to the fertility of the forest that provides for him. He prays because he knows he doesn’t control it. He’s at the mercy of it. “But you decide you won’t be at the mercy of nature. You decide you’ll control nature, and from that moment on you’re in deep trouble, because you can’t do it. Yet you have made systems that require you to do it. And you can’t do it—and you never have—and you never will. Don’t confuse things. You can make a boat, but you can’t make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can’t make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams of reason would have you believe.” “He’s lost me,” Hammond said, with a sigh. “Where did Tim go? He seemed such a responsible boy.” “I’m sure he’s trying to get control of the situation,” Malcolm said. “Like everybody else.” “And Grant, too. What happened to Grant?” Grant reached the rear door to the visitor center, the same door he had left twenty minutes before. He tugged on the handle: it was locked. Then he saw the little red light. The security doors were reactivated! Damn! He ran around to the front of the building, and went through the shattered front doors into the main lobby, stopping by the guard desk where he had been earlier. He could hear the dry hiss of his radio. He went to the kitchen, looking for the kids, but the kitchen door was open, the kids gone. He went upstairs but came to the glass panel marked CLOSED AREA and the door was locked. He needed a security card to go farther. Grant couldn’t get in. From somewhere inside the hallway, he heard the raptors snarling."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c50_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The leathery reptile skin touched Tim’s face, the claws tore his shirt, and Tim fell onto his back, shrieking in fright. “Timmy!” Lex yelled. Tim scrambled to his feet again. The baby velociraptor perched on his shoulder, chirping and squeaking in panic. Tim and Lex were in the white nursery. There were toys on the floor: a rolling yellow ball, a doll, a plastic rattle. “It’s the baby raptor,” Lex said, pointing to the animal gripping Tim’s shoulder. The little raptor burrowed its head into Tim’s neck. The poor thing was probably starving, Tim thought. Lex came closer and the baby hopped onto her shoulder. It rubbed against her neck. “Why is it doing that?” she said. “Is it scared?” “I don’t know,” Tim said. She passed the raptor back to Tim. The baby was chirping and squeaking, and hopping up and down on his shoulder excitedly. It kept looking around, head moving quickly. No doubt about it, the little thing was worked up and— “Tim,” Lex whispered. The door to the hallway hadn’t closed behind them after they entered the nursery. Now the big velociraptors were coming through. First one, then a second one. Clearly agitated, the baby chirped and bounced on Tim’s shoulder. Tim knew he had to get away. Maybe the baby would distract them. After all, it was a baby raptor. He plucked the little animal from his shoulder and threw it across the room. The baby scurried between the legs of the adults. The first raptor lowered its snout, sniffed at the baby delicately. Tim took Lex’s hand, and pulled her deeper into the nursery. He had to find a door, a way to get out— There was a high piercing shriek. Tim looked back to see the baby in the jaws of the adult. A second velociraptor came forward and tore at the limbs of the infant, trying to pull it from the mouth of the first. The two raptors fought over the baby as it squealed. Blood splattered in large drops onto the floor. “They ate him,” Lex said. The raptors fought over the remains of the baby, rearing back and butting heads. Tim found a door—it was unlocked—and went through, pulling Lex after him. They were in another room, and from the deep green glow he realized it was the deserted DNA-extraction laboratory, the rows of stereo microscopes abandoned, the high-resolution screens showing frozen, giant black-and-white images of insects. The flies and gnats that had bitten dinosaurs millions of years ago, sucking the blood that now had been used to re-create dinosaurs in the park. They ran through the laboratory, and Tim could hear the snorts and snarls of the raptors, pursuing them, coming closer, and then he went to the back of the lab and through a door that must have had an alarm, because in the narrow corridor an intermittent siren sounded shrilly, and the lights overhead flashed on and off."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c50_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Running down the corridor, Tim was plunged into darkness—then light again—then darkness. Over the sound of the alarm, he heard the raptors snort as they pursued him. Lex was whimpering and moaning. Tim saw another door ahead, with the blue biohazard sign, and he slammed into the door, and moved beyond it, and suddenly he collided with something big and Lex shrieked in terror. “Take it easy, kids,” a voice said. Tim blinked in disbelief. Standing above him was Dr. Grant. And next to him was Mr. Gennaro. Outside in the hallway, it had taken Grant nearly two minutes to realize that the dead guard down in the lobby probably had a security card. He’d gone back and gotten it, and entered the upper corridor, moving quickly down the hallway. He had followed the sound of the raptors and found them fighting in the nursery. He was sure the kids would have gone to the next room, and had immediately run to the extractions lab. And there he’d met the kids. Now the raptors were coming toward them. The animals seemed momentarily hesitant, surprised by the appearance of more people. Grant pushed the kids into Gennaro’s arms and said, “Take them back someplace safe.” “But—” “Through there,” Grant said, pointing over his shoulder to a far door. “Take them to the control room, if you can. You should all be safe there.” “What are you going to do?” Gennaro said. The raptors stood near the door. Grant noticed that they waited until all the animals were together, and then they moved forward, as a group. Pack hunters. He shivered. “I have a plan,” Grant said. “Now go on.” Gennaro led the kids away. The raptors continued slowly toward Grant, moving past the supercomputers, past the screens that still blinked endless sequences of computer-deciphered code. The raptors came forward without hesitation, sniffing the floor, repeatedly ducking their heads. Grant heard the door click behind him and glanced over his shoulder. Everybody was standing on the other side of the glass door, watching him. Gennaro shook his head. Grant knew what it meant. There was no door to the control room beyond. Gennaro and the kids were trapped in there. It was up to him now. Grant moved slowly, edging around the laboratory, leading the raptors away from Gennaro and the kids. He could see another door, nearer the front, which was marked TO LABORATORY. Whatever that meant. He had an idea, and he hoped he was right. The door had a blue biohazard sign. The raptors were coming closer. Grant turned and slammed into the door, and moved beyond it, into a deep, warm silence. He turned. Yes. He was where he wanted to be, in the hatchery: beneath infrared lights, long tables, with rows of eggs and a low clinging mist. The rockers on the tables clicked and whirred in a steady motion."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c50_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The mist poured over the sides of the tables and drifted to the floor, where it disappeared, evaporated. Grant ran directly to the rear of the hatchery, into a glass-walled laboratory with ultraviolet light. His clothing glowed blue. He looked around at the glass reagents, beakers full of pipettes, glass dishes … all delicate laboratory equipment. The raptors entered the room, cautiously at first, sniffing the humid air, looking at the long rocking tables of eggs. The lead animal wiped its bloody jaws with the back of its forearm. Silently the raptors passed between the long tables. The animals moved through the room in a coordinated way, ducking from time to time to peer beneath the tables. They were looking for him. Grant crouched, and moved to the back of the laboratory, looked up, and saw the metal hood marked with a skull and crossbones. A sign said CAUTION BIOGENIC TOXINS A4 PRECAUTIONS REQUIRED. Grant remembered that Regis had said they were powerful poisons. Only a few molecules would kill instantaneously.… The hood lay flush against the surface of the lab table. Grant could not slip his hand under it. He tried to open it, but there was no door, no handle, no way that he could see.… Grant rose slowly, and glanced back at the main room. The raptors were still moving among the tables. He turned to the hood. He saw an odd metal fixture sunk into the surface of the table. It looked like an outdoor electrical outlet with a round cover. He flipped up the cover, saw a button, pressed it. With a soft hiss, the hood slid upward, to the ceiling. He saw glass shelves above him, and rows of bottles marked with a skull and crossbones. He peered at the labels: CCK-55 … TETRA-ALPHA SECRETIN … THYMOLEVIN X-1612…. The fluids glowed pale green in the ultraviolet light. Nearby he saw a glass dish with syringes in it. The syringes were small, each containing a tiny amount of green glowing fluid. Crouched in the blue darkness, Grant reached for the dish of syringes. The needles on the syringes were capped in plastic. He removed one cap, pulling it off with his teeth. He looked at the thin needle. He moved forward. Toward the raptors. He had devoted his whole life to studying dinosaurs. Now he would see how much he really knew. Velociraptors were small carnivorous dinosaurs, like oviraptors and dromaeosaurs, animals that were long thought to steal eggs. Just as certain modern birds ate the eggs of other birds, Grant had always assumed that velociraptors would eat dinosaur eggs if they could. He crept forward to the nearest egg table in the hatchery. Slowly he reached up into the mist and took a large egg from the rocking table. The egg was almost the size of a football, cream-colored with faint pink speckling. He held the egg carefully while he stuck the needle through the shell, and injected the contents of the syringe."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c50_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The egg glowed faint blue. Grant bent down again. Beneath the table, he saw the legs of the raptors, and the mist pouring down from the tabletops. He rolled the glowing egg along the floor, toward the raptors. The raptors looked up, hearing the faint rumble as the egg rolled, and jerked their heads around. Then they resumed their slow stalking search. The egg stopped several yards from the nearest raptor. Damn! Grant did it all again: quietly reaching up for an egg, bringing it down, injecting it, and rolling it toward the raptors. This time, the egg came to rest by the foot of one velociraptor. It rocked gently, clicking against the big toe claw. The raptor looked down in surprise at this new gift. It bent over and sniffed the glowing egg. It rolled the egg with its snout along the floor for a moment. And ignored it. The velociraptor stood upright again, and slowly moved on, continuing to search. It wasn’t working. Grant reached for a third egg, and injected it with a fresh syringe. He held the glowing egg in his hands, and rolled it again. But he rolled this one fast, like a bowling ball. The egg rattled across the floor loudly. One of the animals heard the sound—ducked down—saw it coming—and instinctively chased the moving object, gliding swiftly among the tables to intercept the egg as it rolled. The big jaws snapped down and bit into it, crushing the shell. The raptor stood, pale albumen dripping from its jaws. It licked its lips noisily, and snorted. It bit again, and lapped the egg from the floor. But it didn’t seem to be in the least distressed. It bent over to eat again from the broken egg. Grant looked down to see what would happen.… From across the room, the raptor saw him. It was looking right at him. The velociraptor snarled menacingly. It moved toward Grant, crossing the room in long, incredibly swift strides. Grant was shocked to see it happening and froze in panic, when suddenly the animal made a gasping, gurgling sound and the big body pitched forward onto the ground. The heavy tail thumped the floor in spasms. The raptor continued to make choking sounds, punctuated by intermittent loud shrieks. Foam bubbled from its mouth. The head flopped back and forth. The tail slammed and thumped. That’s one, Grant thought. But it wasn’t dying very fast. It seemed to take forever to die. Grant reached up for another egg—and saw that the other raptors in the room were frozen in mid-action. They listened to the sound of the dying animal. One cocked its head, then another, and another. The first animal moved to look at the fallen raptor. The dying raptor was now twitching, the whole body shaking on the floor. It made pitiful moans. So much foam bubbled from its mouth that Grant could hardly see the head any more. It flopped on the floor and moaned again."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c50_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The second raptor bent over the fallen animal, examining it. It appeared to be puzzled by these death throes. Cautiously, it looked at the foaming head, then moved down to the twitching neck, the heaving ribs, the legs.… And it took a bite from the hind leg. The dying animal snarled, and suddenly lifted its head and twisted, sinking its teeth into the neck of its attacker. That’s two, Grant thought. But the standing animal wrenched free. Blood flowed from its neck. It struck out with its hind claws, and with a single swift movement ripped open the belly of the fallen animal. Coils of intestine fell out like fat snakes. The screams of the dying raptor filled the room. The attacker turned away, as if fighting was suddenly too much trouble. It crossed the room, ducked down, and came up with a glowing egg! Grant watched as the raptor bit into it, the glowing material dripping down its chin. That makes two. The second raptor was stricken almost instantly, coughing and pitching forward. As it fell, it knocked over a table. Dozens of eggs rolled everywhere across the floor. Grant looked at them in dismay. There was still a third raptor left. Grant had one more syringe. With so many eggs rolling on the floor, he would have to do something else. He was trying to decide what to do when the last animal snorted irritably. Grant looked up—the raptor had spotted him. The final raptor did not move for a long time, it just stared. And then it slowly, quietly came forward. Stalking him. Bobbing up and down, looking first beneath the tables, then above them. It moved deliberately, cautiously, with none of the swiftness that it had displayed in a pack. A solitary animal now, it was careful. It never took its eyes off Grant. Grant looked around quickly. There was nowhere for him to hide. Nothing for him to do … Grant’s gaze was fixed on the raptor, moving slowly, laterally. Grant moved, too. He tried to keep as many tables as he could between himself and the advancing animal. Slowly … slowly … he moved to the left.… The raptor advanced in the dark red gloom of the hatchery. Its breath came in soft hisses, through flared nostrils. Grant felt eggs breaking beneath his feet, the yolk sticking to the soles of his shoes. He crouched down, felt the bulge of the radio in his pocket. The radio. He pulled it from his pocket and turned it on. “Hello. This is Grant.” “Alan?” Ellie’s voice. “Alan?” “Listen,” he said softly. “Just talk.” “Alan, is that you?” “Talk,” he said again, and he pushed the radio across the floor, away from him, toward the advancing raptor. He crouched behind a table leg, and waited. “Alan. Speak to me, please.” Then a crackle, and silence. The radio remained silent. The raptor advanced. Soft hissing breath. The radio was still silent. What was the matter with her!"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c50_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Didn’t she understand? In the darkness, the raptor came closer. “… Alan?” The tinny voice from the radio made the big animal pause. It sniffed the air, as if sensing someone else in the room. “Alan, it’s me. I don’t know if you can hear me.” The raptor now turned away from Grant, and moved toward the radio. “Alan … please …” Why hadn’t he pushed the radio farther away? The raptor was going toward it, but it was close. The big foot came down very near him. Grant could see the pebbled skin, the soft green glow. The streaks of dried blood on the curved claw. He could smell the strong reptile odor. “Alan, listen to me.… Alan?” The raptor bent over, poked at the radio on the floor, tentatively. Its body was turned away from Grant. The big tail was right above Grant’s head. Grant reached up and jabbed the syringe deep into the flesh of the tail, and injected the poison. The velociraptor snarled and jumped. With frightening speed it swung back toward Grant, jaws wide. It snapped, its jaws closing on the table leg, and jerked its head up. The table was knocked away, and Grant fell back, now completely exposed. The raptor loomed over him, rising up, its head banging into the infrared lights above, making them swing crazily. “Alan?” The raptor reared back, and lifted its clawed foot to kick. Grant rolled, and the foot slammed down, just missing him. He felt a searing sharp pain along his shoulder blades, the sudden warm flow of blood over his shirt. He rolled across the floor, crushing eggs, smearing his hands, his face. The raptor kicked again, smashing down on the radio, spattering sparks. It snarled in rage, and kicked a third time, and Grant came to the wall, nowhere else to go, and the animal raised its foot a final time. And toppled backward. The animal was wheezing. Foam came from its mouth. Gennaro and the kids came into the room. Grant signaled them to stay back. The girl looked at the dying animal and said softly, “Wow.” Gennaro helped Grant to his feet. They all turned, and ran for the control room."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c51_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park CONTROL Tim was astonished to find the screen in the control room was now flashing on and off. Lex said, “What happened?” Tim saw Dr. Grant staring at the screen, and gingerly moving his hand toward the keyboard. “I don’t know about computers,” Grant said, shaking his head. But Tim was already sliding into the seat. He touched the screen rapidly. On the video monitors, he could see the boat moving closer to Puntarenas. It was now only about two hundred yards from the dock. On the other monitor, he saw the lodge, with the raptors hanging down from the ceiling. On the radio, he heard their snarls. “Do something, Timmy,” Lex said. He pushed SETGRIDS DNL, even though it was flashing. The screen answered: WARNING: COMMAND EXECUTION ABORTED (AUX POWER LOW) “What does that mean?” Tim said. Gennaro snapped his fingers. “That happened before. It means auxiliary power is low. You have to turn on main power.” “I do?” He pushed ELECTRICAL MAIN. Tim groaned. “What are you doing now?” Grant said. The whole screen was starting to flash. Tim pushed MAIN. Nothing happened. The screen continued to flash. Tim pushed MAIN GRIP P. He felt sick to his stomach with fear. MAIN POWER GRID NOT ACTIVE/AUXILIARY POWER ONLY The screen was still flashing. He pushed MAIN SET 1. MAIN POWER ACTIVATED All the lights in the room came on. All the monitor screens stopped flashing. “Hey! All right!” Tim pressed RESET GRIDS. Nothing happened for a moment. He glanced at the video monitors, then back at the main screen. Grant said something that Tim didn’t hear, he only heard the tension in his voice. He was looking at Tim, worried. Tim felt his heart thumping in his chest. Lex was yelling at him. He didn’t want to look at the video monitor anymore. He could hear the sound of the bars bending in the lodge, and the raptors snarling. He heard Malcolm say, “Dear God …” He pushed LODGE. SPECIFY GRID NUMBER TO RESET. For a frozen interminable moment he couldn’t remember the number, but then he remembered F4, and he pressed that. ACTIVATING LODGE GRID F4 NOW. On the video monitor he saw an explosion of sparks, sputtering down from the ceiling of the hotel room. The monitor flared white. Lex shouted “What did you do!” but almost immediately the image came back and they could see that the raptors were caught between the bars, writhing and screaming in a hot cascade of sparks while Muldoon and the others cheered, their voices tinny over the radio. “That’s it,” Grant said, slapping Tim on the back. “That’s it! You did it!” They were all standing and jumping up and down when Lex said, “What about the ship?” “The what?” “The ship,” she said, and pointed to the screen. On the monitor, the buildings beyond the bow of the ship were much larger, and moving to the right, as the ship turned left and prepared to dock."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c51_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He saw crewmen heading out to the bow, preparing to tie up. Tim scrambled back to his seat, and stared at the startup screen. He studied the screen. TeleCom VBB and TeleCom RSD both looked like they might have something to do with telephones. He pressed TELECOM RSD. YOU HAVE 23 WAITING CALLS AND/OR MESSAGES. DO YOU WISH TO RECEIVE THEM NOW? He pushed NO. “Maybe the ship was one of the waiting calls,” Lex said. “Maybe that way you could get the phone number!” He ignored her. ENTER THE NUMBER YOU WISH TO CALL OR PRESS F7 FOR DIRECTORY. He pushed F7 and suddenly names and numbers spilled over the screen, an enormous directory. It wasn’t alphabetical, and it took a while to scan it visually before he found what he was looking for: VSL ANNE B. (FREDDY) 708-3902 Now all he had to do was figure out how to dial. He pushed a row of buttons at the bottom of the screen: DIAL NOW OR DIAL LATER? He pushed DIAL NOW. WE’RE SORRY, YOUR CALL CANNOT BE COMPLETED AS DIALED. {ERROR-598} PLEASE TRY AGAIN He tried it again. He heard a dial tone, then the tone of the numbers being automatically dialed in rapid succession. “Is that it?” Grant said. “Pretty good, Timmy,” Lex said. “But they’re almost there.” On the screen, they could see the prow of the ship closing on the Puntarenas dock. They heard a high-pitched squeal, and then a voice said, “Ah, hello, John, this is Freddy. Do you read me, over?” Tim picked up a phone on the console but heard only a dial tone. “Ah, hello, John, this is Freddy, over?” “Answer it,” Lex said. Now they were all picking up phones, lifting every receiver in sight, but they heard only dial tones. Finally Tim saw a phone mounted on the side of the console with a blinking light. “Ah, hello, control. This is Freddy. Do you read me, over?” Tim grabbed the receiver. “Hello, this is Tim Murphy, and I need you to—” “Ah, say again, didn’t get that, John.” “Don’t land the boat! Do you hear me?” There was a pause. Then a puzzled voice said, “Sounds like some damn kid.” Tim said, “Don’t land the ship! Come back to the island!” The voices sounded distant and scratchy. “Did he—name was Murphy?” And another voice said, “I didn’t get—name.” Tim looked frantically at the others. Gennaro reached for the phone. “Let me do this. Can you get his name?” There was the sharp crackle of static. “—got to be a joke or else—a—frigging ham operator—omething.” Tim was working on the keyboard, there was probably some kind of a way to find out who Freddy was.… “Can you hear me?” Gennaro said, into the phone."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c51_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“If you can hear me, answer me now, over.” “Son,” came the drawled reply, “we don’t know who the hell you are, but you’re not funny, and we’re about to dock and we’ve got work to do. Now, identify yourself properly or get off this channel.” Tim watched as the screen printed out FARRELL, FREDERICK D. (CAPT.). “Try this for identification, Captain Farrell,” Gennaro said. “If you don’t turn that boat around and return to this island immediately, you will be found in violation of Section 509 of the Uniform Maritime Act, you will be subject to revocation of license, penalties in excess of fifty thousand dollars, and five years in jail. Do you hear that?” There was a silence. “Do you copy that, Captain Farrell?” And then, distantly, they heard a voice say, “I copy,” and another voice said, “All ahead stern.” The boat began to turn away from the dock. Lex began to cheer. Tim collapsed back in the chair, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Grant said, “What’s the Uniform Maritime Act?” “Who the hell knows?” Gennaro said. They all watched the screen in satisfaction. The boat was definitely heading away from the shore. “I guess the hard part’s finished,” Gennaro said. Grant shook his head. “The hard part,” he said, “is just beginning.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c52_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park DESTROYING THE WORLD They moved Malcolm to another room in the lodge, to a clean bed. Hammond seemed to revive, and began bustling around, straightening up. “Well,” he said, “at least disaster is averted.” “What disaster is that?” Malcolm said, sighing. “Well,” Hammond said, “they didn’t get free and overrun the world.” Malcolm sat up on one elbow. “You were worried about that?” “Surely that’s what was at stake,” Hammond said. “These animals, lacking predators, might get out and destroy the planet.” “You egomaniacal idiot,” Malcolm said, in fury. “Do you have any idea what you are talking about? You think you can destroy the planet? My, what intoxicating power you must have.” Malcolm sank back on the bed. “You can’t destroy this planet. You can’t even come close.” “Most people believe,” Hammond said stiffly, “that the planet is in jeopardy.” “Well, it’s not,” Malcolm said. “All the experts agree that our planet is in trouble.” Malcolm sighed. “Let me tell you about our planet,” he said. “Our planet is four and a half billion years old. There has been life on this planet for nearly that long. Three point eight billion years. The first bacteria. And, later, the first multicellular animals, then the first complex creatures, in the sea, on the land. Then the great sweeping ages of animals—the amphibians, the dinosaurs, the mammals, each lasting millions upon millions of years. Great dynasties of creatures arising, flourishing, dying away. All this happening against a background of continuous and violent upheaval, mountain ranges thrust up and eroded away, cometary impacts, volcanic eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving … Endless, constant and violent change … Even today, the greatest geographical feature on the planet comes from two great continents colliding, buckling to make the Himalayan mountain range over millions of years. The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us.” Hammond frowned. “Just because it lasted a long time,” he said, “doesn’t mean it is permanent. If there was a radiation accident …” “Suppose there was,” Malcolm said. “Let’s say we had a bad one, and all the plants and animals died, and the earth was clicking hot for a hundred thousand years. Life would survive somewhere—under the soil, or perhaps frozen in Arctic ice. And after all those years, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would again spread over the planet. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. And of course it would be very different from what it is now. But the earth would survive our folly. Life would survive our folly. Only we,” Malcolm said, “think it wouldn’t.” Hammond said, “Well, if the ozone layer gets thinner—” “There will be more ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface. So what?” “Well. It’ll cause skin cancer.” Malcolm shook his head. “Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c52_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation.” “And many others will die out,” Hammond said. Malcolm sighed. “You think this is the first time such a thing has happened? Don’t you know about oxygen?” “I know it’s necessary for life.” “It is now,” Malcolm said. “But oxygen is actually a metabolic poison. It’s a corrosive gas, like fluorine, which is used to etch glass. And when oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells—say, around three billion years ago—it created a crisis for all other life on our planet. Those plant cells were polluting the environment with a deadly poison. They were exhaling a lethal gas, and building up its concentration. A planet like Venus has less than one percent oxygen. On earth, the concentration of oxygen was going up rapidly—five, ten, eventually twenty-one percent! Earth had an atmosphere of pure poison! Incompatible with life!” Hammond looked irritated. “So what is your point? That modern pollutants will be incorporated, too?” “No,” Malcolm said. “My point is that life on earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago, we didn’t have cars and airplanes and computers and vaccines.… It was a whole different world. But to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.” “And we very well might be gone,” Hammond said, huffing. “Yes,” Malcolm said. “We might.” “So what are you saying? We shouldn’t care about the environment?” “No, of course not.” “Then what?” Malcolm coughed, and stared into the distance. “Let’s be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet—or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c53_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park UNDER CONTROL Four hours had passed. It was afternoon; the sun was falling. The air conditioning was back on in the control room, and the computer was functioning properly. As near as they could determine, out of twenty-four people on the island, eight were dead and six more were missing. The visitor center and the Safari Lodge were both secure, and the northern perimeter seemed to be clear of dinosaurs. They had called authorities in San José for help. The Costa Rican National Guard was on its way, as well as an air ambulance to carry Malcolm to a hospital. But over the telephone, the Costa Rican guard had been distinctly cautious; undoubtedly calls would go back and forth between San José and Washington before help was finally sent to the island. And now it was growing late in the day; if the helicopters did not arrive soon, they would have to wait until morning. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but wait. The ship was returning; the crew had discovered three young raptors scampering about in one of the aft holds, and had killed the animals. On Isla Nublar, the immediate danger appeared to have passed; everyone was in either the visitor center or the lodge. Tim had gotten quite good with the computer, and he flashed up a new screen. “What the hell is it doing now?” Gennaro said. “Now it says there are fewer animals?” Grant nodded. “Probably.” Ellie said, “Jurassic Park is finally coming under control.” “Meaning what?” “Equilibrium.” Grant pointed to the monitors. On one of them, the hypsilophodonts leapt into the air as a pack of velociraptors entered the field from the west. “The fences have been down for hours,” Grant said. “The animals are mingling with each other. Populations reaching equilibrium—a true Jurassic equilibrium.” “I don’t think it was supposed to happen,” Gennaro said. “The animals were never supposed to mix.” “Well, they are.” On another monitor, Grant saw a pack of raptors racing at full speed across an open field toward a four-ton hadrosaur. The hadrosaur turned to flee, and one of the raptors jumped onto its back, biting into the long neck, while others raced forward, circled around it, nipped at its legs, leapt up to slash at the belly with their powerful claws. Within minutes, six raptors had brought down the larger animal. Grant stared, silently. Ellie said, “Is it the way you imagined?” “I don’t know what I imagined,” he said. He watched the monitor. “No, not exactly.” Muldoon said quietly, “You know, it appears all the adult raptors are out right now.” Grant didn’t pay much attention at first. He just watched the monitors, the interaction of the great animals. In the south, the stegosaur was swinging its spiked tail, warily circling the baby tyrannosaur, which watched it, bemused, and occasionally lunged forward to nip ineffectually at the spikes. In the western quadrant, the adult triceratopsians were fighting among themselves, charging and locking horns."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c53_r1.htm.txt", "text": "One animal already lay wounded and dying. Muldoon said, “We’ve got about an hour of good daylight left, Dr. Grant. If you want to try and find that nest.” “Right,” Grant said. “I do.” “I was thinking,” Muldoon said, “that, when the Costa Ricans come, they will probably imagine this island to be a military problem. Something to destroy as soon as possible.” “Damn right,” Gennaro said. “They’ll bomb it from the air,” Muldoon said. “Perhaps napalm, perhaps nerve gas as well. But from the air.” “I hope they do,” Gennaro said. “This island is too dangerous. Every animal on this island must be destroyed, and the sooner the better.” Grant said, “That’s not satisfactory.” He got to his feet. “Let’s get started.” “I don’t think you understand, Alan,” Gennaro said. “It’s my opinion that this island is too dangerous. It must be destroyed. Every animal on this island must be destroyed, and that’s what the Costa Rican guard will do. I think we should leave it in their capable hands. Do you understand what I’m saying?” “Perfectly,” Grant said again. “Then what’s your problem?” Gennaro said. “It’s a military operation. Let them do it.” Grant’s back ached, where the raptor had clawed him. “No,” he said. “We have to take care of it.” “Leave it to the experts,” Gennaro said. Grant remembered how he had found Gennaro, just six hours earlier, huddled and terrified in the cab of a truck in the maintenance building. And suddenly he lost his temper and slammed the lawyer up against the concrete wall. “Listen, you little bastard, you have a responsibility to this situation and you’re going to start living up to it.” “I am,” Gennaro said, coughing. “No, you’re not. You’ve shirked your responsibility all along, from the very beginning.” “The hell—” “You sold investors on an undertaking you didn’t fully understand. You were part owner of a business you failed to supervise. You did not check the activities of a man whom you knew from experience to be a liar, and you permitted that man to screw around with the most dangerous technology in human history. I’d say you shirked your responsibility.” Gennaro coughed again. “Well, now I’m taking responsibility.” “No,” Grant said. “You’re still shirking it. And you can’t do that any more.” He released Gennaro, who bent over, gasping for breath. Grant turned to Muldoon. “What have we got for weapons?” Muldoon said, “We’ve got some control nets, and shock prods.” “How good are these shock prods?” Grant said. “They’re like bang sticks for sharks. They have an explosive capacitor tip, delivers a shock on contact. High voltage, low amps. Not fatal, but it’s definitely incapacitating.” “That’s not going to do it,” Grant said. “Not in the nest.” “What nest?” Gennaro said, coughing. “The raptor nest,” Ellie said. “The raptor nest?” Grant was saying, “Have you got any radio collars?” “I’m sure we do,” Muldoon said. “Get one."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c53_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And is there anything else that can be used for defense?” Muldoon shook his head. “Well, get whatever you can.” Muldoon went away. Grant turned to Gennaro. “Your island is a mess, Mr. Gennaro. Your experiment is a mess. It has to be cleaned up. But you can’t do that until you know the extent of the mess. And that means finding the nests on the island. Especially the raptor nests. They’ll be hidden. We have to find them, and inspect them, and count the eggs. We have to account for every animal born on this island. Then we can burn it down. But first we have a little work to do.” Ellie was looking at the wall map, which now showed the animal ranges. Tim was working the keyboard. She pointed to the map. “The raptors are localized in the southern area, down where the volcanic steam fields are. Maybe they like the warmth.” “Is there any place to hide down there?” “Turns out there is,” she said. “There’s massive concrete waterworks, to control flooding in the southern flatlands. Big underground area. Water and shade.” Grant nodded. “Then that’s where they’ll be.” Ellie said, “I think there’s an entrance from the beach, too.” She turned to the consoles and said, “Tim, show us the cutaways on the waterworks.” Tim wasn’t listening. “Tim?” He was hunched over the keyboard. “Just a minute,” he said. “I found something.” “What is it?” “It’s an unmarked storage room. I don’t know what’s there.” “Then it might have weapons,” Grant said. They were all behind the maintenance building, unlocking a steel storm door, lifting it up into the sunlight, to reveal concrete steps going down into the earth. “Damned Arnold,” Muldoon said, as he hobbled down the steps. “He must have known this was here all along.” “Maybe not,” Grant said. “He didn’t try to go here.” “Well, then, Hammond knew. Somebody knew.” “Where is Hammond now?” “Still in the lodge.” They reached the bottom of the stairs, and came upon rows of gas masks hanging on the wall, in plastic containers. They shone their flashlights deeper into the room and saw several heavy glass cubes, two feet high, with steel caps. Grant could see small dark spheres inside the cubes. It was like being in a room full of giant pepper mills, he thought. Muldoon opened the cap of one, reached in, and withdrew a sphere. He turned it in the light, frowning. “I’ll be damned.” “What is it?” Grant said. “MORO-12,” Muldoon said. “It’s an inhalation nerve gas. These are grenades. Lots and lots of grenades.” “Let’s get started,” Grant said grimly. “It likes me,” Lex said, smiling. They were standing in the garage of the visitor center, by the little raptor that Grant had captured in the tunnel. She was petting the raptor through the cage bars. The animal rubbed up against her hand. “I’d be careful there,” Muldoon said. “They can give a nasty bite.” “He likes me,” Lex said."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c53_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“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 bet he’ll let me put it on him,” she said. “I wouldn’t try,” Muldoon said. “They’re unpredictable.” “I bet 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 hands. 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c53_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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. “You have to realize: we don’t know all the details about the nesting behavior of living reptiles, like crocodiles and alligators. They’re difficult animals to study.” But it was known that in the case of American alligators, only the female guarded the nest, awaiting the time of hatching. The bull alligator spent days in early spring lying beside the female in a mating pair, blowing bubbles on her cheeks to bring her to receptivity, finally causing her to lift her tail and allow him to insert his penis. By the time the female built her nest, two months later, the male was long gone. The female guarded her cone-shaped, three-foot-high nest ferociously, and when the hatchlings began to squeak and emerge from their shells, she often helped break open the eggs, then nudged them toward the water, sometimes carrying them in her mouth. “So adult alligators protect the young?” “Yes,” Grant said. “And there is also a kind of group protection. Young alligators make a 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 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c53_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“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 hear 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 hole, 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c53_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“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 hole. 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 hole 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c54_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c54_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c54_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c54_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c55_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park 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?” “No.” “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 light-headed. He started walking toward the hole. From a distance it appeared small, but as he 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, tumbling 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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c55_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c55_r1.htm.txt", "text": "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. “You think I can take it off ?” she asked. “Just do it quickly.” “Oo-kay,” she said, squatting beside the small animal. It whimpered again. The adults snorted, bobbed their heads. Ellie petted the little juvenile, trying to soothe it, to silence its whimpering. She moved her hands toward the leather collar, lifted back the Velcro tab with a tearing sound. The adults jerked their heads. Then one began to walk toward her. “Oh shit,” Gennaro said, under his breath. “Don’t move,” Grant said. “Stay calm.” The adult walked past them, its long curved toes clicking on the concrete. The animal paused in front of Ellie, who stayed crouched by the juvenile, behind a steel box. The juvenile was exposed, and Ellie’s hand was still on the collar. The adult raised its head, and sniffed the air. The adult’s big head was very close to her hand, but it could not see her because of the junction box. A tongue flicked out, tentatively. Grant reached for a gas grenade, plucked it from his belt, held his thumb on the pin. Gennaro put out a restraining hand, shook his head, nodded to Ellie. She wasn’t wearing her mask. Grant set the grenade down, reached for the shock prod. The adult was still very close to Ellie. Ellie eased the leather strap off. The metal of the buckle clinked on concrete. The adult’s head jerked fractionally, and then cocked to one side, curious. It was moving forward again to investigate, when the little juvenile squeaked happily and scampered away. The adult remained by Ellie. Then finally it turned, and walked back to the center of the nest. Gennaro gave a long exhalation. “Jesus. Can we leave?” “No,” Grant said. “But I think we can get some work done now.” In the phosphorescent green glow of the night-vision goggles, Grant peered down into the room from the ledge, looking at the first nest. It was made of mud and straw, formed into a broad, shallow basket shape. He counted the remains of fourteen eggs. Of course he couldn’t count the actual shells from this distance, and in any case they were long since broken and scattered over the floor, but he was able to count the indentations in the mud. Apparently the raptors made their nests shortly before the eggs were laid, and the eggs left a permanent impression in the mud. He also saw evidence that at least one had broken. He credited thirteen animals. The second nest had broken in half. But Grant estimated it had contained nine eggshells."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c55_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The third nest had fifteen eggs, but it appeared that three eggs had been broken early. “What’s that total?” Gennaro said. “Thirty-four born,” Grant said. “And how many do you see?” Grant shook his head. The animals were running all over the cavernous interior space, darting in and out of the light. “I’ve been watching,” Ellie said, shining her light down at her notepad. “You’d have to take photos to be sure, but the snout markings of the infants are all different. My count is thirty-three.” “And juveniles?” “Twenty-two. But, Alan—do you notice anything funny about them?” “Like what?” Grant whispered. “How they arrange themselves spatially. They’re falling into some kind of a pattern or arrangement in the room.” Grant frowned. He said, “It’s pretty dark.…” “No, look. Look for yourself. Watch the little ones. When they are playing, they tumble and run every which way. But in between, when the babies are standing around, notice how they orient their bodies. They face either that wall, or the opposite wall. It’s like they line up.” “I don’t know, Ellie. You think there’s a colony metastructure? Like bees?” “No, not exactly,” she said. “It’s more subtle than that. It’s just a tendency.” “And the babies do it?” “No. They all do it. The adults do it, too. Watch them. I’m telling you, they line up.” Grant frowned. It seemed as if she was right. The animals engaged in all sorts of behavior, but during pauses, moments when they were watching or relaxing, they seemed to orient themselves in particular ways, almost as if there were invisible lines on the floor. “Beats me,” Grant said. “Maybe there’s a breeze.…” “I don’t feel one, Alan.” “What are they doing? Some kind of social organization expressed as spatial structure?” “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Because they all do it.” Gennaro flipped up his watch. “I knew this thing would come in handy one day.” Beneath the watch face was a compass. Grant said, “You have much use for that in court?” “No.” Gennaro shook his head. “My wife gave it to me,” he explained, “for my birthday.” He peered at the compass. “Well,” he said, “they’re not lined up according to anything.… I guess they’re sort of northeast-southwest, something like that.” Ellie said, “Maybe they’re hearing something, turning their heads so they can hear.…” Grant frowned. “Or maybe it’s just ritual behavior,” she said, “species-specific behavior that serves to identify them to one another. But maybe it doesn’t have any broader meaning.” Ellie sighed. “Or maybe they’re weird. Maybe dinosaurs are weird. Or maybe it’s a kind of communication.” Grant was thinking the same thing. Bees could communicate spatially, by doing a kind of dance. Perhaps dinosaurs could do the same thing. Gennaro watched them and said, “Why don’t they go outside?” “They’re nocturnal.” “Yes, but it almost seems like they’re hiding.” Grant shrugged. In the next moment, the infants began to squeak and hop excitedly. The adults watched curiously for a moment."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c55_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And then, with hoots and cries that echoed in the dark cavernous space, all the dinosaurs wheeled and ran, heading down the concrete tunnel, into the darkness beyond."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c56_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park HAMMOND John Hammond sat down heavily in the damp earth of the hillside and tried to catch his breath. Dear God, it was hot, he thought. Hot and humid. He felt as if he were breathing through a sponge. He looked down at the streambed, now forty feet below. It seemed like hours since he had left the trickling water and begun to climb the hill. His ankle was now swollen and dark purple. He couldn’t put any weight on it at all. He was forced to hop up the hill on his other leg, which now burned with pain from the exertion. And he was thirsty. Before leaving the stream behind, he had drunk from it, even though he knew this was unwise. Now he felt dizzy, and the world sometimes swirled around him. He was having trouble with his balance. But he knew he had to climb the hill, and get back to the path above. Hammond thought he had heard footsteps on the path several times during the previous hour, and each time he had shouted for help. But somehow his voice hadn’t carried far enough; he hadn’t been rescued. And so, as the afternoon wore on, he began to realize that he would have to climb the hillside, injured leg or not. And that was what he was doing now. Those damned kids. Hammond shook his head, trying to clear it. He had been climbing for more than an hour, and he had gone only a third of the distance up the hill. And he was tired, panting like an old dog. His leg throbbed. He was dizzy. Of course, he knew perfectly well that he was in no danger—he was almost within sight of his bungalow, for God’s sake—but he had to admit he was tired. Sitting on the hillside, he found he didn’t really want to move any more. And why shouldn’t he be tired? he thought. He was seventy-six years old. That was no age to be climbing around hillsides. Even though Hammond was in peak condition for a man his age. Personally, he expected to live to be a hundred. It was just a matter of taking care of yourself, of taking care of things as they came up. Certainly he had plenty of reasons to live. Other parks to build. Other wonders to create— He heard a squeaking, then a chittering sound. Some kind of small birds, hopping in the undergrowth. He’d been hearing small animals all afternoon. There were all kinds of things out here: rats, possums, snakes. The squeaking got louder, and small bits of earth rolled down the hillside past him. Something was coming. Then he saw a dark green animal hopping down the hill toward him—and another—and another. Compys, he thought with a chill. Scavengers. The compys didn’t look dangerous. They were about as big as chickens, and they moved up and down with little nervous jerks, like chickens. But he knew they were poisonous."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c56_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Their bites had a slow-acting poison that they used to kill crippled animals. Crippled animals, he thought, frowning. The first of the compys perched on the hillside, staring at him. It stayed about five feet away, beyond his reach, and just watched him. Others came down soon after, and they stood in a row. Watching. They hopped up and down and chittered and waved their little clawed hands. “Shoo! Get out!” he said, and threw a rock. The compys backed away, but only a foot or two. They weren’t afraid. They seemed to know he couldn’t hurt them. Angrily, Hammond tore a branch from a tree and swiped at them with it. The compys dodged, nipped at the leaves, squeaked happily. They seemed to think he was playing a game. He thought again about the poison. He remembered that one of the animal handlers had been bitten by a compy in a cage. The handler had said the poison was like a narcotic—peaceful, dreamy. No pain. You just wanted to go to sleep. The hell with that, he thought. Hammond picked up a rock, aimed carefully, and threw it, striking one compy flat in the chest. The little animal shrieked in alarm as it was knocked backward, and rolled over its tail. The other animals immediately backed away. Better. Hammond turned away, and started to climb the hill once more. Holding branches in both hands, he hopped on his left leg, feeling the ache in his thigh. He had not gone more than ten feet when one of the compys jumped onto his back. He flung his arms wildly, knocking the animal away, but lost his balance and slid back down the hillside. As he came to a stop, a second compy sprang forward, and took a tiny nip from his hand. He looked with horror, seeing the blood flow over his fingers. He turned and began to scramble up the hillside again. Another compy jumped onto his shoulder, and he felt a brief pain as it bit the back of his neck. He shrieked and smacked the animal away. He turned to face the animals, breathing hard, and they stood all around him, hopping up and down and cocking their heads, watching him. From the bite on his neck, he felt warmth flow through his shoulders, down his spine. Lying on his back on the hillside, he began to feel strangely relaxed, detached from himself. But he realized that nothing was wrong. No error had been made. Malcolm was quite incorrect in his analysis. Hammond lay very still, as still as a child in its crib, and he felt wonderfully peaceful. When the next compy came up and bit his ankle, he made only a halfhearted effort to kick it away. The little animals edged closer. Soon they were chittering all around him, like excited birds. He raised his head as another compy jumped onto his chest, the animal surprisingly light and delicate."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c56_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Hammond felt only a slight pain, very slight, as the compy bent to chew his neck."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c57_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park THE BEACH Chasing the dinosaurs, following the curves and slopes of concrete, Grant suddenly burst out through a cavernous opening, and found himself standing on the beach, looking at the Pacific Ocean. All around him, the young velociraptors were scampering and kicking in the sand. But, one by one, the animals moved back into the shade of the palm trees at the edge of the mangrove swamp, and there they stood, lined up in their peculiar fashion, watching the ocean. They stared fixedly to the south. “I don’t get it,” Gennaro said. “I don’t, either.” Grant said, “except that they clearly don’t like the sun.” It wasn’t very sunny on the beach; a light mist blew, and the ocean was hazy. But why had they suddenly left the nest? What had brought the entire colony to the beach? Gennaro flipped up the dial on his watch, and looked at the way the animals were standing. “Northeast-southwest. Same as before.” Behind the beach, deeper in the woods, they heard the hum of the electric fence. “At least we know how they get outside the fence,” Ellie said. Then they heard the throb of marine diesels, and through the mist they saw a ship appearing in the south. A large freighter, it slowly moved north. “So that’s why they came out?” Gennaro said. Grant nodded. “They must have heard it coming.” As the freighter passed, all the animals watched it, standing silent except for the occasional chirp or squeak. Grant was struck by the coordination of their behavior, the way they moved and acted as a group. But perhaps it was not really so mysterious. In his mind, he reviewed the sequence of events that had begun in the cave. First the infants had been agitated. Then the adults had noticed. And finally all the animals had stampeded to the beach. That sequence seemed to imply that the younger animals, with keener hearing, had detected the boat first. Then the adults had led the troop out onto the beach. And as Grant looked, he saw that the adults were in charge now. There was a clear spatial organization along the beach, and as the animals settled down, it was not loose and shifting, the way it had been inside. Rather, it was quite regular, almost regimented. The adults were spaced every ten yards or so, each adult surrounded by a cluster of infants. The juveniles were positioned between, and slightly ahead of, the adults. But Grant also saw that all the adults were not equal. There was a female with a distinctive stripe along her head, and she was in the very center of the group as it ranged along the beach. That same female had stayed in the center of the nesting area, too. He guessed that, like certain monkey troops, the raptors were organized around a matriarchal pecking order, and that this striped animal was the alpha female of the colony."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c57_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The males, he saw, were arranged defensively at the perimeter of the group. But unlike monkeys, which were loosely and flexibly organized, the dinosaurs settled into a rigid arrangement—almost a military formation, it seemed. Then, too, there was the oddity of the northeast-southwest spatial orientation. That was beyond Grant. But, in another sense, he was not surprised. Paleontologists had been digging up bones for so long that they had forgotten how little information could be gleaned from a skeleton. Bones might tell you something about the gross appearance of an animal, its height and weight. They might tell you something about how the muscles attached, and therefore something about the crude behavior of the animal during life. They might give you clues to the few diseases that affected bone. But a skeleton was a poor thing, really, from which to try and deduce the total behavior of an organism. Since bones were all the paleontologists had, bones were what they used. Like other paleontologists, Grant had become very expert at working with bones. And somewhere along the way, he had started to forget the unprovable possibilities—that the dinosaurs might be truly different animals, that they might possess behavior and social life organized along lines that were utterly mysterious to their later, mammalian descendants. That, since the dinosaurs were fundamentally birds— “Oh, my God,” Grant said. He stared at the raptors, ranged along the beach in a rigid formation, silently watching the boat. And he suddenly understood what he was looking at. “Those animals,” Gennaro said, shaking his head, “they sure are desperate to escape from here.” “No,” Grant said. “They don’t want to escape at all.” “They don’t?” “No,” Grant said. “They want to migrate.”"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c58_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park APPROACHING DARK “Migrating!” Ellie said. “That’s fantastic!” “Yes,” Grant said. He was grinning. Ellie said, “Where do you suppose they want to go?” “I don’t know,” Grant said, and then the big helicopters burst through the fog, thundering and wheeling over the landscape, their underbellies heavy with armament. The raptors scattered in alarm as one of the helicopters circled back, following the line of the surf, and then moved in to land on the beach. A door was flung open and soldiers in olive uniforms came running toward them. Grant heard the rapid babble of voices in Spanish and saw that Muldoon was already aboard with the kids. One of the soldiers said in English, “Please, you will come with us. Please, there is no time here.” Grant looked back at the beach where the raptors had been, but they were gone. All the animals had vanished. It was as if they had never existed. The soldiers were tugging at him, and he allowed himself to be led beneath the thumping blades and climbed up through the big door. Muldoon leaned over and shouted in Grant’s ear, “They want us out of here now. They’re going to do it now!” The soldiers pushed Grant and Ellie and Gennaro into seats, and helped them clip on the harnesses. Tim and Lex waved to him and he suddenly saw how young they were, and how exhausted. Lex was yawning, leaning against her brother’s shoulder. An officer came toward Grant and shouted, “Senor: are you in charge?” “No,” Grant said. “I’m not in charge.” “Who is in charge, please?” “I don’t know.” The officer went on to Gennaro, and asked the same question: “Are you in charge?” “No,” Gennaro said. The officer looked at Ellie, but said nothing to her. The door was left open as the helicopter lifted away from the beach, and Grant leaned out to see if he could catch a last look at the raptors, but then the helicopter was above the palm trees, moving north over the island. Grant leaned to Muldoon, and shouted: “What about the others?” Muldoon shouted, “They’ve already taken off Harding and some workmen. Hammond had an accident. Found him on the hill near his bungalow. Must have fallen.” “Is he all right?” Grant said. “No. Compys got him.” “What about Malcolm?” Grant said. Muldoon shook his head. Grant was too tired to feel much of anything. He turned away, and looked back out the door. It was getting dark now, and in the fading light he could barely see the little rex, with bloody jaws, crouched over a hadrosaur by the edge of the lagoon and looking up at the helicopter and roaring as it passed by."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_c58_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Somewhere behind them they heard explosions, and then ahead they saw another helicopter wheeling through the mist over the visitor center, and a moment later the building burst in a bright orange fireball, and Lex began to cry, and Ellie put her arm around her and tried to get her not to look. Grant was staring down at the ground, and he had a last glimpse of the hypsilophodonts, leaping gracefully as gazelles, moments before another explosion flared bright beneath them. Their helicopter gained altitude, and then moved east, out over the ocean. Grant sat back in his seat. He thought of the dinosaurs standing on the beach, and he wondered where they would migrate if they could, and he realized he would never know, and he felt sad and relieved in the same moment. The officer came forward again, bending close to his face. “Are you in charge?” “No,” Grant said. “Please, señor, who is in charge?” “Nobody,” Grant said. The helicopter gained speed as it headed toward the mainland. It was cold now, and the soldiers muscled the door closed. As they did, Grant looked back just once, and saw the island against a deep purple sky and sea, cloaked in a deep mist that blurred the white-hot explosions that burst rapidly, one after another, until it seemed the entire island was glowing, a diminishing bright spot in the darkening night."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_col1_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park “A TAUT THRILLER …FASCINATING … Crichton is a master at blending edge-of-the-chair adventure and a scientific seminar, educating his readers as he entertains them.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Crichton combines his knowledge of science with a great talent for creating suspense.… Fast-moving.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Crichton is remarkably realistic with his depictions of what it could be like if genetic engineering created a theme park full of carefully modified dinosaurs—and the terrible lizards got out of control.” —USA Today “Crichton’s notion is wonderful precisely because nothing about it is entirely outside the realm of possibility.… He presents an astonishingly plausible case that a lot of money and a little bit of luck are all one would need to make this book’s unlikely scenario become real.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer “Intellectually provocative, high-octane entertainment.” —New York Newsday"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_col2_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park “AN EXCITING, FAST-PACEDTALE THAT’S HARD TOPUT DOWN.” —Milwaukee Journal “Riveting … A winning blend of action, suspense, and information.” —Detroit Free Press “Exciting … Frightening.” —The New York Times “Ingenious … JURASSIC PARK is hard to beat for sheer intellectual entertainment.” —Entertainment Weekly “A winner … Highly entertaining … Michael Crichton has written a thriller combining sophisticated biotechnology with prehistoric legend. And what a thriller it is.” —St. Petersburg Times"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_col3_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park “[A] DEFT SCIENTIFICTHRILLER … A SNAPPYNIGHTMARE OF SCIENCERUN AMOK.” —The Wall Street Journal “Crichton’s dinosaurs are genuinely frightening.” —Chicago Sun-Times “Crichton’s sci-fi is convincingly detailed.” —Time Magazine “Vastly entertaining … [A] tornado-paced tale … Easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire bestseller.” —Kirkus Reviews “A scary, creepy, mesmerizing techno-thriller with teeth.” —Publishers Weekly “By far the best science fiction I have read since Jules Verne in my youth.” —John Barkham Review"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_cop_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park A Ballantine Book Published by The Random House Publishing Group Copyright © 1990 by Michael Crichton All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. www.ballantinebooks.com Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-52960 eISBN: 978-0-307-76305-1 The edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. v3.1_r1"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_epl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park EPILOGUE: SAN JOSÉ Days went by. The government was polite, and put them up in a nice hotel in San José. They were free to come and go, and to call whomever they wished. But they were not permitted to leave the country. Each day a young man from the American Embassy came to visit them, to ask if they needed anything, and to explain that Washington was doing everything it could to hasten their departure. But the plain fact was that many people had died in a territorial possession of Costa Rica. The plain fact was that an ecological disaster had been narrowly averted. The government of Costa Rica felt it had been misled and deceived by John Hammond and his plans for the island. Under the circumstances, the government was not disposed to release survivors in a hurry. They did not even permit the burial of Hammond or Ian Malcolm. They simply waited. Each day it seemed to Grant he was taken to another government office, where he was questioned by another courteous, intelligent government officer. They made him go over his story, again and again. How Grant had met John Hammond. What Grant knew of the project. How Grant had received the fax from New York. Why Grant had gone to the island. What had happened at the island. The same details, again and again, day after day. The same story. For a long time, Grant thought they must believe he was lying to them, and that there was something they wanted him to tell, although he could not imagine what it was. Yet, in some odd way, they seemed to be waiting. Finally, he was sitting around the swimming pool of the hotel one afternoon, watching Tim and Lex splash, when an American in khakis walked up. “We’ve never met,” the American said. “My name is Marty Guitierrez. I’m a researcher here, at the Carara station.” Grant said, “You were the one who found the original specimen of the Procompsognathus.” “That’s right, yes.” Guitierrez sat next to him. “You must be eager to go home.” “Yes,” Grant said. “I have only a few days left to dig before the winter sets in. In Montana, you know, the first snow usually comes in August.” Guitierrez said, “Is that why the Hammond Foundation supported northern digs? Because intact genetic material from dinosaurs was more likely to be recovered from cold climates?” “That’s what I presume, yes.” Guitierrez nodded. “He was a clever man, Mr. Hammond.” Grant said nothing. Guitierrez sat back in the pool chair. “The authorities won’t tell you,” Guitierrez said finally. “Because they are afraid, and perhaps also resentful of you, for what you have done. But something very peculiar is happening in the rural regions.” “Biting the babies?” “No, thankfully, that has stopped. But something else. This spring, in the Ismaloya section, which is to the north, some unknown animals ate the crops in a very peculiar manner."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_epl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "They moved each day, in a straight line—almost as straight as an arrow—from the coast, into the mountains, into the jungle.” Grant sat upright. “Like a migration,” Guitierrez said. “Wouldn’t you say?” “What crops?” Grant said. “Well, it was odd. They would only eat agama beans and soy, and sometimes chickens.” Grant said, “Foods rich in lysine. What happened to these animals?” “Presumably,” Guitierrez said, “they entered the jungles. In any case, they have not been found. Of course, it would be difficult to search for them in the jungle. A search party could spend years in the Ismaloya mountains, with nothing to show for it.” “And we are being kept here because …” Guitierrez shrugged. “The government is worried. Perhaps there are more animals. More trouble. They are feeling cautious.” “Do you think there are more animals?” Grant said. “I can’t say. Can you?” “No,” Grant said. “I can’t say.” “But you suspect?” Grant nodded. “Possibly there are. Yes.” “I agree.” Guitierrez pushed up from his chair. He waved to Tim and Lex, playing in the pool. “Probably they will send the children home,” he said. “There is no reason not to do that.” He put on his sunglasses. “Enjoy your stay with us, Dr. Grant. It is a lovely country here.” Grant said, “You’re telling me we’re not going anywhere?” “None of us is going anywhere, Dr. Grant,” Guitierrez said, smiling. And then he turned, and walked back toward the entrance of the hotel."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_fm1_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park “Reptiles are abhorrent because of their cold body, pale color, cartilaginous skeleton, filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom; wherefore their Creator has not exerted his powers to make many of them.” LINNAEUS, 1797 “You cannot recall a new form of life.” ERWIN CHARGAFF, 1972"}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_itr_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park INTRODUCTION “The InGen Incident” The late twentieth century has witnessed a scientific gold rush of astonishing proportions: the headlong and furious haste to commercialize genetic engineering. This enterprise has proceeded so rapidly—with so little outside commentary—that its dimensions and implications are hardly understood at all. Biotechnology promises the greatest revolution in human history. By the end of this decade, it will have outdistanced atomic power and computers in its effect on our everyday lives. In the words of one observer, “Biotechnology is going to transform every aspect of human life: our medical care, our food, our health, our entertainment, our very bodies. Nothing will ever be the same again. It’s literally going to change the face of the planet.” But the biotechnology revolution differs in three important respects from past scientific transformations. First, it is broad-based. America entered the atomic age through the work of a single research institution, at Los Alamos. It entered the computer age through the efforts of about a dozen companies. But biotechnology research is now carried out in more than two thousand laboratories in America alone. Five hundred corporations spend five billion dollars a year on this technology. Second, much of the research is thoughtless or frivolous. Efforts to engineer paler trout for better visibility in the stream, square trees for easier lumbering, and injectable scent cells so you’ll always smell of your favorite perfume may seem like a joke, but they are not. Indeed, the fact that biotechnology can be applied to the industries traditionally subject to the vagaries of fashion, such as cosmetics and leisure activities, heightens concern about the whimsical use of this powerful new technology. Third, the work is uncontrolled. No one supervises it. No federal laws regulate it. There is no coherent government policy, in America or anywhere else in the world. And because the products of biotechnology range from drugs to farm crops to artificial snow, an intelligent policy is difficult. But most disturbing is the fact that no watchdogs are found among scientists themselves. It is remarkable that nearly every scientist in genetics research is also engaged in the commerce of biotechnology. There are no detached observers. Everybody has a stake. The commercialization of molecular biology is the most stunning ethical event in the history of science, and it has happened with astonishing speed. For four hundred years since Galileo, science has always proceeded as a free and open inquiry into the workings of nature. Scientists have always ignored national boundaries, holding themselves above the transitory concerns of politics and even wars. Scientists have always rebelled against secrecy in research, and have even frowned on the idea of patenting their discoveries, seeing themselves as working to the benefit of all mankind. And for many generations, the discoveries of scientists did indeed have a peculiarly selfless quality."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_itr_r1.htm.txt", "text": "When, in 1953, two young researchers in England, James Watson and Francis Crick, deciphered the structure of DNA, their work was hailed as a triumph of the human spirit, of the centuries-old quest to understand the universe in a scientific way. It was confidently expected that their discovery would be selflessly extended to the greater benefit of mankind. Yet that did not happen. Thirty years later, nearly all of Watson and Crick’s scientific colleagues were engaged in another sort of enterprise entirely. Research in molecular genetics had become a vast, multibillion-dollar commercial undertaking, and its origins can be traced not to 1953 but to April 1976. That was the date of a now famous meeting, in which Robert Swanson, a venture capitalist, approached Herbert Boyer, a biochemist at the University of California. The two men agreed to found a commercial company to exploit Boyer’s gene-splicing techniques. Their new company, Genentech, quickly became the largest and most successful of the genetic engineering start-ups. Suddenly it seemed as if everyone wanted to become rich. New companies were announced almost weekly, and scientists flocked to exploit genetic research. By 1986, at least 362 scientists, including 64 in the National Academy, sat on the advisory boards of biotech firms. The number of those who held equity positions or consultancies was several times greater. It is necessary to emphasize how significant this shift in attitude actually was. In the past, pure scientists took a snobbish view of business. They saw the pursuit of money as intellectually uninteresting, suited only to shopkeepers. And to do research for industry, even at the prestigious Bell or IBM labs, was only for those who couldn’t get a university appointment. Thus the attitude of pure scientists was fundamentally critical toward the work of applied scientists, and to industry in general. Their long-standing antagonism kept university scientists free of contaminating industry ties, and whenever debate arose about technological matters, disinterested scientists were available to discuss the issues at the highest levels. But that is no longer true. There are very few molecular biologists and very few research institutions without commercial affiliations. The old days are gone. Genetic research continues, at a more furious pace than ever. But it is done in secret, and in haste, and for profit. In this commercial climate, it is probably inevitable that a company as ambitious as International Genetic Technologies, Inc., of Palo Alto, would arise. It is equally unsurprising that the genetic crisis it created should go unreported. After all, InGen’s research was conducted in secret; the actual incident occurred in the most remote region of Central America; and fewer than twenty people were there to witness it. Of those, only a handful survived. Even at the end, when International Genetic Technologies filed for Chapter 11 protection in United States Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco on October 5, 1989, the proceedings drew little press attention."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_itr_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It appeared so ordinary: InGen was the third small American bioengineering company to fail that year, and the seventh since 1986. Few court documents were made public, since the creditors were Japanese investment consortia, such as Hamaguri and Densaka, companies which traditionally shun publicity. To avoid unnecessary disclosure, Daniel Ross, of Cowan, Swain and Ross, counsel for InGen, also represented the Japanese investors. And the rather unusual petition of the vice consul of Costa Rica was heard behind closed doors. Thus it is not surprising that, within a month, the problems of InGen were quietly and amicably settled. Parties to that settlement, including the distinguished scientific board of advisers, signed a nondisclosure agreement, and none will speak about what happened; but many of the principal figures in the “InGen incident” are not signatories, and were willing to discuss the remarkable events leading up to those final two days in August 1989 on a remote island off the west coast of Costa Rica."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park PROLOGUE: THE BITE OF THERAPTOR The tropical rain fell in drenching sheets, hammering the corrugated roof of the clinic building, roaring down the metal gutters, splashing on the ground in a torrent. Roberta Carter sighed, and stared out the window. From the clinic, she could hardly see the beach or the ocean beyond, cloaked in low fog. This wasn’t what she had expected when she had come to the fishing village of Bahía Anasco, on the west coast of Costa Rica, to spend two months as a visiting physician. Bobbie Carter had expected sun and relaxation, after two grueling years of residency in emergency medicine at Michael Reese in Chicago. She had been in Bahía Anasco now for three weeks. And it had rained every day. Everything else was fine. She liked the isolation of Bahía Anasco, and the friendliness of its people. Costa Rica had one of the twenty best medical systems in the world, and even in this remote coastal village, the clinic was well maintained, amply supplied. Her paramedic, Manuel Aragón, was intelligent and well trained. Bobbie was able to practice a level of medicine equal to what she had practiced in Chicago. But the rain! The constant, unending rain! Across the examining room, Manuel cocked his head. “Listen,” he said. “Believe me, I hear it,” Bobbie said. “No. Listen.” And then she caught it, another sound blended with the rain, a deeper rumble that built and emerged until it was clear: the rhythmic thumping of a helicopter. She thought, They can’t be flying in weather like this. But the sound built steadily, and then the helicopter burst low through the ocean fog and roared overhead, circled, and came back. She saw the helicopter swing back over the water, near the fishing boats, then ease sideways to the rickety wooden dock, and back toward the beach. It was looking for a place to land. It was a big-bellied Sikorsky with a blue stripe on the side, with the words “InGen Construction.” That was the name of the construction company building a new resort on one of the offshore islands. The resort was said to be spectacular, and very complicated; many of the local people were employed in the construction, which had been going on for more than two years. Bobbie could imagine it—one of those huge American resorts with swimming pools and tennis courts, where guests could play and drink their daiquiris, without having any contact with the real life of the country. Bobbie wondered what was so urgent on that island that the helicopter would fly in this weather. Through the windshield she saw the pilot exhale in relief as the helicopter settled onto the wet sand of the beach. Uniformed men jumped out, and flung open the big side door. She heard frantic shouts in Spanish, and Manuel nudged her. They were calling for a doctor. Two black crewmen carried a limp body toward her, while a white man barked orders."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The white man had a yellow slicker. Red hair appeared around the edges of his Mets baseball cap. “Is there a doctor here?” he called to her, as she ran up. “I’m Dr. Carter,” she said. The rain fell in heavy drops, pounding her head and shoulders. The red-haired man frowned at her. She was wearing cut-off jeans and a tank top. She had a stethoscope over her shoulder, the bell already rusted from the salt air. “Ed Regis. We’ve got a very sick man here, doctor.” “Then you better take him to San José,” she said. San José was the capital, just twenty minutes away by air. “We would, but we can’t get over the mountains in this weather. You have to treat him here.” Bobbie trotted alongside the injured man as they carried him to the clinic. He was a kid, no older than eighteen. Lifting away the blood-soaked shirt, she saw a big slashing rip along his shoulder, and another on the leg. “What happened to him?” “Construction accident,” Ed shouted. “He fell. One of the backhoes ran over him.” The kid was pale, shivering, unconscious. Manuel stood by the bright green door of the clinic, waving his arm. The men brought the body through and set it on the table in the center of the room. Manuel started an intravenous line, and Bobbie swung the light over the kid and bent to examine the wounds. Immediately she could see that it did not look good. The kid would almost certainly die. A big tearing laceration ran from his shoulder down his torso. At the edge of the wound, the flesh was shredded. At the center, the shoulder was dislocated, pale bones exposed. A second slash cut through the heavy muscles of the thigh, deep enough to reveal the pulse of the femoral artery below. Her first impression was that his leg had been ripped open. “Tell me again about this injury,” she said. “I didn’t see it,” Ed said. “They say the backhoe dragged him.” “Because it almost looks as if he was mauled,” Bobbie Carter said, probing the wound. Like most emergency room physicians, she could remember in detail patients she had seen even years before. She had seen two maulings. One was a two-year-old child who had been attacked by a rottweiler dog. The other was a drunken circus attendant who had had an encounter with a Bengal tiger. Both injuries were similar. There was a characteristic look to an animal attack. “Mauled?” Ed said. “No, no. It was a backhoe, believe me.” Ed licked his lips as he spoke. He was edgy, acting as if he had done something wrong. Bobbie wondered why. If they were using inexperienced local workmen on the resort construction, they must have accidents all the time. Manuel said, “Do you want lavage?” “Yes,” she said. “After you block him.” She bent lower, probed the wound with her fingertips."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "If an earth mover had rolled over him, dirt would be forced deep into the wound. But there wasn’t any dirt, just a slippery, slimy foam. And the wound had a strange odor, a kind of rotten stench, a smell of death and decay. She had never smelled anything like it before. “How long ago did this happen?” “An hour.” Again she noticed how tense Ed Regis was. He was one of those eager, nervous types. And he didn’t look like a construction foreman. More like an executive. He was obviously out of his depth. Bobbie Carter turned back to the injuries. Somehow she didn’t think she was seeing mechanical trauma. It just didn’t look right. No soil contamination of the wound site, and no crush-injury component. Mechanical trauma of any sort—an auto injury, a factory accident—almost always had some component of crushing. But here there was none. Instead, the man’s skin was shredded—ripped—across his shoulder, and again across his thigh. It really did look like a maul. On the other hand, most of the body was unmarked, which was unusual for an animal attack. She looked again at the head, the arms, the hands— The hands. She felt a chill when she looked at the kid’s hands. There were short slashing cuts on both palms, and bruises on the wrists and forearms. She had worked in Chicago long enough to know what that meant. “All right,” she said. “Wait outside.” “Why?” Ed said, alarmed. He didn’t like that. “Do you want me to help him, or not?” she said, and pushed him out the door and closed it on his face. She didn’t know what was going on, but she didn’t like it. Manuel hesitated. “I continue to wash?” “Yes,” she said. She reached for her little Olympus point-and-shoot. She took several snapshots of the injury, shifting her light for a better view. It really did look like bites, she thought. Then the kid groaned, and she put her camera aside and bent toward him. His lips moved, his tongue thick. “Raptor,” he said. “Lo sa raptor…” At those words, Manuel froze, stepped back in horror. “What does it mean?” Bobbie said. Manuel shook his head. “I do not know, doctor. ‘Lo sa raptor’—no es español.” “No?” It sounded to her like Spanish. “Then please continue to wash him.” “No, doctor.” He wrinkled his nose. “Bad smell.” And he crossed himself. Bobbie looked again at the slippery foam streaked across the wound. She touched it, rubbing it between her fingers. It seemed almost like saliva.… The injured boy’s lips moved. “Raptor,” he whispered. In a tone of horror, Manuel said, “It bit him.” “What bit him?” “Raptor.” “What’s a raptor?” “It means hupia.” Bobbie frowned. The Costa Ricans were not especially superstitious, but she had heard the hupia mentioned in the village before. They were said to be night ghosts, faceless vampires who kidnapped small children."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "According to the belief, the hupia had once lived in the mountains of Costa Rica, but now inhabited the islands offshore. Manuel was backing away, murmuring and crossing himself. “It is not normal, this smell,” he said. “It is the hupia.” Bobbie was about to order him back to work when the injured youth opened his eyes and sat straight up on the table. Manuel shrieked in terror. The injured boy moaned and twisted his head, looking left and right with wide staring eyes, and then he explosively vomited blood. He went immediately into convulsions, his body vibrating, and Bobbie grabbed for him but he shuddered off the table onto the concrete floor. He vomited again. There was blood everywhere. Ed opened the door, saying, “What the hell’s happening?” and when he saw the blood he turned away, his hand to his mouth. Bobbie was grabbing for a stick to put in the boy’s clenched jaws, but even as she did it she knew it was hopeless, and with a final spastic jerk he relaxed and lay still. She bent to perform mouth-to-mouth, but Manuel grabbed her shoulder fiercely, pulling her back. “No,” he said. “The hupia will cross over.” “Manuel, for God’s sake—” “No.” He stared at her fiercely. “No. You do not understand these things.” Bobbie looked at the body on the ground and realized that it didn’t matter; there was no possibility of resuscitating him. Manuel called for the men, who came back into the room and took the body away. Ed appeared, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, muttering, “I’m sure you did all you could,” and then she watched as the men took the body away, back to the helicopter, and it lifted thunderously up into the sky. “It is better,” Manuel said. Bobbie was thinking about the boy’s hands. They had been covered with cuts and bruises, in the characteristic pattern of defense wounds. She was quite sure he had not died in a construction accident; he had been attacked, and he had held up his hands against his attacker. “Where is this island they’ve come from?” she asked. “In the ocean. Perhaps a hundred, hundred and twenty miles offshore.” “Pretty far for a resort,” she said. Manuel watched the helicopter. “I hope they never come back.” Well, she thought, at least she had pictures. But when she turned back to the table, she saw that her camera was gone. The rain finally stopped later that night. Alone in the bedroom behind the clinic, Bobbie thumbed through her tattered paperback Spanish dictionary. The boy had said “raptor,” and, despite Manuel’s protests, she suspected it was a Spanish word. Sure enough, she found it in her dictionary. It meant “ravisher” or “abductor.” That gave her pause. The sense of the word was suspiciously close to the meaning of hupia. Of course she did not believe in the superstition. And no ghost had cut those hands."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "What had the boy been trying to tell her? From the next room, she heard groans. One of the village women was in the first stage of labor, and Elena Morales, the local midwife, was attending her. Bobbie went into the clinic room and gestured to Elena to step outside for a moment. “Elena …” “Sí, doctor?” “Do you know what is a raptor?” Elena was gray-haired and sixty, a strong woman with a practical, no-nonsense air. In the night, beneath the stars, she frowned and said, “Raptor?” “Yes. You know this word?” “Sí.” Elena nodded. “It means … a person who comes in the night and takes away a child.” “A kidnapper?” “Yes.” “A hupia?” Her whole manner changed. “Do not say this word, doctor.” “Why not?” “Do not speak of hupia now,” Elena said firmly, nodding her head toward the groans of the laboring woman. “It is not wise to say this word now.” “But does a raptor bite and cut his victims?” “Bite and cut?” Elena said, puzzled. “No, doctor. Nothing like this. A raptor is a man who takes a new baby.” She seemed irritated by the conversation, impatient to end it. Elena started back toward the clinic. “I will call to you when she is ready, doctor. I think one hour more, perhaps two.” Bobbie looked at the stars, and listened to the peaceful lapping of the surf at the shore. In the darkness she saw the shadows of the fishing boats anchored offshore. The whole scene was quiet, so normal, she felt foolish to be talking of vampires and kidnapped babies. Bobbie went back to her room, remembering again that Manuel had insisted it was not a Spanish word. Out of curiosity, she looked in the little English dictionary, and to her surprise she found the word there, too: raptor\\n [deriv. of L. raptor plunderer, fr. raptus]: bird of prey."}
{"ID": "Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Cric_9780307763051_epub_toc_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Jurassic Park Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Epigraph Introduction Prologue: The Bite of the Raptor First Iteration Almost Paradise Puntarenas The Beach New York The Shape of the Data Second Iteration The Shore of the Inland Sea Skeleton Cowan, Swain and Ross Plans Hammond Choteau Target of Opportunity Airport Malcolm Isla Nublar Welcome Third Iteration Jurassic Park When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth The Tour Control Version 4.4 Control The Tour Control Big Rex Control Stegosaur Control Breeding Sites Fourth Iteration The Main Road Return Nedry Bungalow Tim Lex Control The Road Control In the Park Control The Park Dawn The Park Fifth Iteration Search Aviary Tyrannosaur Control Sixth Iteration Return The Grid Lodge Control Seventh Iteration Destroying the World Under Control Almost Paradigm Descent Hammond The Beach Approaching Dark Epilogue: San José Dedication Acknowledgments Books by Michael Crichton About the Author"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_ack_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to Tricia Pasternak, my editor, and Mike Braff, her assitant. Thanks also to Peter Weissman for copyediting and Nancy Delia for production editing, Joe Scalora for marketing, David Moench for publicity, and Scott Shannon for publishing. Thanks to Paul Youll for the cover art and Dreu Pennington-McNeil for the cover design. Once again, thanks to Pete Hines, Kurt Kuhlmann, Bruce Nesmith, and Todd Howard for their input, advice, and a great playground to run around in."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_adc_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel ALSO BY GREG KEYES The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel THE KINGDOMS OF THORN AND BONE The Born QueenThe Blood KnightThe Charnel PrinceThe Briar King STAR WARS: THE NEW JEDI ORDER Star Wars: The New Jedi Order:Edge of Victory I: ConquestStar Wars: The New Jedi Order:Edge of Victory II: RebirthStar Wars: The New Jedi Order:Edge of Victory III: The Final Prophecy"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_ata_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1963, GREG KEYES spent his early years roaming the forests of his native state and the red rock cliffs of the Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona. He earned his B.A. in anthropology from Mississippi State University and a master’s degree from the University of Georgia, where he did course work for a Ph.D. He lives in Savannah, Georgia, where, in addition to full-time writing, he practices ethnic cooking—particularly Central American, Szechuan, Malaysian, and Turkish cuisines—and Kapucha Toli, a Choctaw game involving heavy sticks and no rules. While researching the Age of Unreason series, he took up fencing, and now competes nationally. Greg is the author of The Waterborn, The Blackgod, the Babylon 5 Psi Corps trilogy, the Age of Unreason tetrology (for which he won the prestigious Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire award), and three New York Times best-selling Star Wars novels in the New Jedi Order series."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c01_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel ONE Wind opened Colin’s eyes, but it was the unfastened window that sped his heart, and the utter lack of sound that sent his fingers to the knife under his mattress. A hand met his there and gripped his wrist, hard. He swung over to kick at the vague shadow, but he was grasped at the ankles as well, and a bag was forced over his head, followed by a return to sleep that would have been gentle if part of him wasn’t screaming to the rest that he wouldn’t ever wake up. He did wake again, however. The bag and the cloying scent of somniculous remained, but the drug itself was obviously dissipated. He was lying on a hard but inconstant surface, and he soon recognized by the motion that he was in a boat, on water. His hands and feet were efficiently bound. His captors did not speak, but he could hear their breathing and exertions at the oars. He couldn’t make out anything through the sack except light, but he felt the sun on his skin and guessed it was approaching midday. Not much later, there was a bit of jostling and then the shock of the boat coming on shore. He smelled pine. They cut the bindings on his feet and made him walk. He kept thinking he ought to say something, but his kidnappers behaved so professionally he knew there wasn’t much point. There was no talking them out of whatever they were doing with him. All he could do was wait, and wonder. Would he feel it? Would he know anything had happened? Colin killed a man once. He died confused, begging, unwilling to admit even as the knife cut into him what was happening. He wished he could have seen his mother again, and—realizing he was weeping—felt ashamed. He’d wanted to be braver. The hand on his arm came away. He tried not to shake. Then one of the men made a peculiar sound, a sigh like a very tired man finally lying down. “What?” the other asked, before sucking a sharp breath. Colin heard two distinct thumps—then for a moment, nothing. He wondered if he should run. “Who do you work for?” a feminine voice asked. He recognized it, and a deep chill wracked through him. The last time he’d heard that voice had been in a house in the Market District, just before its owner slaughtered at least eight men. “Come,” she said. “Tell me.” “I’m not at liberty to say,” he replied. “Keep still,” she said. A moment later the sack came off his head. And there she was, regarding him, Letine Arese. Her small frame, turned-up nose, and short blond hair made her seem almost like a little girl, but he knew her to be thirty-one years of age, and her blue eyes held a cold intensity that was quite un-childlike. Those eyes narrowed now. “You look familiar,” she said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c01_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I’ve seen you. I suppose that makes sense.” He glanced behind her, at the two bodies on the ground. Both were male; one was an Argonian, the other a Bosmer. They both seemed quite dead, although he could not see the cause. “They brought you out here to kill you,” she said. “I gathered that,” he replied. “I’m grateful you stopped them.” “Are you? We’ll get back to that in a moment.” She folded her hands behind her back. She was dressed in Bosmer woodsman style, with high boots and soft leather vest and breeches. It was an odd look for her, in his experience—he’d only ever seen her in relatively fashionable city attire. “What would you say if I told you they worked for me?” she asked. “I would be confused,” Colin said carefully. “Yes, I should hope so,” she told him. “They noticed you spying on me and brought it to my attention. So of course, I did a little checking of my own. Colin Vineben, from Anvil. Your father is dead, and your mother does laundry. You were recommended for and received training for the Penitus Oculatus, and recently were named an inspector in that organization. It was you who discovered the massacre of Prince Attrebus’s personal guard and the apparent murder of the prince, and you who suggested to the Emperor that the prince wasn’t actually dead. Which, as it turns out, you were right about. And now you’re spying on me, but without, it seems, any official authority to do so. So I wonder if you’re employed by someone else.” “Why did you kill them?” he asked. “Because otherwise, I would have had to kill you,” she snapped. “Now I have to account for them, pretend I sent them on a mission to someplace fatal. Otherwise, the two of them would have wondered why you were still walking, and after a while that wonder would have spread its way up to the minister himself.” “I don’t understand,” Colin said. “I’m risking my neck for you, you idiot,” Arese snapped suddenly. “Can’t you see that?” “I can see it,” he replied. “I just don’t get why.” She pulled a knife from her belt and stalked toward him. His chest tightened, but she merely cut the ropes that held his hands behind his back. Then she stepped back a bit and untied her pants, loosening the laces and pulling one side down, exposing her hip. “You know what that is?” she asked, indicating a small black tattoo of a wolf’s head. He did, of course. It was the Emperor’s personal brand, worn only by his innermost circle. He didn’t say anything, but she saw he recognized it, and pulled the breeches back up, tying them again. “He put me in the minister’s office ten years ago,” she said. “No one knows but him and me."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c01_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And now you.” “Why are you telling me this?” “Because I need help, and I think we may have a common purpose.” “What’s that?” “To discover why Minister Hierem wants Prince Attrebus dead.” “Does he?” “I should know,” she said. “I made the arrangements for the ambush on his orders.” “Why?” Colin exploded. “If you’re loyal to the Emperor—” She barked a laugh. “You knew,” she said. “You were there, weren’t you? When I took care of Calvur and his thugs. I knew someone was there!” She closed her eyes for a moment, looking very tired. “I didn’t mean for the prince to come to harm,” she said. “If I could have gotten word to the Emperor, I would have. It was impossible at the time, at least without revealing myself to Hierem. In the end, a decision had to be made.” “And you decided you were more important than the prince?” “Yes. If you knew anything about him, you would probably agree.” “And yet Hierem wants him dead.” “Apparently.” “Then why hasn’t the Emperor had the minister arrested?” “When the Emperor first placed me in the ministry, he didn’t have any particular worries about Hierem, only the sort of general paranoia a successful monarch must have. For most of the past ten years, the minister has been above suspicion, but a year or so ago he began testing me, first subtly, then overtly. It became clear he wanted his own private intelligence and eliminations organization, one not connected to the Penitus Oculatus or known to the Emperor. The attack on Attrebus was—surprising. I didn’t see that coming. It’s only because some of the assassins got greedy that the prince survived. The Emperor isn’t ready to move against Hierem yet because he doesn’t believe we know everything, and because the minister is politically important—very important. The Emperor has survived because he waits until he knows where all the forces are and their strengths before he strikes. Right now, Hierem thinks his actions are invisible. We want to keep it that way a bit longer. That’s where you come in, if you’re up to it.” “Up to what?” “Hierem trusts me now, completely I believe. But that limits me. And I can’t trust anyone else in the ministry. I can open certain doors, but I need someone who can walk through them. Can you be that man?” Colin considered for a moment. Arese might be telling the truth and she might be lying; in a way, it didn’t matter. If he agreed to help her, it gave him a chance to find the answers he sought, even if she was steering him away from them. If he told her no, it was pretty certain he was staying on this island for eternity. “I can be that man,” he told her."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel TWO When he smelled blood, Mere-Glim turned in the deep waters of the Marrow Sump, trying to find the source. Blood wasn’t an unusual smell in these waters; bodies were dumped here every day, many still feebly struggling against death. But this blood was not only fresh, it had a certain rotten scent he’d come to know all too well. He closed his eyes and flared his reptilian nostrils, and when he identified the current that carried the smell, he struck out along it, his webbed hands and feet propelling him swiftly through the clear waters. It took him only a few moments before he could see the erratically twitching figure trying to reach the surface. By the time he reached her, the life was dimming from her eyes. He wasn’t sure if she ever actually saw him. Blood still roiled in clouds from her nostrils and gaping mouth. He reached around her from behind and kicked purposefully toward the surface, but by the time he reached it, she had gone limp. He took her into the skraw caves along the shoreline anyway, and laid her out on the little bier his coworkers had made from woven cane and grass for the dead to rest on. In the sunlight she’d looked old, worn, with black bags beneath her eyes and hair like lank kelp, but here in the phosphorescence from the cave walls she appeared younger, more like the ten or fifteen years she probably actually was. On Umbriel, people were born as adults, and those born to be skraws, to tend and harvest the sump, had nothing that resembled a childhood. He heard others approaching and looked over his shoulder to see his friend Wert and a young skraw named Oluth. “Joacin,” Wert sighed. “I knew she couldn’t last much longer.” “I’m sorry,” Glim told him. “I couldn’t reach her in time.” “It wouldn’t have mattered,” Wert said. “If you had, she might have lived another day.” “A day is a day,” Glim said. Wert knelt and studied the woman’s face for a long moment, his own visage more long and doleful than usual. “When do we move forward?” he asked without looking up. “Isn’t it time to take the next step?” “We’re done with the maps,” Oluth blurted. He was young, probably no more than three years old; his skin had only the barest hint of the jaundice that plagued the older skraws. “Good,” Glim replied. “So—like Wert said—what’s next?” the hatchling went on eagerly. “I’m still planning that,” Glim told him. “You excited everyone, Glim,” Wert said. “You gave us all hope. But now—some say that you’re stalling.” “We have to be prepared,” Glim said. “We have to be careful. Once we start, there’s no turning back. Does everyone understand that?” “They do,” Wert said. “They’re ready to do what you say, Glim. But you have to say something.” Glim felt his heart sink. “Soon,” he said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“How soon?” “I’ll let you know.” Wert frowned, but nodded. Then he turned to Oluth. “Go with Glim. He’ll show you about the lower sump. You’ll be working down there with him.” “It’ll be an honor,” Oluth said. Glim waited for Oluth to go take the vapors and felt guilty. The caustic fumes allowed the skraws to breathe underwater, but they also killed them young, as they had just killed Joacin. Of all the skraws, he was the only one who hadn’t been born on Umbriel, the only Argonian—the only one who didn’t need the vapors to breathe beneath the surface. When the youngster joined him in the shallows, Glim took him down below the midway of the cone-shaped body of water and showed him the cocooned figures fastened to the wall. Inside each was something that had started as a worm smaller than his least claw, but were now in various stages of becoming inhabitants of Umbriel. He brushed against one near term, a lanky female who—in appearance—would be human. Next to her grew a brick-red creature with horns, and farther along a man with the dusky skin of a Dunmer. All began as worms, however, and beneath appearances they were all Umbrielians. He tried not to be annoyed by Oluth’s eagerness as he explained the procedures for tending the unborn and moving them to the birthing pools when their time came, and how to know that time. He could tell the boy was only half paying attention. He kept glancing around, especially down, to the bottom of the sump, where the actinic glare of the connexion with the ingenium lay. “You’re curious about that?” Glim asked. “That’s the ingenium,” Oluth said. “That’s the heart and soul of Umbriel. If we controlled that …” “Even if we could do it,” Glim said, “that would be too much.” “But if we’re to really revolt, carry the fight to the lords—” “SSht, husst, slow down,” Glim said. “Who ever said anything about taking the fight to anyone? Or fighting at all?” “Well, I guess we thought it would come to that,” Oluth said. “Who is ‘we’?” Glim asked. “Oh.” He looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you.” “Tell me what?” “The younger skraws. We call ourselves the Glimmers. We’ve pledged to follow you and help you.” Glim absorbed that, feeling claustrophobic. “Listen to me,” he said. “Our goals are simple: We want a substitute for the vapors, so you don’t have to tear your lungs up and die early just to do your job. We’re looking for ways to inconvenience the lords, to make them aware of your needs. We don’t want it to come to a fight.” “Right,” Oluth said. “Inconvenience them. Like how?” “Well, what do we skraws do? We keep the sump working. That means food, water, nutrients for everyone on Umbriel and the fringe gyre—and of course, we bring the newborns into the world."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "We just need to emphasize our worth by showing what happens if things don’t get done down here—or if things break, clog up, and so forth. Do you understand?” Oluth nodded vigorously. “I do!” he said. Then his gaze darted past Glim. “What’s that?” Glim followed his regard to a small embryo sac, nearly transparent, and the thing curled in it. It was still small, but it wasn’t like a baby—more like an unfinished and undersized adult. It had scales and was a pale pink color with huge eyes and tiny little claws. “It’s an Argonian,” he said. “It looks a little like you.” “Soon enough it will look a lot like me,” Mere-Glim said. “I’m an Argonian.” He’d known it was going to happen, but now that it had, he felt a sort of sick spot in his gut. He needed to see Annaïg. “I really am sorry I tried to kill you,” Slyr told Annaïg. Annaïg blinked and glanced up at the gray-skinned woman fidgeting across the table from her. “Have you tried again, or is this still about last week?” she asked. Slyr’s red eyes widened. “I haven’t tried again, I swear.” “Right. So you’ve apologized already,” Annaïg said. “This means you’re now wasting my time.” Slyr didn’t reply, but she didn’t leave either, just stood there, shuffling her feet a bit. Trying not to let her irritation show, Annaïg bent back to her task of emulsifying horse brains and clove oil, whisking the gray matter vigorously and adding the oil a few drops at a time. When it reached the consistency of mayonnaise, she set it aside. Slyr was still standing there. “What?” Annaïg exploded. “I—you haven’t assigned anything for me to do.” “Fine. I assign you to go sit in our quarters.” “I have to work,” Slyr said. “Toel thinks little enough of me as it is. If he finds me idle—I worry, Annaïg.” Annaïg closed her eyes and counted to four. When she opened them, she half expected to see Slyr lunging at her with a knife, but Slyr was still just standing there looking pitiful. “Go husk the durian,” she said. “But—” “What now?” “Durian is so smelly.” She waved the back of her hand at Annaïg’s preparations. “What are you doing there?” She’s just spying, Annaïg thought. Trying to steal my ideas. It didn’t matter, though, did it? “I’m extracting terror,” she said. “Come again?” She lifted the emulsion. “Terror, fear, happiness—any strong emotion leaves something of itself in the brain.” “But if the soul has fled, hasn’t all of that gone with it?” Annaïg smiled, despite the company, and scraped some of the emulsion into a glass cylinder, divided three-quarters of the way down by a thin membrane. “What’s that?” Slyr asked, indicating the divider. “It’s the humorous membrane from a chimera-eel,” she replied. “It’s what allows them to change color to suit their emotions."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I’ve altered this one to let only terror through.” “You’re filtering horse-terror through eel-skin?” “Very specially prepared eel-skin,” she replied. She placed the tube in a small centrifuge and cranked the handle, spinning the vial. After a few moments she detached it and held it up, showing a pale yellow ichor in the bottom. “That’s terror?” Slyr said. She sounded skeptical. “Do you want to understand this or not?” Annaïg asked. “I do. Please. I’m sorry.” “Sit down, then—you’re making me nervous, hovering there.” Slyr scootched onto a stool and folded her hands in her lap. “You were right, in a way—terror—or any emotion—isn’t merely chemical. But the substance acts as a vessel, a shaper of soul stuff, just as—at a higher level—does the brain and body.” She opened a small valve on the bottom of the tube and let the liquid empty into a small glass cone. She then sealed a second, identical cone base-to-base with the first to form a spiculum. She shook the container so that the liquid coated the interior surface evenly, then slid the whole thing into a coil of translucent fibers that in turn was connected to a pulsing cable of the same material that came up through the floor and workbench. “Now we pass soul energy through it,” Annaïg said. “The chemical terror will attract what it needs to become the real thing.” For a moment nothing happened; then the spiculum took on a faint lavender glow, and quite abruptly became opaque. Annaïg waited another moment then removed the spiculum and shook it again. The coating inside the crystal sloughed free and settled into one end, a viscous powder. She unsealed the hlzu gum that held the spiculum together with spirits of coatin. Then she emptied a bit of the newly formed substance into a horn spoon and carefully handed it to Slyr. “And there you have it,” she said. Slyr blinked at the lavender stuff. “Am I to taste this?” “You may if you wish.” “Perhaps not,” Slyr said, dipping her finger into it experimentally. A bit clung there, and she rubbed it back and forth. “It feels—” But then her face transformed; her eyes became huge, and the veins on her neck stood out as she suddenly began shrieking. She fell from her stool and twisted into a fetal position, fighting for the air she needed to keep screaming. “Or you can just touch it,” Annaïg said. “It’s absorbed just as readily through the skin.” Slyr’s only response was to quiver uncontrollably—she was past screaming now. For Annaïg, the next few seconds stretched thin and brittle; part of her wanted to continue watching the other woman suffer. Anger was beautiful, because its core was the absence of all doubt."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "When anger wrapped you up in yourself and you knew that you were right and righteous—that the very universe was in agreement with you—at that moment you were a god, and anyone who crossed or disagreed with you was worse than wrong, they were heretics, apostates, twisted in the very womb. Slyr deserved this. And much, much more. Then why, beneath the wonderful, purifying rage, did she feel sick? Why did she suspect that she was the one in the wrong? Because she wasn’t really angry at Slyr. She was angry because all her hopes of escaping Umbriel were destroyed. She was angry at the stupidity of a little girl who thought she could save the world like a hero from the songs, and now was going to spend what little of her life remained in a disgusting place among disgusting people. And one of those people was Slyr. But somehow she couldn’t watch her lose her mind. So, with a sigh, she unstoppered the bottle she’d fixed for herself, in case she had an accident during the experiment, and waved it under Slyr’s nose. The other woman inhaled, gasped, gave one great shake, then sagged. She was still breathing hard but her eyes were clear. “S-Summpslurry,” Slyr managed, her breath still ragged. She traveled her gaze over her body, as if fearing she was missing limbs. “You stopped it, didn’t you? You could have let it go on and on.” “For a few hours, yes.” “It would have driven me mad.” Annaïg shrugged, still feeling angry and helpless, and now trying not to cry. What was wrong with her? “I’m not so convinced you’re sane as it is,” she said. Slyr chuckled harshly. “I soiled myself,” she said. “I didn’t need to know that,” Annaïg replied. “I guess not.” Her eyes dropped down. “Toel doesn’t care what happens to me. No one does. No one would have even reprimanded you—” “I’m not like you, Slyr,” Annaïg said. Slyr shakily came to her feet and gathered her clothing around her. “Maybe not,” she said. “But you’re closer than you were.” And then she left. Annaïg almost thought the woman had a faint look of triumph on her face. When Slyr was gone, Annaïg’s tears came. For a long time after being trapped on Umbriel, she hadn’t cried. She watched the city she grew up in destroyed, and although she hadn’t seen it, in her heart she knew her father was dead, and Hecua, and every other soul she had ever known before coming to this place, to Umbriel—which was responsible for all of that murder. She had kept it all in, bound up with hope and purpose, freighted by the need to survive to get from one day to the next—and yes, at times by wonder, by the sheer alien assault on the senses that was Umbriel."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But after Slyr poisoned her, those bands began to fray, and when at last she was ready to escape, to leave Umbriel, they had broken, because she wouldn’t have to live each day in fear any longer, because she didn’t need such unnatural control. And then she and Mere-Glim had flown out across the night to where Prince Attrebus was waiting, with his strength, his courage to sustain her. But Umbriel hadn’t let them go, and now … “You cry far too much,” a soft voice said behind her. She closed her eyes, but he knew, so she didn’t bother to wipe them. It would only show further weakness. She turned with her cheeks still glistening and stood up from her stool. “Chef Toel,” she said. When she first met Toel, she’d thought him darkly, devilishly handsome, and his unbelievably blue eyes had absorbed her. Now he only seemed dangerous, like a viper. He looked meaningfully at the purplish substance in the crystal cone. “What have you there?” he asked “Terror, Chef.” “Well, give us a taste, then.” She hesitated. “It’s quite strong, Chef.” “I’ll take care, then.” She doled him out a bit and watched as he carried it to his lips and let it touch his tongue. His eyes widened dreamily and he hissed before taking several shuddering breaths. Little sparks danced on his skin, and she felt the tiny hairs on her face pull toward him. Then he looked down at her, his gaze still a little strange. “Exquisite,” he murmured. “You have so much talent, little one. Such beautiful ideas. If only you had—well, a little drive. A bit of ambition.” He smiled slightly. “I saw Slyr. She looked as if she’d seen the worst thing in the world.” “She tasted it, Chef.” “You let her?” “I did.” “Well, well. An improvement. But why is she still walking? She hasn’t a constitution for such things, as I do. I think it should have destroyed her mind.” “I gave her an antidote,” Annaïg admitted. He stared at her a moment, then made a slight tsking sound beneath his breath. His eyes—which had held her with a certain sparkle—dulled and shifted. “Very well, then,” he said. “Bring that around. I’ve a mind to use it in seasoning the suspiration of hare and sulfur I’m preparing for Lord Irrel’s thirty-third course. A little something different for him. And perhaps, if you could, also make me a bit of remorse?” “I’m not certain a horse can feel remorse, Chef.” “Very well,” he said. “Kohnu was badly burned this morning distilling phlogiston. I shall send his brain over.” “But if he’s still alive—” “Healing him would take time and resources, and he wouldn’t be able to work for weeks. He’ll serve me better this way.” She knew Kohnu. He was funny, always telling little self-effacing jokes and clowning about with the produce. “Chef—” she began. He rolled his eyes. “It’s not as if you have to kill him yourself,” he said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Then he left. She sat back down, trembling. “What am I doing?” she whispered. She needed Glim. “What are you doing?” Mere-Glim asked the next night, at their weekly meeting. It took place in an old slurry filter, empty and forgotten a few yards below the pantry. From it Annaïg could hear what was going on in the kitchens—which at night was usually nothing—and Glim was only feet away from the tube that would take him back down into the sump, if anyone approached. “I’m trying to figure out why we can’t leave,” she told him. “It’s got something to do with the way Umbriel uses souls, I’m pretty sure. At least it’s a place to start. But I can’t just experiment without producing anything, or Toel would start thinking I’m no longer useful. And if that happens, well—it’s over. Just ask poor Kohnu.” “You’re doing what you have to do,” Glim said. “You can’t feel bad because of what Toel does.” “He might have let Kohnu live if it wasn’t for me.” “Might-have and mud are fine places to wallow,” Glim said. “That’s easy for you to say,” Annaïg replied. “You haven’t gotten anyone killed.” She clenched her fists. “I’ve gotten a lot of people killed, Glim, not just Kohnu. Everyone in Qijne’s kitchen. And probably Attrebus.” “Still no word from him?” “No,” she said miserably. “I talked to him just before we tried to escape. He was in our path, Glim. I fear the worst.” “You don’t know, though,” Glim said. “He might have lost Coo, or maybe he’s somewhere the enchantment doesn’t work.” “Maybe.” “But even if something happened to him, it’s not your fault.” “If I knew more, had more to tell him—” “You’ve done more than he could have ever expected,” Glim replied. “More than I’ve ever done.” “Nonsense. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t understand half what I do about this horrible place. You found me, Glim. I couldn’t have found you. And all of those maps—I still don’t know why the skraws helped you with that.” “Well,” Glim said, sighing, “I sort of promised them something.” “What do you mean?” He was silent for a moment. “Do you remember, back when we tried to escape, you said something about having invented a way of breathing underwater?” “Sure. Why do you ask?” He wiggled his hands in clear agitation. “What?” “The skraws,” he said at last. “Those who work in the sump, like me—none of them can naturally breathe underwater. They inhale vapors that allow them to, but the vapors are really bad for them. They live in agony and die young.” He looked up. “I was wondering if you could make them something else, something that won’t hurt them.” She thought about that, and then found herself answering carefully. “I could,” she said. “It’s easy for me to sneak the things I need to make an ounce or two of anything."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But you would need more than that—a lot more than that—to make a difference. I would have to set up a generation vat. I don’t think I can do that without permission, but if I managed to, it would be noticed and I would be in big trouble.” “Maybe you can get permission,” he said. “If I bring up the skraws, Toel will wonder why I know anything about them and why I care. He considers caring a weakness, and he already thinks I’m about as weak as they come. And he might find out about you.” She paused, and then went on even more cautiously. “Anyway—our goal is to bring Umbriel down, remember? Before it destroys our world?” “The skraws don’t have anything to do with that,” he said. “They just work and die.” “Are you—” She laughed suddenly. “What?” “After all that making fun of me and my causes. You’ve got one, haven’t you?” “They—They sort of made me their leader.” “Why?” “I told them we might be able to make things better if we—umm—organized a little.” “Organized? You’re leading a revolt?” “I didn’t mean to,” he replied miserably. “I mean, they kind of got the idea from me when I stood up to an overseer, and then—well, I might have suggested that they make some maps for me.” “Maps?” “So I could find you. So we could escape.” “Oh. And now that we’re stuck here—” “They seem to expect me to follow through.” “Well, I guess they do,” she said. “Will you?” His pupils expanded and shrank, and then he nodded. “I think so,” he said. “It’s not right, how they live.” “You can think of it this way, too,” Annaïg told him. “The more of them you’ve got looking for ways to sabotage things, the more likely you’ll find some way to stop Umbriel altogether. That connection with the ingenium you told me about, for instance. We need to know more about that.” “Right,” he said, but he sounded a bit uneasy. “Glim,” she said, taking his chin between her fingers. “Yes?” “I’m glad you care about these people. I’m glad you found a cause. And if there is any way to save the skraws, I’m all for it. But if it comes down to them or our world—if all of these people and the two of us thrown into the bargain have to die to stop this thing—that’s what we have to do. You know that, don’t you?” He nodded, but there was an odd stiffness to it. “Look,” she said. “The kitchens are highly competitive, right? If the skraws raise enough ruckus, the lords may start looking for an alternative to the vapors. I’ve got one, ready to go. I just need Toel to ask me for it—understand?” “I understand,” Glim replied. “We’ll start there. But meanwhile you have to keep gathering information, okay?"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I mean, if I solve the problem of getting us off of this rock, maybe we can take your friends with us. The more information I have, the more alternatives that gives us.” “That makes sense,” Glim breathed. “I’ll see what I can do. But you—what about this woman who tried to kill you? What about Toel? If what you say is true, and if he thinks you’re weak—I don’t want to find you in the sump one day.” “You have your situation to manage,” she said softly. “I have mine.” She hugged him and watched him go, but she felt troubled afterward, wondering if she and Mere-Glim were really on the same side anymore."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c03_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel THREE A soft cough drew Colin from the papers massed on his desk. Intendant Marall stood a few feet from his table, hands clasped behind his back. Colin pushed his chair back and came to his feet. “Intendant,” he acknowledged. “Inspector,” Marall nodded. Then he just stood there. “Can I help you, sir?” Colin asked after the moment drew uncomfortably long. “I’m just wondering if you have anything to report.” Colin blinked. If I had anything to report I would have—he began thinking, but quashed it, lest it show on his face. “Not much, really, sir,” Colin said. “Is there something wrong?” “You received the latest interceptions.” “I did, Intendant,” he replied. “I still can’t find any connection between the Thalmor and this—flying city.” “And yet they must be up to something.” “Oh, yes, sir, they’re up to plenty,” Colin said. “Thalmor agents continue to harass the refugee communities in Sentinel and Balfiera—there has been a series of murders in the latter we can pretty confidently assign to them. The pattern is typical—the victims were all of mixed blood or had associations considered by the Aldmeri Dominion to be unclean. It’s much worse in Valenwood—our supplies are no longer reliably getting to the rebels there. Sixty were caught and executed last week, along with four of our own men. There’s a leak we don’t know about, someplace. They know too much about our movements.” “But in all of that—” “Nothing. No Thalmor connections to the east at all.” Marall looked sour. He took the other chair in Colin’s nook, slid it toward Colin’s desk, and sat down. “Have you seen the reports concerning the flying city?” “I haven’t, sir. Since being taken off the Attrebus case—” “I’m sorry about that. The more so because you were right about everything. But you made Administrator Vel look foolish, and there you go. At least I managed to get you back on something—eh—important.” “I appreciate that, sir.” “I’m going to tell you a few things, Inspector, because I hope you may have some thoughts on them. But you understand you may not repeat them.” “Of course, sir.” “You’re aware, I imagine, of the stories in popular circulation concerning this—Umbriel.” “I am. They are based, as I understand, on letters written by Prince Attrebus and sent to his biographers—before he vanished again.” “Yes. They’ve rather captured the popular imagination. A flying city from Oblivion, populated by strange creatures, destroying all it passes over and creating an army of living dead from the corpses.” “I’ve heard all of that.” “Well, we’ve a good bit of information from our scouts now,” Marall said. “It’s all basically true. There are just a few new details. Umbriel—apparently the name of this thing—landed at Lilmoth and proceeded in a straight line toward, it appears, Vvardenfell. It is indeed accompanied by some sort of reanimated corpses, and those who die beneath it also rise again."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c03_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But here’s the thing—the cities of Gideon and Stormhold were both overrun. Do you see what that means?” “Neither lies between Lilmoth and Vvardenfell,” Colin answered after a moment’s thought. “Correct. Apparently this army of the walking dead needn’t remain near its creator.” “But do they continue to grow in numbers away from the island? Do they reproduce themselves?” “That is unclear,” Marall replied. “What we do know is that a large force of them has entered Cyrodiil and seems to be making its way toward the Imperial City.” “I see,” Colin said. “Are you certain you’ve seen no evidence that they might be colluding with the Thalmor? If they strike from the east, and the Dominion from the west, or up the Niben, we could find ourselves in a very precarious state.” “I’ve seen no evidence that the Thalmor are aware of these goings-on, much less that they are involved with them. Why—if I may ask, sir—why do you feel the Thalmor must be involved?” “Well, if not them, someone.” He tugged at the slight beard under his chin. “You were educated concerning the Oblivion crisis, of course.” “Yes, sir.” “The received wisdom in the highest circles is that Tamriel can never be invaded from Oblivion again.” “And yet we have been.” “Yes and no. Umbriel is apparently not entirely in our world.” “I don’t understand.” “It exists in a sort of pocket of Oblivion.” “And yet it can affect our world, obviously.” “Yes. But the consensus opinion of both the Synod and the College of Whispers—who never agree on anything—is that even given its strange nature, Umbriel could not have come into Tamriel even so much as it has without being asked.” “Asked?” “Summoned. Conjured. Facilitated. The sort of wizardry one naturally associates with the Thalmor.” Colin nodded. “More than ever, then,” he said, “I think we’re looking in the wrong place. Once it becomes clear we’re being attacked, I have no doubt that the Dominion will take some advantage of it, but in my opinion that would be to consolidate their hold on Valenwood while our attention is elsewhere. They have a plan, a plan laid out in decades—I don’t see them rushing into some strange alliance with an Oblivion prince or what-have-you.” “Who then?” “Why not the An-Xileel?” “The lizards?” Marall’s voice dripped with contempt. “They’re entirely parochial. Even if they could muster the sort of arcane knowledge this would require, why would they bother? They’re content in their swamps.” “They invaded Morrowind.” “For revenge. They stopped their advance decades ago, and haven’t showed the slightest interest in doing anything since then.” “Except keeping the Empire from reclaiming their territory,” Colin pointed out. “To my knowledge, we’ve never tried to invade Black Marsh. Who wants it?” “I just think they might bear looking at,” Colin said. “After all, that’s where Umbriel first showed up.” Marall looked unconvinced, but then he nodded. “Very well,” he said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c03_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I’ll make the appropriate reports available to you, and send any requests for whatever else you may need through my office. You were right about the Attrebus thing, after all. But—keep your head low, yes? I don’t need this getting back to Vel.” “Understood, sir.” He watched Marall go, and then returned his gaze to the papers, but he wasn’t really seeing them. The Intendant was probably right that the An-Xileel were not a threat. They were entirely nativistic in their views, interested only in purging the former colonial influences and returning Black Marsh to whatever state they imagined it had been in before it was ruled by foreign powers. And technically, of course, Umbriel had appeared somewhere out at sea, so one might just as well suspect the elusive Sload of having helped the flying city conjure its way into Tamriel. After all, they were supposed to be great sorcerers. He turned it around a few ways and didn’t get anything, so he directed his thoughts to his other “case.” There wasn’t much there either. Despite her dramatic recruitment of him, he hadn’t heard from Arese, and since he didn’t have anything to tell her, he didn’t see any point in risking contact with her. He got the intelligence from Black Marsh a few hours later. He started with the most recent stuff; both the College of Whispers and the Synod had collected intelligence remotely, but there were also a number of on-the-ground reports. A few had been relayed by riders, but most were also transmitted through sorcerous means. It was mostly information regarding the size and travel path of Umbriel, and the accounts of Stormhold and Gideon seemed somehow light. Feeling he was missing something, Colin turned to what little they had in the way of information regarding the An-Xileel. He found something very interesting indeed. It had rained, and Talos Plaza was awash in reflected torch and lamplight. The air still smelled clean as Colin stepped through the puddles. A troupe of Khajiit acrobats was performing nearby, gracefully tumbling, forming unlikely structures with their feline bodies, juggling sparkling torches. A crowd clapped and tossed coins at their feet. He passed through a group of kids enthusiastically swinging at one another with wooden swords, and felt stiffness in this throat. He’d been like them once. He remembered playing such games. But he couldn’t remember at all how it felt. A few steps to the right, and he stood in the near utter darkness of an alleyway. Here, a man could die—or kill—and those in the plaza with its light and merriment would never be the wiser. She noticed him too late. If he’d meant to end her, he could have, and she knew it. For the first time since he’d met her, Arese’s controlled expression cracked, and he saw something that looked very much like fear. He could almost hear her heart pounding. “Easy,” he said. “I needed to see you."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c03_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I was afraid to send any sort of message.” She took a step back, swallowed, and the mask went back on. “How did you know I would come this way?” she asked. “You usually do. You’re on your way to meet your sister at the pub, and you always cut through here.” He indicated the narrow lane with a slight twist of his head. “You’ve been spying on me?” “Not lately. Before. I wondered why you come through here rather than staying on the street.” She vented a self-deprecating chuckle. “So I can hear if anyone is following me,” she replied. “No one ever is, and so I’ve gotten careless. What do you need?” “I was looking at reports dealing with Black Marsh,” he told her. “They’ve been censored—by Minister Hierem’s office.” “That’s not terribly surprising,” she said. “How is that?” “Hierem made a secret trip to Black Marsh last year, ostensibly to negotiate with the An-Xileel leaders. He would have had anything suggesting his presence there removed.” “That explains the older reports,” Colin said. “But I’m talking about intelligence gathered recently, concerning the attacks from the flying city.” “That’s interesting,” Arese replied. “That’s really very interesting. You think there’s some connection between this and the attempt on Attrebus?” “I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,” Colin said. “Attrebus was on his way to attack Umbriel. We know that from several sources, including the broadsides posted on every street corner. Clearly Hierem wanted to prevent that, to delay any Imperial confrontation with this thing for as long as possible. Now we know a force from the city is already in eastern Cyrodiil.” “Umbriel has also turned,” Arese said. “It is now moving over the Valus Mountains toward the Imperial City.” “Well, then,” Colin said, “what we have to ask ourselves is why Hierem wants Umbriel to attack the Imperial City. What’s his relationship with it? Do you have any ideas?” “None. Do you?” “Well, I think Hierem summoned Umbriel,” he said. “Helped it come here, whatever. That suggests he has some sort of bargain with whoever is master of the flying city.” “It does, doesn’t it?” Arese said. She frowned. “It will be trouble to get the uncensored documents. He keeps things like that—if he keeps them at all—in his private rooms.” “Did anyone go with him to Black Marsh?” he asked. “Yes, let me think. He took—” Then her eyes widened. “Well, that’s no good,” she said. “What?” “He took Delia Huerc. But she’s dead.” “Dead? Murdered?” “An illness of some sort, according to the report, and there wasn’t any reason to doubt it. Now—well, what’s to be done about it?” “Anyone else?” “He hired a merchant ship and traveled in disguise. I’m sure the name of the ship has been removed from any records.” “He had to pay for it.” “He didn’t want the Emperor to know, so he probably paid out of pocket. He’s not without his own wealth.” She looked around."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c03_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“This is going on too long,” she said. “Is there anything else?” “Delia Huerc. Where did she live?” “I don’t know, but I can get that. Look for a message from me.” “Okay.” She started to go, but then turned. “Good work,” she said. “Thanks.” “Next time, come to my house. Do you know where it is?” “Yes.” “Of course you do. Come to the window above the alley and tap it four times. If I’m there, I’ll come. And watch your back. Things are getting very paranoid in the ministry. There are questions where there shouldn’t be.” “I’ll be careful,” he said. She nodded and started walking. “You be careful, too,” he said. She paused for an instant, but didn’t look back, and then continued on her way."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel FOUR Annaïg stared out at the shimmering green sump and delicate, insectile buildings that climbed and depended from the stone walls of the conical valley at Umbriel’s heart. Above, shining through the glittering strands of what resembled a giant spiderweb or some vast sea invertebrate, shone the sun of Tamriel. The sun she had been born under. It made her feel tight, claustrophobic, to know the light of that sun could illume the flying city, touch her, warm her—but that she could not go up through that sky, be in the wider world that orb washed with its radiance. “You’ve not been here in a while,” Toel said. Annaïg forced herself to look at him. She had first seen Toel when he and his staff had slaughtered everyone in her former kitchen—everyone but Slyr and her. Even then, surrounded by brutally murdered corpses, he’d been calm, serene really. She had been terrified of him then, and was even more so now. She felt that at any moment he would stand, take her by the shoulders, and push her over the balcony to her death. Afterward, he would never think of her again. But showing her fear would only get her killed more quickly. Toel had no use for the weak. She had to present him with something else. “You’ve not invited me,” Annaïg replied. He shrugged and breathed in mist from the long, curved glass tube he held. “I’m aware of why you haven’t been here,” he said, frost forming on his nostrils. “Are you?” “You’re disappointed that I asked you to spare Slyr, after she poisoned me.” “It goes beyond that. I thought you were like me, driven to excel, to rise. But you hold yourself back, and there isn’t anything I can do about that.” “Then why am I here?” she asked. “Because still you intrigue me. You invent marvelous things. I hope to reach you, at last.” The hairs behind Annaïg’s ears pricked up at the ominous sound of that. “I do wish to please you, Chef,” she said. “Do you?” “Yes. But in my own way.” “By definition, you can only please me by catering to my desires.” Annaïg shook her head, tightening her belly to act bold. “That is only the beginning,” she said. “A child’s idea of pleasure.” “What is a child?” Toel asked. “It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “My point is that the best chef cooks what the patron never knew he wanted.” “And what is it that I don’t know I want?” “That is for me to show you,” Annaïg said, trying to sound playful. “And it cannot be rushed.” “And yet, I feel impatient,” Toel said, “and perhaps a bit condescended to.” She forced a smile. “But still I intrigue you.” “I cannot deny it,” he said, inhaling again. He looked off into the distance for a long moment, and then returned his attention to her."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“There will be a banquet,” he said, “some days hence. It will be for the court of Umbriel himself. Four kitchens have been invited to present a tasting for Lord Rhel, Umbriel’s steward—mine, and those of Phmer, Luuniel, and Ashdre. Whichever kitchen pleases the steward most will cook for Umbriel. I need not tell you that it must be my kitchen that wins.” “It goes without saying, Chef.” “Phmer is our chief competition, to my mind. She is known for her creativity. Before Phmer, there were only eight essential savors: salty, bitter, piquant, sweet, sour, ephemerate, quick, and dead. But Phmer found a ninth sensation of taste, which has no name, and all attempts to duplicate it or ascertain how it is created have failed. And so, Annaïg, although you may tantalize me with these desires you know I have which I myself do not, this is what I tell you now: You will find this ninth savor for me. If you do not, any other plans you have to gratify me are moot. Do you understand?” “I do, Chef,” Annaïg said. “I won’t fail.” “Indeed,” he replied. She couldn’t tell if it was an affirmation or a question. “Now you may go.” “A few questions, Chef,” she said. “What are they?” “Do you have a sample of this ninth taste, so that I might know what I’m trying to duplicate?” “I don’t have any, no.” “Have you ever tasted it yourself, Chef?” For a moment his face might have been cast in stone. “No,” he finally said. “Can you at least tell me if it is a spiritual or gross substance?” “We may assume spiritual, as only the highest lords have tasted it.” “Thank you, Chef.” Her knees were shaking when she left, and she felt profoundly unreal, as if she were watching this all happen to someone else. She returned to the kitchens, attempting to stay calm, to focus—trying to understand where she had to start. She was sure she could duplicate anything she could taste, but that wasn’t in the offering. That left her with what seemed an impossible task, but it was pointless to entertain that notion, wasn’t it? She had to assume that it was possible. Phmer had done it, after all. Had it been an accident, or a design? She went to her private bench, far from the hustle and bustle of the stations, and began idly thumbing through the various powders, liquids, distillations, and ferments in her cabinet. She fiddled with the flow of soul force through the refraxor, but after an hour of that pushed back and placed her face in her palms. Her brain didn’t seem to work at all. Sighing, she went back to her room, but her thoughts flowed no better there, so in the end she gave up and opened a bottle of wine. She was on her second glass when Slyr entered. “I’m sorry,” the other woman said. “You’re never here this early in the day."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I—” “No, join me,” Annaïg said. “I’m just thinking.” “Well, I’ve no wish to disturb you.” “Sometimes talking helps me think.” She pulled over a second cup and poured more wine. “Have a drink, talk.” Slyr looked uncertain but did as she was told. “What do you know of Phmer’s ninth savor?” Annaïg asked. “I’ve heard of it,” Slyr said cautiously. “Before I came to Umbriel, I knew of only four or five essential flavors. When I was taught to cook, I was told that the success of a good dish was in the inclusion and balancing of these sensations. When I came here, you, Slyr, taught me that there were three more, all of a spiritual nature.” “Quick, dead, and ephemerate,” Slyr supplied. “So I’m thinking,” Annaïg said. “I taste the five gross senses on different parts of my tongue, and I read long ago that the tongue is grown to interpret such flavors. But I cannot, like the lords, taste the difference between quick and dead. I might discern that a wiggling shrimp is alive and a still one dead, but the taste is the same, because my tongue isn’t designed for that distinction. And as for ephemerate, that’s another thing entirely, isn’t it? Those are the ‘flavors’ we make with souls. The tongue doesn’t taste them, although that’s generally how they are introduced, since they’re presented as food. But really, the skin or eyes can taste them equally as well—and ephemerate isn’t a single kind of flavor, but hundreds, thousands, of very different things made possible by the cuisine spirituelle. Like the terror you tasted the other day, or the joy I could create tomorrow. How does that compare with the electric vitality of raw, unrefined soul energy, or the needling pleasure of filple?” Slyr took a drink. “So you’re thinking that the ninth savor can’t be ephemerate, then? That it must be a new material flavor?” “Or something completely different, as different from the ephemerate as the ephemerate is from salty and piquant.” “How can such a thing be discovered, then? If one knew only piquant, sour, and sweet, how would you guess that salty existed and learn how to make it?” Something shaped itself in her mind then, a worm that might become an idea. “Especially if one had no tongue,” Annaïg pursued, her thoughts racing. “That is our dilemma.” “Our?” “You are still my assistant, Slyr.” “I know that,” she said. “I only thought—” “I’m giving you another chance,” Annaïg said. “One more, do you understand?” Slyr nodded vigorously, and then her eyes narrowed. “You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?” Annaïg smiled. “It’s not what you think.” “What, then?” “I think I might be able to hit twice with the same stone,” she said. “What do you mean?” “Toel believes that I am not ambitious enough, that I’m not willing to do what I have to do to survive and get ahead.” “Yes,” Slyr said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I’ve heard him say so.” “I’ll get the ninth savor,” Annaïg promised. “And I’ll show Toel just how far I’m willing to go.” “How?” “I’m going to steal it from Phmer.” Slyr’s eyes widened and her mouth parted. “That’s impossible,” she said. “Look,” Annaïg said, drinking a bit more wine. “We can work for two weeks to invent this thing—and probably fail—or we can go where we know it already exists, and spend that time learning how best to use it to please Umbriel.” She sat back. “I think it’s what Toel intends me to do. I think this is a test he has devised.” “That does sound like him,” Slyr admitted. “But to invade another kitchen, to pass all their safeguards and survive, much less escape being caught—I can’t imagine how it could be done.” “I can,” Annaïg told her. “I know how to learn secret ways, and I know recipes for concealment that—with a bit of work—ought to keep me undiscovered.” “I’m not sure you understand,” Slyr said. “Even if you escape—if Phmer finds any evidence that you stole from her, she can demand Toel give you to her, and he must do so. That is the law. Perhaps that is even what Toel has in mind for you.” “Then I had better not be caught,” Annaïg said. “Or leave trace of my visit.” Slyr’s face hardened into an expression of determination. “Tell me what I can do to help,” she said. “I will not fail you.” “You had better not,” Annaïg said. “This really is your last chance. You must understand that.” “I understand,” Slyr replied. “Good. I’ll let you know when I need something.” Glim unfolded the note from Annaïg the skraw Jernle had handed him. It was written in the jumble language of their childhood—which only the two of them understood—although Glim hadn’t seen any evidence that anyone on Umbriel could read in any language. Still—avoiding leeches was better than picking them off. What are you up to, Nn? he thought. For a moment he considered refusing the request until Annaïg agreed to make something to replace the vapors. He followed her logic, understood why she couldn’t do it, but still, something about her refusal bothered him. Maybe it was because she didn’t take him seriously, that she thought her cause was bigger than his. And it was, wasn’t it? How many of his people—his relatives—had died because of Umbriel? But the skraws weren’t to blame for that. They didn’t even know it had happened. But someone was responsible. He turned to Wert, who was watching him patiently. “I need detailed information concerning the kitchen of Phmer,” he said. “Bribe the pantry workers, if you must.” “More maps?” Wert inquired. “No. More than that.” He paused. “And let’s see what happens if some of the middens stop draining. That should get someone’s attention.” Wert’s face broke into a huge grin. “At last!” he said. “Which ones?” “You decide,” Glim said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I need to have a second look at something.” Everything led to the sump, which meant lots of things led away from it as well. Early on Glim had found his way to the trees of the Fringe Gyre. The flying island of Umbriel was a rough cone, with the apex pointed down. The sump was a basin in that cone, and most of the population of the city lived in warrens in the stone. The lords lived on the upper edge in their delicate habitations of metal and crystal. But another world sprouted from the verge of the rim, enormous trees whose roots sank deep into the rock where vesicles from the sump fed and watered them, and whose boughs and branches flowed far out from the island like a sort of lacy collar, bending in a rightwise whorl. It was a world of strange birds and weird gardens growing from intentionally rotted places in the wood, of fruits and nuts and warbling monkeylike things. Next to the sump, he liked this place most, and sometimes better. Part of it was the feeling of freedom the place afforded, but part of it was a familiarity that spoke to him almost below the level of consciousness, a sense of intrinsic belonging he’d lost months ago. The view, however, was disturbing. If he looked to the horizons, he saw plains and forest, softened and made beautiful by distance. If he looked down, however, that was another story. Any open ground revealed the thousands of corpses walking, animated by Umbriel’s larvae. The ground was very open now. Umbriel had changed direction, taking them east over vast mountains, and below them was heath and snow, and few trees to hide the undying. They seemed numberless, and—perhaps worst of all—organized, marching in a rough semblance of ranks. “I haven’t seen you lately,” a pleasant feminine voice quietly said. He glanced up but already knew who it was. “Hello, Fhena,” he said. With her charcoal complexion and red eyes, Fhena might have been a Dunmer woman of about twenty years. But she was no more Dunmer than Wert was human, and since Umbrielians were born adult, he’d reckoned from their earlier conversations she was probably no more than five or six years old. She wore her usual blouse and knee-shorts; today the former was green and the latter yellow. “Did you bring me more orchid shrimp?” she asked hopefully. “No,” he said, “but I thought you might like these.” He handed her a pouch, which she took with an expression of purest delight. But when she saw what was inside, her look wandered toward puzzlement. “Kraken barnacles,” he explained. She pulled one out of the bag. It was about the size and shape of a large shark tooth, smooth and dark green, with a wet, tube-like appendage sticking out of the wide end. She bit the tooth-shaped shell. “Hard,” she said. “Here,” he said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Let me show you.” He took the barnacle, gave it a squeeze so the shell cracked, then pulled out the soft mass inside by the projecting stalk. He handed it to Fhena, who bit into it, chewed a moment, and then laughed. “Good, yes?” Glim said. “Those are native to the seas around Lilmoth, where I grew up. The taskers must have collected some and brought them up, because they’ve suddenly started growing in the sump.” “Delicious,” she agreed. “You always find some way to surprise me.” “I’m glad to be of service,” Mere-Glim said. “But I’m not often able to repay the favor,” she replied. “You might today,” he said. “Tell me about the trees.” “The trees?” “Yes.” He tapped on the nearest branch. “I’m not sure what to say about them,” she replied. “Well,” he said, trying to think how to go about this, “I’ve noticed that they produce nuts and fruit and even grains, of a sort. But what else?” “What else?” She clapped her hands. “Salt and sugar, acid and wine, vinegar and sulfur, iron and glass. The trees have a talent for making things—they just have to be told how.” “Who tells them?” She looked thoughtful. “Well, I’m not sure,” she said. “They’ve been making most things for so long, I think they may have forgotten. Or at least they don’t talk about it. They just tell us when something needs doing, or collecting, or when something isn’t right and them in the kitchens must help.” “Wait a minute,” Glim said. “The trees talk to you?” “Of course. Can’t you hear them?” “Almost,” Glim said. “Almost. But what does it mean?” Her eyes had widened, and he realized his spines were puffed out and he was giving off his fighting odor. He tried to calm himself. “What’s this about, Glim?” she asked. “It’s about me,” he said. “It’s about my people, and why they died.” “I don’t understand,” she said. “But I can see how upset you are. Can you explain?” Glim thought about that for a long moment. Annaïg would tell him not to trust the girl; she didn’t trust anyone on Umbriel. But Fhena had only ever helped him. “I would like to explain,” he finally said. “Because it might mean something to you. It might make you think of something. So don’t be afraid to interrupt me.” “I won’t,” she replied. “I’ve told you before; I’m from a place named Black Marsh. My people call themselves the Saxhleel, and others call us Argonians.” “I remember. And you said all of your people are the same.” “The same? Yes, compared to your people. We all have scales, and breathe beneath the water, that sort of thing. Umbriel chooses your form when you are born. Mine is chosen by—ah—heritage.” “What do you mean?” “It’s not important right now. We can talk about that later. What’s important is this; there is another race in Black Marsh—the Hist."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt", "text": "They are sentient trees, and we are—connected to them. They are many and they are one, all attached at the root, and we, too, are joined to that root. Some say we were created by the Hist, to see for them the world where they cannot walk. They can call us or send us away. When we are named, we take of the sap of the Hist, and we are changed—sometimes a little, sometimes very much.” “What do you mean, ‘changed’?” “A few twelves of years ago, our country was invaded from Oblivion. The Hist knew it was going to happen, and called our people back to Black Marsh. Many of us were altered, made ready for the war that we had to fight. Made stronger, faster—able to endure terrible things.” “I’m starting to understand,” Fhena said. “You’re saying the Hist are much like the trees of our gyre.” “Yes. But not the same. They don’t speak to me as the Hist did. But you say they speak to you.” “Not in words,” she replied. “They dream, they experience, they communicate needs. I can’t imagine them making a plan, as you describe.” “But their sap can alter things, like that of the Hist.” “Oh, yes. But as I said, usually they have to be told.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “I still don’t understand why this is so upsetting to you.” “The Hist are supposed to be unified,” Glim said, “but at times certain trees have gone rogue, broken away from the others. It happened long, long ago in my city, and I think it happened again, not long before your world entered mine. A rogue tree helped Umbriel somehow, do you understand? It helped kill many, many of my people so they could serve Umbriel as dead things. And now I think it may have helped summon Umbriel here in the first place. Can you remember—” But Fhena’s eyes had become unfocused with memory. He stopped and waited. “We were in the void,” she said. “Nothing around. And then the trees began to sing a strange song, one I had never heard before. They sang and sang. It was beautiful. No one could remember such a thing happening before. And then we were here. They still sing it, but quietly now. Listen.” She took his hand and pressed it to the bark. It was strange, the roughness of the tree and the supple warmth of her hand, and for a moment that was all he experienced. But then she began to hum, and something seemed to turn in his head, and the soft burring that was all he had ever heard from the Fringe Gyre before suddenly sharpened and he heard it in tune with Fhena’s humming, a faint, rising and falling tone, along with a thousand harmonics, as if each seed and leaf had its own note to add. And he knew that melody, had known it since before his birth. The Hist sang it."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But the Fringe version was a little different—simpler. Still, it drew him, pulling him out of language and thought, and for a long, long time he knelt there with Fhena’s hand on his, feeling newborn, empty, at one."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel FIVE Most traps are simple, Colin thought. It’s why they work. Delia Huerc’s apartment had seemed simple. It had been reoccupied since her death, so he’d had to wait until the current owner—a Khajiit rug-seller named Lwef-Dim—was gone. It was an old place, full of shadows, once-weres, and might-have-beens, and so opening his spectral eyes was easy enough. And there she was, a slip of a ghost, still waiting. Ghosts usually moved on, except in locations with the power to hold them and feed them, but this place had given him hope—and it hadn’t disappointed. But then he saw that it wasn’t Delia. It wasn’t even a ghost. It was something left to deal with the likes of him. It contorted in his overvision, a chimera that refused to settle on a shape, then bloomed fully into Mundus, the world, and brought harm to him. He failed to dodge its blow, but whatever hit him still wasn’t actually matter; it was worse, traveling though his arm, through every layer of muscle, every vessel of blood, the bone and spongy marrow, leaving detailed and unbelievable agony behind. At first he thought the arm was actually off, but then he saw it was still there, a mass of spasming muscle. He tumbled away without thinking and drew the blade from his belt as reflexively, his training working well below the level of thought. The thing came for him and he cut at it with the translucent weapon. The apparition shivered and made a sound he hardly heard, so high-pitched was it, but the windows of the apartment shattered. So it didn’t like the blade, which was good. He’d brought it in case he had to fend off a ghost, and luckily whatever this was, it was at least offended by the consecrations bound into its crystalline metal. But he wasn’t sure if he’d actually hurt it, so he backed away, trying to focus on it, to forget the feeling of death eating at his arm and understand what he was facing. It came again, and this time he noticed a sort of center and stabbed at that. He felt resistance, and it made the sound again, but this time shudders of pain that weren’t his own racked through him, so he thrust again, and then again. A yellowish mist whipped at his head, he felt something like a razor pass through his brain, and colors exploded, seemed to spill out of him. He couldn’t feel his limbs, and realized he was in a jumble on the floor. The presence loomed over him. Feeling oddly detached, Colin closed his eyes against the thing and reached into the middle of himself, where his little star was, the tiny piece of him that had come from beyond the world and even Oblivion, from Aetherius, the realm of pure light and magic. As pain and then cold gripped him, he made the star a sun."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The force and light of it blew his eyelids and mouth open, and radiance shredded through the specter like a high wind through smoke. This time it didn’t manage to make a sound, but was instantly and utterly gone. Colin lay there then, watching the slight rise and fall of his chest, unable to remember what he was supposed to be doing. He didn’t recognize where he was either. And he couldn’t move. He ought to have panicked, but he was too tired. Across the room, a woman he did not know was watching him, silent, unmoving. He remembered being a boy in the city of Anvil, tarring boats and staring out to sea, dreaming of distant lands. He remembered his mother, her back permanently bent from her work scrubbing clothes. He remembered killing a man. He hadn’t known his name. It was on a bridge, and the man was looking out across water at a light. The man had seen his knife and tried to fend off the sharp blade with his hands. He tried to beg, but Colin had stabbed him until all of his life spilled out. He remembered that was his final test before becoming an inspector. As his memory returned, so did the feeling in his legs and arms. It was as if a million needles had been thrust into them. By the time he could push himself up, he knew where he was again. He faced the woman, who still hadn’t said anything. She was a Redguard, with tight, curly hair and a strong, handsome face. She was probably about fifty. “Are you Delia Huerc?” he asked. Her eyes moved at the sound of her name, but otherwise she didn’t react. Some ghosts remembered everything, some nothing. Some didn’t even know they were dead. “You went to Black Marsh, with Prime Minister Hierem. Do you remember that?” Her head turned a bit. She looked down, and her hand came up a little. He followed the gesture and saw she was pointing at one of the baseboards. He went over to it and found it loose. In a hollow in the wall he discovered a soft leather bag, and in that a book. “May I look at this?” he asked. Her hand dropped back to her side but she didn’t answer, so he opened it. It was written mostly in Tamrielic, with some asides in Yoku, which he had passing knowledge of. It was a journal, and flipping toward the end, he found several pages of entries about Black Marsh. He’d only read a page when he heard steps in the hall and realized he’d been on the floor most of the day. He went out the empty window, taking the book with him. Delia watched him go without objection. There wasn’t much sun left, but he wanted to be in it, to try to forget the thing in the apartment."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He went through the Market District and bought apples, pork pies, and lemon water from street vendors, then found a good place on the roof of a building overlooking the alley behind Arese’s house. There he ate and read the journal, stalked by pigeons trying to get at his scraps. Huerc described the preparations for the trip in detail, and it became clear to him that she thought the Emperor, at least, was aware of the trip. Hierem had explained that the secrecy and misdirection were to avoid any of the Emperor’s enemies learning what he was about. She hadn’t been privy to the meeting with the An-Xileel, but worked out that some agreement had been reached. She’d been led to believe that Hierem was there to propose an alliance against the Thalmor. But he was vague about what the negotiations actually entailed. Most interesting, the agreement involved Hierem performing some sort of ritual at the City Tree. She had written: The tree is enormous. The only one I have ever seen taller was in Valenwood, but the Hist was more massive, more spread out. And I could feel a palpable presence in it. I had never quite credited the Argonian claims that the trees are intelligent, but when I stood in its presence, I could no longer doubt it. Further, I thought I felt a certain malevolence in it, but that might well have been my imagination, for the whole situation was anything but friendly. The An-Xileel have been uniformly rude and arrogant, the city itself is a festering, putrid place. From the moment I entered Lilmoth, I have wanted nothing more than to leave it. The minister, on the other hand, seems quite excited, almost jubilant. The An-Xileel sang to the tree, an awful cacophonous chant that went on so long that I might have drifted off a bit. At some point, Hierem added his voice to theirs, but in a sort of counterpoint. He lit a brazier, and I’m sure he did some sort of sorcery. In his younger years he was in the leadership of the Mages’ Guild, before that organization utterly collapsed, and so I know him capable of these things, but I was still somehow surprised. It was my impression that he was calling something, for he repeated the word “Umbriel” many times. It seemed like a name, although the language he spoke was not one I knew, and so I may have been mistaken, for nothing came, although everyone seemed pleased anyway. Tomorrow we sail for home, and I could not be happier. He read on, but the only other passage of interest to him was one in which she began to question whether the Emperor had authorized or was aware of their trip, and she had determined to ask Hierem about it. He read the final few sentences with a little chill: At lunch today Hierem repeated his assertions, but I still have my doubts."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I have a meeting with the Emperor tomorrow. I will ask him myself. I hope I shall feel better. My stomach is unsettled, and there is pain in my joints. Perhaps the soup did not suit me. Colin thumbed back through earlier parts of the book, but it was dark now. He settled against a chimney, watching Arese’s unlit window. Neither moon was in the sky, but there were no clouds, and the stars were glorious. He rested there, letting the fall of night ease into him; first the swifts, then the fluttering of bats, the lonely imprecation of a barn owl. Tree frogs chirped and insects whirred. A dog barked somewhere in the Market District and was answered nearby, which set off a chorus of canine comment from all quarters of the city. A couple argued not far away about what the proper price of the cockles for dinner might have been, and the strains from a lute drifted along in the breeze. Arese would be with her sister now. He had a few more hours to wait, a little more time to decide what to do, whether to show Arese the journal or not. Was she really an agent of the Emperor? He’d been assigned to find Prince Attrebus. The prince had gone, against his father’s wishes and in secret, to find and fight the menace of the flying city. He hadn’t gotten far; Colin had found his entire bodyguard slaughtered—and it seemed, at first, the prince, too. Attrebus, it turned out, was a careful creation of his father and his ministers. All of the battles and duels he had won were set up that way, and the bards and authors who sang and wrote of him were heavily subsidized by the court. The prince himself hadn’t known this; few outside his guard had. Whenever the prince decided to go off on some sort of adventure, his right-hand man Gulan always reported it to the office of the Prime Minister, and it had been handled. But not this time—or at least not the way it usually was. This time the prince had been ambushed. That was what had led Colin to investigate Arese; he knew Gulan had gone to her, as usual. He discovered that she had set up the attack on the prince herself, and later followed her to a house where—as he listened—she killed the crime boss who had facilitated it, along with all of his guard and household. He still didn’t know if she had summoned something or transformed into the nightmare that had turned the house into an abattoir. And yet, Arese had admitted this to him. She had offered an explanation for it. Most traps are simple. He sighed, ran his hand through his hair, felt the breeze on his face. He heard a faint noise that seemed somehow out of place and opened his eyes."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Fifteen yards away he saw the shadowed figure of a man, dressed in the black quilted jerkin so many of the Dark Brotherhood affected these days. The fellow was in profile, kneeling on the roof of the building across the alley. As Colin watched, he slipped like a spider down a rope too dark and thin to make out from his vantage point. He settled, still like a spider, on the casement of Arese’s window. After a moment Colin saw the window reflect starlight as it swung open, and then, a few heartbeats later, shut again. The breeze picked up. It felt cool, and Colin realized he was sweating. Someone wanted Arese dead. He hesitated long enough to feel ashamed, trying to sort out what the smart thing to do was. If she died, he could step out of this whole thing. But then he would never know what was going on, and maybe he would have to watch the Empire collapse knowing he might have done something. But it was more than that. There had been something about her, brittleness, vulnerability … He recognized her, he understood in that moment. She was what he might become after a few years of this. He had seen, however briefly, the hollow place in her, the weariness. He still wasn’t sure if he believed her or if they were on the same side. But he didn’t want her to die. He looked back up at the sky. Almost time for her to come home, of course. The assassin would know that, too, wouldn’t he? He didn’t have any rope or cord. He could make the jump to the window, maybe, but the odds were against it, and it wouldn’t be quiet. But he could jump to the next building, get to her front door before she did, and avoid the whole confrontation. But then he saw light in the window—not in the room itself, but diffuse light, coming from another room. Muttering a curse, he stepped back a few paces, assessed the distance, and leapt. His toes hit the window ledge and he curled forward, elbows over his eyes. Glass panes shattered but the wooden frame did not, and so he bounced back, spine toward the street thirty feet below. He kicked a foot through one of the broken panes and managed to hook it on the wood, which swung him back and smacked his shoulders into the brick. Gasping, he jerked up, tightening his stomach muscles, and drew himself up to the window. By the time he got it open, of course, someone was coming for him. He dove past and to the side of the dark blur and rolled toward the lantern-lit room farther in, drawing his knife. He absently noticed that his hands were slick with blood."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt", "text": "A knife thudded into the floor next to him as he scrambled up, and the assassin was close behind; he had a dark blade in his left hand and was drawing a bright one with his right from beneath his jerkin. Colin’s breath rushed in, and for an instant everything slowed and golden light seemed to infuse the room. His arms moved but he seemed outside of it. The next thing he knew, he hit the wall hard, pain trying to make him scream as he fell, but his throat wouldn’t open to let it out. His attacker was leaning against a bookcase across the room. He made a sort of snarling sound and took one, two steps toward him. With the third step his knee kept bending and he slammed face-first into the floor. Colin could see the bloody point of his knife standing out between the downed man’s shoulder blades. Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet, feeling them wobble beneath him. Under his breath he said a little prayer to Dibella, but he couldn’t tell if she heard. He wasn’t sure how long he could stand. He made it to the fallen man, though, and took the black knife from his hand. He stuck it in between the first two vertebrae below the skull and wiggled it. Then he had a look at himself. His arms were cut up from the window, nothing so deep as to be dangerous. The assassin’s other knife had driven through the pectoral muscle where it stretched up to meet his shoulder. The feeling of the impact came back to him, and he realized the blade must have hit a bone and skipped up instead of slipping through to his heart. In any event, if the dagger hadn’t been poisoned, he was probably going to survive. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a second man, coming from the direction of the window, and he tried to turn, far too slowly. But there was a clap like thunder, and the man went staggering back, and in the next instant something appeared, something horrible. Colin had a glimpse of slits of green balefire, scales, and claws like sickles. The man almost managed to scream before his lungs and viscera were spattered across the room. Then the thing turned on Colin, snarling. “Stop!” a voice shouted, and the daedra stopped, panting. Arese stood behind him, her eyes wider than he had ever seen them. It made her look very young. The sleeve of her white shirt was soaked in blood, and a red patch on her temple and eye would probably soon prove itself a bruise. “Hunt and guard,” she told the daedra, and it turned and reluctantly slouched back toward the window. “How did you—” Arese managed. She was breathing so hard and shallowly it worried him. “Come here,” he said. “Are you cut anyplace else?” “I never saw him,” she said, staring down at the body. “Never heard him."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I didn’t have time to do anything.” “Let me look,” he said. “You got your arm up,” he remarked, examining the defensive wound on her wrist. It wasn’t deep. “I heard a crash, like glass breaking. I guess I threw up my hand when I turned, but he was there already.” “The crash was me,” Colin said, searching for punctures anywhere vital. “I don’t understand.” “I was waiting on the roof across the alley. I saw him come in.” “He came to kill me.” Her breath was still too quick, and her skin was hot, much hotter than it should be. “That seems obvious,” he said. “They would have killed me if not for you.” “Well, that second guy would have had me,” he said. “Divines, you’re bleeding everywhere.” “Nothing serious,” he said. “But speaking of bleeding, your arm—” She looked at it, then back at him. He realized he had one hand on her shoulder and another on her stomach. He felt her belly quiver, and something happened to her eyes. Stupid, he thought. This is stupid. Her skin felt almost molten. She gasped when their lips came together, as if trying to get the air from his lungs. He smelled something like burning cloves and felt a shock of energy race through him like nothing he had ever known before, filling the emptiness left in him from two hard fights with impossible strength. She buried her face in his neck and he in hers, and they went down on the rug in a tangle, both wrestling furiously at ties and buttons. Slick with blood, the salt from their sweat burned his wounds, but not enough to matter. Later, much later it seemed, he lay back while she cleaned his wounds, first with warm water and then with a white ointment that left a pleasant warmth behind it and smelled a little like mustard. It did more than feel good; he could see the flesh draw together almost as if stitched. They had moved to her bedroom, where she had laid out a thick cover over her sheets and let him rest stretched out. She sat on the edge of the bed, the skin of her throat and breast like pearl in the moonlight—except for where the streaks of dried blood still clung. “Feel better?” she asked. “Much,” he said. “Although I have to say, I didn’t feel it that much a little while ago either.” She looked down. He thought she seemed embarrassed. “Reaction,” he offered. “When you realize you’ve almost died, sometimes—you know.” She shook her head. “When I summon daedra, I have to touch them with my mind. I have to be strong enough to keep them from turning on me. Daedra are—violent, passionate. Sometimes I feel something of what they do.” She looked away. “I think—” She shook her head and dabbed at the cut on his chest. “It’s also been a long time, for me."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I haven’t felt I could trust anyone enough to—do that. I haven’t felt secure enough.” “And you trust me?” She smiled. “No. But—” She smiled. “Reaction. And there is something about you.” She cocked her head. “You’ve no reason to trust me either, I know. I’ve given you every reason not to. But I’m just trying to get through this. Alive. And sometimes it doesn’t seem worth the cost.” “Cost?” “This isn’t a life, Colin. I’m thirty-one years old. I’ve been a spy in Hierem’s ministry since I was twenty-one. I’ve been with one other person in that time, and it was a disaster. I work, and I fear, and sometimes I do awful things. I have drinks with my sister for an hour or two most evenings and come home. I can’t talk to her about what I do. She stays out, gambles, goes for rides in the country, has affairs. I’m careful. I protect myself. And now I’m going to die anyway.” “They failed,” he pointed out. “But someone sent them, probably one of my rivals or Hierem himself. They’ll send more. I’ve made a mistake somewhere—probably to do with those two on the island. They know.” She lifted his hand and kissed it. “You’re very young,” she said. “You can get out of this. You should. I won’t stop you.” “Are you giving up?” he asked. “No. No, I can’t do that. But I don’t have to pull you down with me.” He sighed. “I was in this already,” he said. “I have to—I have to do something right. Do you understand?” “You did something right tonight,” she said. “You saved my life. Can’t that be enough?” “Not if you die tomorrow.” “We all die. You gave me at least a day more than I would have had. And not a bad one.” “It’s not enough,” he said. “Why?” “It’s just not.” “Don’t get angry,” she said. “I’m not,” he replied. “You sound it.” “Okay,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m not, though.” But he was, wasn’t he? She didn’t say anything, but then he felt a tender kiss, just at the edge of his lips. “It doesn’t have to be rough,” she said. “I can be gentle.” He thought of the two men she had killed on the island, of the many who had perished in that house he had followed her to. He thought about the assassin he had just slaughtered, and realized he felt nothing. He kissed her, and outside the night birds sang as if everything were normal, quiet, and in its place."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel SIX “Halt here,” Captain Falcus shouted. “Brennus, Mazgar—take three more and check out the village.” “On it, Captain,” Mazgar said, trying to keep the fatigue out of her voice. Then realizing she’d spoken out of turn, she looked to Brennus. “I’m not trained for this,” Brennus said. “We both know that. You choose.” She nodded. “Merthun, Tosh, Na-Nasha, come on.” The others were as weary as she, and in fact she was beginning to worry about Brennus. He was a scholar, not a warrior or battlemage, although his skills had saved her a few times in the past weeks. But he didn’t have the constitution or the training for this sort of forced march, and it was starting to show. They had managed to fight their way through the southern end of the encirclement on the ridge, but none of the horses had survived and they had lost almost half their number. Since then they had been able to keep ahead of the undead creatures, but only by pushing themselves to their limits. What provisions they had were now gone, and they couldn’t stop to hunt or fish, because the band that attacked them wasn’t alone; it was part of a massive wave moving across the mountains into Cheydinhal County. They half trotted, half stumbled down the hill to the village, if village was even the word for ten houses arranged around a central area of bare dirt and a well. She looked longingly at the latter, but had a job to do before she could drink from it. There were about seven people in the square when they entered it, but within moments more began appearing from the houses. They didn’t look threatening; none of them even seemed to be armed. “We’re Imperial troops,” Mazgar shouted. “Who’s in charge here?” An older Redguard woman with frizzled white hair stepped toward her. “I suppose that would be me,” she said. “I’m Sariah, charter-holder of Mountain Watch, such as it is.” “Sariah,” Mazgar said, “just keep your people still for a moment. We mean you no harm.” They went quickly house to house, despite the sudden burst of protests and complaints from Sariah and a few others in the square, only confirming what Mazgar already reckoned—that this was a bunch of farmers and hunters. Then she whistled—one short, one long, two short. A few moments later Captain Falcus and the rest came down. “Captain, this here is Sariah,” Mazgar said, introducing her, “the charter-holder.” “What’s this about, Captain?” Sariah demanded. “Since when can Imperial troops search houses without permission?” “By order of his majesty, or in time of war, lady,” Falcus said. “You and all of your people are about half a day from being dead, every one of you.” “What are you talking about?” Sariah asked. “Mountain Watch, eh?” Falcus said, and spat. “You aren’t watching too well.” He raised his voice. “Listen up! You people have fifteen minutes to pack."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Take nothing you can’t eat, drink, or fight with, and I mean it. Any horses you have, bring those up now, and bring my men provisions.” “What gives you the right to order us out of our homes?” Sariah snapped. “I don’t aim for any of you to die,” Falcus said. “I intend to get you all behind the gates of Cheydinhal ahead of what’s coming. But if you delay me with this senseless prattle—if anyone does—it means some or all of you are going to die. Even now it may be too late. Now—do what I told you. Now!” The charter-holder’s eyes widened, but she didn’t dissent anymore. Nobody ever argued with Falcus when he used that tone of voice. He might as well have been the Emperor himself. They took turns at the well, drinking and filling their skins, and those not at the well helped gather up the grand total of six horses the village had to offer. They hooked four of them to two wagons, to carry the youngest and the infirm. Falcus and Kuur, the battlemage, took the other two. A bit of grumbling started to resurface, and it took more than fifteen minutes, but within the hour they were shepherding forty people ranging in age from two months to sixty-something down a weather-worn track that couldn’t quite be called a road. Mazgar and Brennus took positions along one of the wagons. Brennus looked pale. “There’s room in the wagon,” Mazgar suggested. “I’m fine,” he murmured. “Thank Akatosh I don’t have to carry around all that muscle and bone, like you do.” “No, all of your weight is in your head,” she replied. “Seriously. A little rest will help you.” “He can have my place,” a child’s voice said. “I want to walk.” Mazgar glanced in the wagon and saw that the speaker was a little human in brown twill breeches and a yellow felt shirt. “See?” she said. “The boy is willing to give up his spot for you.” “Yeah,” the kid said, “but I ain’t a boy.” Mazgar studied the short brown bangs, snub nose, and slight frame. “The girl, then,” she corrected. “It’s all right,” Brennus said. “Come on,” the girl said, hopping out. “I’m seven now. I can walk as good as anyone and better than most.” Brennus shook his head, but in the next step he stumbled. “Well, considering that,” he sighed. “Right,” Mazgar said. “We need you fresh when the wormies catch up to us, and that’s no lie.” She expected a quip back from him, but he just nodded and started trying to clamber in. She gave him a little shove to help him along. “There,” she said. Then she looked down at the girl. “Think you can keep up with me?” “I can keep up with anybody,” she said. “We’ll see about that.” “You’re an orc,” the girl said. “Is she, now?” Brennus said, perking up a little."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Here I’ve been thinking that somewhere out there a bear and a pig are living in wedded bliss.” “What do you mean?” the girl asked. “Don’t pay attention to him,” Mazgar said. “He’s only trying to get me to mash his face in.” “Why?” “Some people are funny that way,” she replied. “Well, I’d like to see it!” “Maybe when he’s feeling a little better. What’s your name?” “Lorcette, but everybody calls me Goblin.” “Why?” “I don’t know, they just always have. Mom always said I had ears like a goblin.” “Huh,” Mazgar said. “Now that I look, you sort of do. Which one of these is your mom?” “Oh, she’s gone,” Goblin said. “Died when I was six.” “Mine died when I was seven,” Mazgar said. “At the sack of Orsinium. They say she killed thirty before death took her.” “My mom didn’t die in a battle. She just got sick.” The girl cocked her head. “Who was your mom fighting?” “Redguards and Bretons,” Mazgar replied. “You became an Imperial soldier because of her?” “I became a soldier because of her. I became an Imperial soldier because if it hadn’t been for the Seventh and Fifteenth legions, a lot more of us would have died. They put themselves in harm’s way for us, got the survivors to safety in Skyrim.” “Kind of like what you’re doing now.” Mazgar remembered the terror, the chaos, the walk that went on for weeks through bitter cold—and never having enough to eat. “Let’s hope not,” she said. “What’s a wormy?” Goblin asked after a few moments of silence. “What?” “You said something about wormies catching up with us.” “Yeah. That’s what I call ’em. They used to be people—then they died and some kind of witchery brought them back, and now they’re all full of maggots and such—so I call ’em wormies.” She thought the girl would look scared, but instead she looked thoughtful. “My mom is buried back there,” she said. “Do you think they’ll bring her back?” “Nah, they like fresher bodies than that. Anyway, it wouldn’t really be your mom, just your mom’s body with a daedra in it.” “Why would anyone do that?” “To conquer Tamriel, it looks like,” Mazgar replied. “But I wish whoever it is who had the itch to do that would have chosen less smelly troops.” “I could say the same about some of his majesty’s elections,” Brennus said. Mazgar was preparing a retort, but then she saw his eyes were closed. “Mauloch,” she muttered. “Even when he’s asleep.” They marched along like that, with the girl prattling and keeping good pace. When night fell, however, she and Brennus switched places. The mage seemed much better for the rest, and Goblin dropped off pretty swiftly. “You let that girl talk your ear off all day,” Brennus said, “and you never once looked like you were going to clout her in the head."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "That’s not like you.” “Isn’t it?” “Remember that kid that hung around our camp on the way up—that little mountain town? The one you threatened to tie to a tree by his bowels?” “Well, he was annoying.” “About the same as this one, really,” he said. “Something’s changed in you.” “In me?” she snorted. “I think maybe you’re starting to think about spitting out a few little bear-pigs yourself, that’s what I think.” “You’re more out of your mind than usual,” she said. “Children? Me?” “Just an observation,” he rejoined. “You’re not getting any younger, and we’ve lost a lot of comrades. Makes you think.” “Makes you think,” she said. “And way too much.” “Still—” “Rest it!” she snapped. She must have said it louder than she meant to, for a number of heads turned her way. She couldn’t tell if the look on Brennus’s face was smugness or contrition. Humans. A bit after noon the next day, Mazgar saw the high steeple of the chapel of Arkay peeking up through the trees below them. On foot they would have been there quickly, but the wagons were having a hard time going downhill. Mazgar felt the familiar itch of danger at her back growing more and more pronounced, and glanced often over her shoulder, though Coals and Merthun were on the rearguard and both were more than competent. But it wasn’t Coals and Merthun who sent up the alarm—it came from the north, their left flank, from Na-Nasha and Glavius. The two men arrived a few moments behind their signal. “They’ll cut us off from Cheydinhal if we don’t hurry,” Na-Nasha said, wriggling his reptilian fingers oddly, as he often did when agitated. “That’s it for the wagons,” Falcus said. He turned to the refugees. “We’re going to make it, but we’re going to have to run. Leave everything, you hear? Cheydinhal is just down this hill, not even half a mile.” Mazgar dumped her backpack and reached for Goblin, but the girl shook her head. “I told you, I can run. Carry Riff Belancour, there—he’s got a funny foot.” Mazgar nodded and took up the boy, who was probably about six and weighed half as much as her pack. The horses were cut loose and the most elderly put up on them in tandem. Mothers clutched their infants. Falcus set the pace, a slow trot, and the boy on Mazgar’s shoulders giggled, obviously thinking it was all a game of some kind. True to her boast, Goblin kept up, running alongside her. Falcus picked up the tempo a little as they burst into a field; the walls of Cheydinhal were visible through the next line of trees. But the wormies were coming fast, toward their left flank, ranged in a rough phalanx, and Mazgar could easily make the calculation that they weren’t going to make it. A few of the townsfolk screamed or began to cry, but most broke into full-on, terrified flight."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Falcus began shouting orders, but Mazgar couldn’t make them out. A moment later, though, Na-Nasha, Coals, Casion, and Sugar-Lick broke off and formed a semicircle with Kuur behind them. “Captain!” she shouted. “Permission to join—” “Denied,” Falcus shouted back. “Keep with your charge. Make it count. Go!” She exchanged a glance with Brennus. “I’m with you,” he said. “Whatever you want to do.” Mazgar glanced down at Goblin, felt the weight on her back. “I don’t make the orders,” she snarled. So they ran. She looked back once before they reached the trees, because she felt the heat on her back and heard the dull thud of an explosion. She couldn’t see anything but black, greasy smoke and billowing flame. They came through the trees into the clearing around the walls. The gate was off to the right. It was open, and a picket of about a fifty soldiers was formed up there. They had maybe thirty paces to go when Goblin shrieked. Mazgar looked back and saw six wormies coming up fast. She set Riff down and drew Sister. “Get them through the line,” she howled at Brennus. Then she got her footing and charged. Sister caught the first—a half-charred Dunmer man—right at the juncture of clavicle and neck, and the heavy blade clove halfway through his ribs and stuck there. Bellowing, she punched the next in the face as he lifted his heavy curving blade, and had the satisfaction of feeling the cartilage and bone crush under her knuckles. She used Sister to turn the corpse into the next two, temporarily deflecting them while she reached for another, this one unarmed, and she roared the battle cry her mother had in her last battle. Red sleeted before her eyes, and rage took everything. The next thing she knew, Goblin was shouting at her. She looked dully down and saw the pile of bodies, Sister still stuck in one. Twenty yards away, about sixty wormies were charging toward her. She put her boot on the dead thing and heaved out the sword, then turned and pounded toward the gate, where the others were waiting. Falcus ordered them all to eat and rest, and no one argued. The wormies didn’t have siege engines, and Cheydinhal had its own soldiers, after all, and a mixed company of Imperial troops as well. Within an hour a camp had been set up near the castle that dominated the north end of town, and Mazgar had the first hot food and cool ale she’d had in a long time. She didn’t remember falling asleep, and the next thing she knew was light coming softly through an open tent-flap. She left her armor in the tent and went outside to stretch, wandering down to the river that flowed through the city. The sun wasn’t showing over the walls yet, but things were waking up. Wagons of bags and crates made their way across the bridges, pulled by thick, sturdy horses."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Across the river, a Dunmer woman was casting a net, which came up wriggling. Mazgar could smell sausage frying somewhere. But most of the people she saw were up on the walls. She watched the river flow for a while. She knew Brennus by the sound of his gait. “Nice place,” he said. “Have you ever been here before?” “No,” she said. “The houses look funny.” She nodded across the river. The timbers of most of the structures in town were exposed. In the lower floors they were covered with stone, but the upper ones had plaster between the beams and struts, which were often arranged in whimsical patterns. The roofs were concave peaks, and the shingles looked like scales. “That’s called half-timbering,” Brennus said. “It’s Morrowind architecture, really—or was.” She tossed a twig in the river and watched it float off. “Have you heard anything?” “No,” he replied, “but I need to have a look with my instruments.” “Going up on the wall, then?” “Higher,” he said, pointing to the structure of stone and stained glass that towered over everything else. “I’ll go with you,” she said. “I don’t think I need a guard at the moment,” he said. “You never know,” she replied. Inside, the chapel of Arkay was all hush and colored light. They found a priest who, after a bit of explanation, showed them the way up to the highest spire. From there even the people on the walls looked small. She gazed first out over the forest, hills, and distant Valus Mountains. Only reluctantly did she focus nearer. The wormies had taken up positions a few hundred yards from the gates. “They’re out of range of ballista and catapults,” she said. “They’re not stupid.” “No, they aren’t,” Brennus replied. “Necromancers have been known to make such creatures as these, but they are generally mindless. And slow. We’re dealing with something new here. Did you hear what happened last night?” “What do you mean?” “A man died of natural causes and rose up as one of these. The watch got him, and afterward they put out the alarm. There were three more cases.” “Just like Jarrow, and the others we lost on the hill.” “Right. Whatever spirits animate them clearly can travel more than a few paces.” “Every time we kill one, we risk a corpse waking up in town.” Brennus nodded. “What do you reckon, then? They’ll try to starve us out?” “No,” the mage replied. “I think they’re just waiting for reinforcements.” As he said it, he pointed. She saw it then, pale as a cloud with distance, unmistakable. Umbriel itself was coming for them."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel SEVEN Annaïg picked at the flesh of the green nutlike thing and popped it into her mouth, chewing slowly. She felt a little heat like black pepper, followed by a rush in her nose like fiery mustard and green onions. The texture, though, was like a boiled cashew. “That’s great,” she told Glim. “What is it?” “Something new,” he said. “Maybe from Morrowind.” “Maybe,” Annaïg said dubiously. “Wert says that sometimes the sump will go for years without producing a particular thing, then start again, while something else vanishes for a time.” “How does it do it?” she wondered. “Does Umbriel store seeds and eggs someplace?” “I don’t think so,” Glim told her. “I think it’s the trees.” Glim had a sharp, excited scent about him, and he seemed to be barely holding something in. “The trees?” she asked. “The trees in the Fringe Gyre,” he said. “You saw them when we tried to escape.” “Well, yes,” she said. “But it was dark, and I was distracted by—well, escaping.” “I believe that they are cousins of the Hist.” “That’s interesting. I can’t imagine what that means.” “Well—think of water oaks and white oaks in Black Marsh. They’re both oaks because they have acorns; their leaves are arranged in a spiral. But other things about them are different. Like cousins.” “Okay,” Annaïg said. “I follow that, although I never thought of it that way. So are you saying that the trees in the Fringe Gyre are intelligent, like the Hist?” “Yes and no. They communicate, as the Hist do, but in different tones. I didn’t really learn to hear them until Fhena showed me, and then—” “Fhena?” “Yes, one of the gardeners in the trees. She helped me find you. Surely I mentioned her.” “No, you surely did not,” Annaïg said. “Well, she’s just someone I talk to,” Mere-Glim said. She thought he sounded defensive. “A woman?” “She is female, yes.” “Uh-huh.” He made a low growl in his throat, which she understood as embarrassment. “It’s not like that,” he said. “She’s not—I mean, she’s an Umbrielian. She looks like a Dunmer.” “Fine. I’m just wondering, if you’re so friendly with her, why you haven’t mentioned her before.” He blinked at her, and she realized she sounded stupid. Jealous. And what did she have to be jealous over? But the fact that after all of these years as best friends, he hadn’t mentioned her … She pushed it off. “The trees,” she said. “Yes,” he replied. “Some of my people believe that the Hist came to Tamriel from Oblivion. Umbriel is from Oblivion, too, so it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to me that they could be cousins.” “Yes, but it would be a huge coincidence.” “I don’t think it’s a coincidence."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I think the city tree somehow called Umbriel, or the Fringe Gyre trees may have called to the Hist—but I think there was some sort of collusion.” “Are the trees here malevolent?” “No, they are—vaguer than the Hist. Not as intelligent maybe, or maybe just in a different way. Simpler. But like the Hist, they can form their sap into different things, the way you do with your equipment. And they can shape life, change its form.” She thought about that for a moment. “That—makes sense. One of my tasks is to take raw ingredients from the sump and transform them into nutrients for the trees, but part of that process involves getting the roots themselves to release substances. I haven’t worked in the large fermentation vats, but I have noticed there are always roots involved.” “I think it’s the trees who remember all the forms of life on Umbriel,” Glim said. “I think they produce the proforms—the little worms Umbrielians start as. Then the ingenium gives them a soul, and they grow according to some sort of plan the trees remember.” “Well, that’s really interesting,” Annaïg said. “If we could poison the trees, destroy them, that would in essence destroy Umbriel.” Glim’s eyes went wide. “But you can’t—” he began, then stopped. “It would take a long time,” he said. “And it might not be possible.” “If they are all connected at the root, like the Hist—sure, they all draw nourishment from the sump.” An expression flickered across his features that she had never actually seen before, but it reminded her of anger. “Look,” she said, “you’re saying these trees are responsible for the murder of almost everyone we know.” “I’m not,” he said. “I’m saying they were used. Someone used them.” “Glim, you can’t—I know how you feel about some of these people, but—” “I don’t think you do,” he said. “You hate everyone you know here.” “Glim, the one person I showed friendship to tried to kill me.” “I know,” he said. “But the skraws are different. And Fhena.” She sighed. “Look, let’s take one thing at a time. What about Phmer’s kitchen? Can I get in?” “You can’t get in far,” he said. “Any more than I could get into your kitchen.” “But here we are.” “No, no. I can get to your pantry, and so could someone from another kitchen, in the proper disguise. But to go any farther would raise all sorts of alarms and protections. Some are in the walls, living things that see and smell the uninvited. Others, as I understand it, are sorcerous in nature. All I know is, they say at least twenty people from other kitchens have tried to invade past Phmer’s pantry; all were caught or killed. Almost as many have tried to get into Toel’s kitchen since you came to work there.” “I haven’t heard anything about that.” “That’s because they all went into the sump,” he said. “Huh."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But you think I can get into the pantry.” “At night, if you’re very careful.” “Suppose I was invisible, had no scent, made no sound?” she asked. “You might make it another fifteen paces, as some of the others did.” “Well, then,” she said. “Thanks, Glim, that’s very helpful.” “You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said. “You remember the last time you tried to make someone invisible? For a week all my organs were on display for everyone to see.” “I’ve learned a lot since then,” she assured him. “I hope so. When are you going?” “Tonight.” Annaïg was wakened by a gentle pressure on her arm. She opened her eyes and found Dulg standing there, his little froglike form perched on the stool by her bed. “What is it?” she asked. “Chef Toel requires your presence,” he said. She stirred, rubbing her eyes. “What’s going on?” “That’s not for you to ask,” Dulg replied. She looked around. “Where is Slyr?” she asked. “Summoned earlier,” Dulg supplied. “Did she wear my gold-and-black gown?” Dulg looked a bit puzzled. “You said I could offer it to her.” “Right. I did, didn’t I? Well, just fetch me the black one.” Dulg nodded and bounded off. An hour later, properly dressed and coiffed, she met Toel on his balcony. He wasn’t alone this time. His underchefs Intovar and Yeum stood on either side of him. Intovar was a spindly fellow with dirty yellow hair and an air of the rodent about him. Yeum was a thick woman with an appealing, heart-shaped face and dusky skin. Neither had ever spoken to her except to give her orders. Slyr was also there, of course. On the other side of the balcony—as if relegated there by an invisible line—stood another party. The obvious leader was an impressively tall, narrow woman with close-cropped hair and large emerald eyes. She was accompanied by two men, one brick red with horns and the other a merish-looking person who looked perpetually surprised. “Chef Toel,” Annaïg said, bowing her head slightly. He smiled oddly and gestured at the green-eyed woman. “I should like to present you to Chef Phmer, and also her assistants Jolha and Egren.” “An honor, Chefs,” Annaïg replied. Phmer smiled, but it reminded Annaïg of the toothy grin of the piranhas that lived in the dunkwaters. “I’m told you are to thank—or blame—for many of the fads passing through some kitchens,” she said. Her voice was silk, coiled thick and made into a noose. “I suppose I might be,” Annaïg replied. “And yet your inventiveness would appear to have its limits.” “Everything has limits,” Annaïg said cautiously. “And yet fetching up against these limits has tempted you to do something rather costly,” Phmer went on. Annaïg looked at Toel, whose expression was blank. “I don’t understand,” she said. Phmer’s expression changed, going from one of apparent good humor to barely checked rage."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Do you deny you broke into my kitchen last night in an attempt to steal the secret of the ninth savor?” “Chef,” Annaïg said, “I do. I certainly do.” “And yet we have testimony that you did. And other evidence.” “Testimony?” But she couldn’t miss the suppressed look of triumph on Slyr’s face. “If you did this thing,” Toel said, “you know I must give you over to her. It is the law.” “It’s permissible to invade another kitchen wholesale and slaughter everyone there, but not to sneak into one to steal?” “I obtained permission for my raid on Qijne’s kitchen,” he replied. “Nor is that here nor there. You are not the head of a kitchen. Did you do this? Did you try to steal from Phmer?” “I’ve already said I didn’t,” Annaïg pointed out. “Well, we shall see about that,” Phmer said. She gestured at a box on the floor, and her red-skinned underchef bent to it. He unlatched one side of the thing, and something crawled out. She thought at first it was a spider, but its legs weren’t rigid; nor were they as supple as those of a squid, but something in between. And—she realized as it unfolded them—it had wings, rather like those of a mosquito, and in fact now it somewhat resembled one, albeit one that could fit into the palm of her hand. The wings blurred into motion, and the little creature lifted into the air; three stalks or antennae began probing about as it approached her. She remained still, wondering if it had some sort of sting, and if she had made a mistake. She tried to slow her heart with simple willpower, but it thudded on irrespective. The tentacles tickled across her face and down her dress, lingering on her left hand, but then the creature darted over to Slyr and began to make an annoying high-pitched sound. Phmer frowned, but Toel’s lips turned up. Slyr just looked puzzled, then aghast. Toel lifted his hand toward Phmer, then turned it gently toward Slyr. Two of his guards took Slyr by the shoulders, and the woman looked wildly at Annaïg. Phmer reached into one of Slyr’s pockets, and then the other. From the second she withdrew a small vial. She uncorked it, sniffed it, and then tasted a bit on her finger. “This is it,” she said. “The scent of my kitchen is on her dress, the ninth savor in her pocket. Do you need more?” “I do not,” Toel said. “The evidence is clear enough.” “How did you do it?” Phmer asked Slyr. “There was sign that you had been in the kitchen, but my best safeguards are those around the taste itself, and you left no trace there. I must know how you did this.” “I didn’t!” Slyr exploded. “It was Annaïg! Somehow she made it look as if—why would I warn you she was going to steal from you if it was really me coming?"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Why would I—This is her doing!” She plucked wildly at her clothing, as if discovering it was made of fire. “This is her dress! She’s tricked us all somehow.” “Let me understand this,” Toel said softly. “You warned Phmer against someone on my staff? Behind my back?” Slyr shrank back, like a cornered animal, a little whimper escaping her. “She remains mine,” Phmer said. “Oh, you may have her,” Toel replied. “I have no doubt you will extract revenge enough for both of us.” “First there will be questions,” she said. “Many, many questions.” She nodded at Annaïg. “I would question her as well.” “There is no evidence against her other than the testimony of a thief,” Toel replied. “You may not have her.” Phmer lifted her chin haughtily, but she didn’t argue. Instead she signed for her creature to take Slyr. “Annaïg, please,” Slyr whimpered. She felt her heart soften, remembering her first few weeks in the bowels of Umbriel, nights with Slyr, gazing at the stars. “It’s not in my hands, Slyr,” she said quietly. “Your own actions brought you to this.” And so they dragged Slyr off. She didn’t beg or plead again, at least not in Annaïg’s earshot. When they were gone, Toel indicated one of the chairs. “Sit,” he said. She did as he commanded. “How did you do it?” he asked. “Chef—” she began. “You are safe,” he replied. “Unless you left some sort of evidence that might turn up later, you are safe. I can easily see how you manipulated Slyr into going to Phmer, and how you used the chemical stains of that kitchen to implicate her, how you might scrub them from your own person. But I ask you again, how did you do it—how did you pass the inner safeguards and steal the savor itself?” Annaïg felt her fear melting, then transforming, igniting into triumph. “I didn’t, Chef,” she said. “What do you mean?” “I only entered the outer corridors of her kitchen, to taint the dress. The ninth taste I invented—or reinvented, I suppose—on my own.” For perhaps the first time since she had met him, Toel’s mouth moved as if in speech but without producing any sound. “How?” he asked. “All I had to do was think about it a bit. Once I understood the principle, making the taste was simple enough. And just now, Phmer confirmed that I was right. Until then I couldn’t be sure.” “What is it, then? Do you have more?” “I can make more,” she assured him. “For obvious reasons, I don’t have any with me.” “But what is it?” “The ninth savor is the opposite of all other tastes. It is the utter absence of flavor.” Toel’s pupils constricted, then widened again, reminding her of Glim. “Like the space between words,” he murmured. “I thought of music,” she said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“There are many pitches, chords, harmonies, and dissonances—but silence—that, too, is a part of music.” His smiled broadened a little and he tapped the table with his forefinger. “I had given up on you, you know,” he said. “I thought all of that talk about showing me what I didn’t know I wanted to see was desperate nonsense, and yet you’ve done it. And Slyr—she never saw it coming. But why did it take you so long?” “I do things in my own time, for my own reasons,” she said. His gaze intensified and he placed his hand on hers. “You’ve pleased me more than you can imagine,” he said. “Come with me now, and let me please you.” She squeezed his hand, leaned forward—and with a slight hesitation, brought her lips to his. They were amazingly smooth, like slippery glass, and an unexpected tingle fizzed down to her belly, leaving her feeling both excited and somewhat sick. He responded, lightly at first, but as he grew hungrier she pulled away. “In my own time,” she said softly. “For my own reasons.” For a breath or two she didn’t think he would relent, but then he laughed. “I will have to kill you one day,” he said. “But for now, I love you. Go now; invent delightful things for Lord Rhel. I will see you tomorrow.” In the corridor, her knees wobbled. “Xhuth!” she swore. She hated Toel, hated him, now more than ever. And yet her body didn’t care about that at all. It was disgusting. Later, in her rooms, she drew out her locket. Maybe tonight Attrebus would answer, finally. But did she want him to? What would she tell him? How could she explain what she had done to Slyr? Or talk about what had happened with Toel? She couldn’t. And so she closed the locket and sought sleep, turning so she could not see Slyr’s empty bed."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c08_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel EIGHT Colin woke sometime after midnight. At first he thought he was alone, but then he noticed Arese standing at the window. She reminded him of one of the white poplars that grew along streams in the hills outside of Anvil. She heard him approaching and glanced over her shoulder, but her features were shadowed by the moonlight behind her. “I shouldn’t still be here,” she said. “Right,” he replied. “Why are you?” She shrugged. “I guess I thought we weren’t through.” She must have seen the expression on his face, because she laughed. “No, I think we’re done with that for the night,” she said. “I mean—you came here for something, right? To tell me something?” “Yes,” he said, surprised at how unimportant it seemed at the moment. But he explained it anyway—about what Hierem did in Black Marsh. “That only seems to confirm what we already thought,” she said. “It’s something,” Colin replied. “The journal is proof, isn’t it?” “It is proof,” she said. “Just not very good proof.” “How good does it have to be? The Emperor was suspicious enough to plant you in Hierem’s ministry. Shouldn’t this be enough to convince him?” “I don’t know,” she said. “What do you know about Hierem?” “Not much,” Colin admitted. “He’s been around forever. He had a position in the old Empire—he was an ambassador to Morrowind. He was a minister to Thules the Gibbering, the witch-warrior who ruled what little remained of the Empire before Titus Mede took it from him.” “I remember. Not a well-liked ruler.” “Maybe not beloved, but he was Nibenese, and despite his various perversions, many on the council favored him over a Colovian usurper. Hierem is from an old Nibenese family, with a lot of connections. He smoothed over the conquest, helped convince the council to accept Mede as a liberator rather than a conqueror. He’s also extremely influential with the Synod. He’s the second most powerful man in the Empire, despite his servile public appearance, and if Mede were to move against him without an unimpeachable reason, it could lead to civil war.” “I find that hard to believe.” “Only because you don’t know Hierem. I feel certain that Mede would win any such conflict, but it would be costly.” “What then?” She turned back to the window. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’ll work something out.” “Your life is in danger,” he said. “Go to the Emperor, tell him what you know. Get out.” “It’s not enough,” she said. “And any cover I might have left—” “Surely you have some means of communicating with him. Secret means.” “There is a secret word,” she said. “If it reaches the Emperor’s ear, he will know to go to a certain place. But if I do that, he may do exactly as you say.” “Would that be so bad?” “Yes, because we fail to stop Hierem."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c08_r1.htm.txt", "text": "After ten years—I have to have something.” “Then let me go,” Colin said. “I’ll speak for you. I’ll explain it all.” He didn’t hold his breath, but he felt like it. She saw right through it. “You don’t believe me,” she said. “You think I’m lying about working for him.” “I want to believe you,” he said. She looked back out the window and chewed her lower lip. “Jasper,” she said. “The word is Jasper.” The second time Colin met the Emperor it was in a narrow, unfurnished room. He’d been brought there bound and blindfolded, and he didn’t see a door. The stone was the same color as the interior of the White-Gold Tower, but beyond that he had no clues at all as to where he was. This wasn’t court, and the Emperor wasn’t dressed for it. He wore a plain Colovian soldier’s tunic of dark gray wool and leather breeks. His crown was a plain gold circlet. A broadsword in a battered scabbard hung at his side. Two soldiers stood yards away, but Colin suspected that if he tried anything, he would be dead at Mede’s hand before either of them could move. “I know you,” the Emperor said. “You’re the young man who told me my Attrebus wasn’t killed when his men were massacred.” “Yes, sire,” Colin replied. “You’re an inspector in the Penitus Oculatus.” “Yes, sire.” “And yet you’ve come to me over all of your superiors, using a password and sign that only I and one other know.” “Knew, sire. I know it now, as does the man who brought it to you. It’s as few as I could manage to involve, but more than I would have liked.” Titus Mede conceded that with a nod. Then he signed for the guards to leave, and Colin was alone with the most powerful man in the world. “Who sent you?” the Emperor asked. “Letine Arese, majesty,” Colin said. “Why didn’t she come herself?” “Two members of the Dark Brotherhood tried to kill her a few nights ago. She’s afraid that if she came to you herself, she would be followed. She’s in hiding.” “Who sent the assassins?” “I wasn’t able to discover that, sire. Both men are dead, and I cannot find any trace of their shades—it’s rumored the brotherhood has ways of ensuring their members don’t leave behind talkative ghosts. Not surprisingly, they had no material evidence to connect them to anyone either.” “But surely Arese has suspicions about who might try to murder her.” “She suspects your minister, Hierem, majesty.” The Emperor nodded. “Of course. How are you mixed up in this, inspector?” “Arese asked for my help,” he replied. “In finding proof to implicate Hierem in the massacre—in the attempted murder of your son.” “That’s funny,” the Emperor said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c08_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Hierem has supplied me with some evidence that Arese was behind that herself.” “She arranged the attack,” Colin said, “but the order came from higher.” “From Hierem?” “She believes so.” “Believes so?” Mede paced, hands clasped behind his back. “Ten years she’s been there,” he muttered. “In all of that time, no proof. Nothing I can use against him.” “Sire, I don’t understand. If you’re suspicious of the minister …” “It’s not so simple,” the Emperor said. “I can’t risk an internal conflict—especially when we face this—bonewalker army, if it can be called that.” “Sire, Arese and I believe that’s no accident,” Colin said. “We believe Hierem is somehow involved in this Umbriel business.” He outlined what they had learned about Hierem’s trip to Black Marsh. When Colin was done, Mede stood still and silent for a long time, his forehead wrinkled. “You have the journal?” “Yes, sire.” He handed the Emperor the book and waited while he read it. “Why didn’t you go to your superiors with this?” he asked when he was finished. “I wasn’t sure I could trust them, majesty,” Colin said. “I really don’t know who to trust anymore.” “I can see your point. But now I wonder who I should trust. This might all be true, and it might all be some fabrication of Arese’s.” He stroked his chin. “Find me proof,” the Emperor said. “Real proof. Something the council can’t argue with.” He leaned against the wall. “You know, we had a letter from Umbriel, delivered by a … rotting thing … to one of my generals.” “Really, sire? A letter?” “Yes—very politely written, supposedly from the very hand of the master of that place, who also calls himself Umbriel. They have besieged every path to the Imperial City in the East, and soon enough they will probably hold the West as well. Yet we are told we are free to leave the city unharmed—with all of our arms and possessions. Umbriel wants this city, not its inhabitants. The offer remains good until Umbriel arrives. Doesn’t that seem peculiar?” “Didn’t your majesty offer the chance of surrender to any city he besieged?” “Yes. But according to our reports, Umbriel requires the souls of the living to remain aloft—and no defense has been found by either the College or the Synod to prevent its method of slaughter. Why would they allow the fuel that keeps their engines burning to simply walk away?” “Obviously, majesty, they want something more than fuel. Something here in the city.” “Or perhaps Umbriel has no interest in the city, but rather is aiding the ally who summoned it here. If I take my army and leave, what will Hierem do? Take possession of the throne and then send Umbriel to destroy my army and me?” “From what we know, it seems a possibility,” Colin said. “But not yet enough of one to risk a civil war if I’m wrong. So find out."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c08_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And involve no one else, other than Arese.” Mede reached into his pocket and produced a small metallic key. “Use this carefully,” he said. “It is a key to Hierem’s ministry and rooms. If he finds it on you, he will know it came from me, and things will go bad very quickly. If he is connected to Umbriel, he may know something of its secrets, who commands it, how to stop it. Find these things out for me, and do it quickly. I am not squeamish about methods—you understand? Our time grows short. If you find nothing, he will have to be questioned, no matter the consequences—before the enemy arrives.” “I understand, majesty.”"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel NINE In her third hour of sleeplessness, Annaïg gave up the fight and sat up in bed. Despite her earlier misgivings, she tried the locket, but Attrebus still didn’t answer, and she didn’t really expect him to. She was beginning to think he was dead. “I’m not sorry for what I did to Slyr,” she muttered, under her breath. “I had to do it.” But for what? And what now? She could play Toel along for a bit, but soon he would get impatient, and she would have to refuse him outright or comply with his desires. Would it be that bad? “Yes,” she told herself. But if it worked, if it moved her nearer to discovering how to rip Umbriel from the sky, then fine. But it wouldn’t work. If she became his mistress she might rise a bit in position, but then he would become bored with her, as he had with Slyr, and she would be worse off than before—or at least no better. What she had to do was escape him, and that meant moving up on her own merit—without him. And her best chance at that was coming up all too soon, and it might not come again. If she could cook the perfect meal, draw the attention of those Toel called “lords”—then she would really be in a position to do something. She had started something and she couldn’t stop now. If she cooked the best meal Lord Rhel had ever eaten—if she could impress him beyond measure—then maybe he would make her a chef, give her her own kitchen. And so she began to plan, and that calmed her down, and finally she slept, and dreamed of cooking. She met Glim again, this time by the light of the two moons, high up on one of the massive boughs of the trees. She strained to see something of the land below, but mist and clouds obscured almost everything. Glim was curiously silent. “Are you listening to the trees?” she asked. “I’m thinking,” he replied softly. He sounded strange—upset. “I didn’t want to do it,” she said. “I had to.” “It’s not about Slyr,” Mere-Glim said. “It’s about this new request of yours.” “It should be easy,” she replied. “Even if the skraws never get past the pantries, they talk to the workers there—I know they do. A little information is all I ask.” “No, you’re asking for a lot of information. And the skraws have already given you a lot of information—for which they haven’t been repaid.” “Is that what it’s come to be between us?” she asked. “Glim, I have to know I can count on you. I have to know you’re my friend.” “I am your friend,” he said. “Of course I am. And I’ve been doing what you ask, haven’t I?"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "All I am saying is—maybe it’s time you helped me.” “I’m still in no position to manufacture enough water-breathing serum to make a difference,” she said. “I would if I could.” “I understand that,” he replied. “What I need right now are weapons.” “What?” “The tubes that bring processed waste from the midden to the sump are living things. There is a series of sphincters that pass the waste along or hold it back, as needed. I need something that will paralyze the sphincters and an antidote for that. I need concoctions to taint foods, to make them unpleasant or inedible without rendering them poisonous. I need weapons of sabotage for the skraws to wage their rebellion with. I won’t need large amounts of them—just enough. You know how to make these things.” “I do,” she said. “Let me think a moment.” She closed her eyes and felt the pull toward the world below, so close, so impossibly far away. So far, none of her experimentation had given her any hope that she and Glim could leave without fading into nothingness. But there was still some chance she could destroy her prison. Glim was giving her an opportunity to learn how to sabotage Umbriel, and a network to do it with. How could she refuse? “Okay,” she said finally. “But we have to do this carefully. We have to be smart. The first thing is, Toel’s kitchen has to keep running, at least for now. At the same time, we can’t be seen as immune to these attacks, or we’ll draw attention. I think it’s also best that—at first—no one knows the skraws are doing this.” “I don’t understand,” Glim said. “We’re trying to pressure the lords into doing something about the vapors. If they don’t know it’s us—” “I really don’t think you know what you’re dealing with,” Annaïg told him. “As soon as they suspect the skraws, the kitchens—or worse, I’m sure, the lords—will come after you. I’ve seen what that means.” “They can’t kill us all.” “No, but they can kill you. They can find out who the other leaders are and kill them.” “Maybe.” “Try it my way,” she urged. “When everything is completely bollixed up, when they see how vulnerable they are, you step in and set things right, asking only that the vapors be replaced by something more humane.” “What’s your way?” Glim asked. “Well—at first we make the kitchens think they’re attacking one another.” “How is that?” “The banquet, the one I needed the ninth savor for. Umbriel himself will be in attendance. Four kitchens are competing to win the honor of cooking that meal. Would it be so surprising if they started sabotaging one another?” “Now I’m starting to see,” Glim said. “And of course, your kitchen would in the end benefit the most from this—competition.” “Yes.” Glim scratched his arms. “I don’t hate this idea,” he said. “But why do you want Toel to succeed?” “Because if he succeeds, I succeed."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He might get advanced and take me with him.” “Why do you care about that?” “Because the closer I am to the heart of things, the more damage I can do. And the more I can help the skraws.” He nodded. “That makes sense,” he said. “I’ll talk to the others.” “And I’ll start work on the things you need. Now come on, let’s go back down before we’re noticed.” “I’m going to stay up here awhile,” he said. “Listen to the trees.” “I’ll see you later, then.” She felt stirrings of guilt, because she didn’t like to deceive Glim, but he had lost all sense of things. She loved him, and she needed him—and if she had to, for both of their sakes, and the sake of the world—she would use him. Toel’s expression began as disgust but quickly became so murderous that Annaïg felt a rush of fear. Then she noticed it wasn’t the vaporessence of fermented duck egg she had given him to try that he was reacting to—he was smelling something else more generally in the air. “It’s the water filters,” she explained. “Sump slurry has them clogged.” “I know what it is,” Toel said, his voice cold. “Do not presume, you. I know every scent of this kitchen. If a single lampen invades the cilia tubules, my nose aches from the stench. We are sabotaged—again. I will not bear it. I will not bear it!” “But who would do such a thing?” Annaïg asked. “Phmer possibly,” he snarled. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? It could be her, or it could be Luuniel or Ashdre.” “Why? Is this kind of thing usual during a competition?” “Not at all,” he fumed. “It is far outside of the bounds. Very far. Too far.” He slammed the flat of his hand on the table. “This sort of contest happens all the time. We are all of us rivals. But never before has this sort of wholesale sabotage occurred. Now they strike at us, we strike at them—it escalates.” “Wait,” Annaïg said. “We’ve been doing this as well?” “Well, of course,” he replied. “Once a war is begun, only a fool will not fight. But after our last response to Phmer’s affronts, I should have thought the matter settled. But now she—or one of the others—they come back at us.” “Why don’t the lords step in?” “Because there is no law concerning this. Outright invasion is governed by strict rules, but this picking and picking at things … Anyway, even though we’re usually able to discover who has been tampering with us, it’s not enough proof for a lord, you understand. They do not understand instinct and intuition the way we do.” “Who started it?” she asked as guilelessly as possible. “Most think it was Ashdre. He had the least chance of winning.” He chuckled a mean sort of laugh. “He has none now. Between Phmer and us, Ashdre’s kitchen is crippled."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Luuniel isn’t much better off.” “That’s good, then,” Annaïg said. “It seems we’re faring better than the others.” “It seems, it seems. But all of the others hate me, you know, because I rose up from below. They disdain me, they pine for my failure. And lesser chefs, they are watching this. Possibly they are even behind some of the vandalism, hoping to see me fall and take my place. And sooner, not later, they will think to come against me together.” “Have you no protection? Couldn’t you post guards?” “Post them where? In the sump? In the midden? Below the filters? Even if I had a hundred guards, there would be no way to cover every vulnerable place. No, the only thing we can do is set a harsher example. And that I will do. I will show them what real retribution is.” With that, he left her, and she worked in silence. She felt like humming, but suppressed the urge for fear that her good cheer might be noticed. Her plan was working better than she had ever imagined. This was the first time Toel had said anything about it, but the rumors had been thick this last week, and Toel had come to ask her to develop a recipe for breathing underwater. All of the major kitchens were at one another’s throats, and they were all so vicious and mean it didn’t occur to any of them to question closely how it had all started. Glim and the skraws didn’t have to do much to keep things going—just a little nudge here and there. In fact, for the first time since she had been in Umbriel, she heard people talking about the skraws in glowing terms—how quickly they fixed what was broken, how good and uncomplaining they were. That was very good news, because it meant that Glim might achieve his goal without ever having to risk a confrontation between the skraws and the lords—when Toel’s kitchen was triumphant, she could reasonably suggest a replacement for the vapors as their reward. She’d already been given the perfect excuse to invent a safer drug. That wouldn’t matter in the long run, of course, but it would make Glim happy. The other thing that had Annaïg suppressing her humming was how well her menu was coming along. Thanks to the skraws, she knew the tastes, fashions, and fetishes of not only Lord Rhel, but also most of those attending his tasting. She knew which ones Rhel liked and which ones he despised, and part of her planning was that the meal itself subtly insult and discomfit the latter. She knew he had a great sense of whimsy, and above all that he was partial to the new, strange, surprising—but also that he prided himself on a sort of coarseness of taste, of mortal indulgence."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "In this, he seemed to ape Umbriel himself, the eponymous master of this place, who was known to dine on the lowest sorts of matter at times. Rhel had been heard to say that such tastes reflected not the lack of refinement, but the fulfillment of it. She worked, and her mood only improved as the day went on. Glim rode the tree and bellowed in delight. His claws gripped about the tendril-thin branch tips, and the wind, the spin of Umbriel, and the long rippling undulation of the trees did the rest. Fhena’s musical laugh sang nearby, where she clung to her own branch. “I told you!” she shouted. “You did!” he admitted. “It’s better than flying, I can tell you that.” “You’ve flown? How?” “Never mind,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.” It was merely exciting, at first, but after a few moments he began to feel the trees, their own joy in their existence, in the process of merely being, and he felt himself gently tugged into a state of pure thought, where no words existed to constrain his feelings, where no logic tried to make sense and order of the world, and there was only color, smell, touch, feeling, motion. When Fhena finally cajoled him back to thicker branches, he went only reluctantly, and he felt more refreshed—and more himself—than he had in a long time. “Thank you,” he said. “That was—wonderful.” “Isn’t it?” she said. “Sometimes I dream of just letting go, of never coming back.” “Right,” Glim said. “But you have to come back.” “Why?” she asked. “Well, because—you would die.” “And return to Umbriel and be born again. People do it all the time.” “Die?” “Ride the branches and let go. They say sometimes the mood just hits you and you can’t help it.” “How do you know what someone who lets go was thinking?” “Well, my friend Jinel got the feeling, but Qwern caught him. But he just went out the next day and let go anyway.” Glim remembered the ghost of the feeling, of near-perfect peace. “You didn’t think to warn me about that before I did it?” he wondered. “Warn you? Why?” “Because—” He stopped, then started again. “Listen, don’t do it again, okay? I don’t want you to die.” “Well, I wouldn’t die, silly, just go back into Umbriel.” “Right—and be born as someone else, someone who doesn’t remember me, who isn’t my friend.” “I wouldn’t have to remember you,” Fhena said. “I would know you, Mere-Glim, whatever form I wore.” She brightened. “Maybe I would even be born in a form like yours. Wouldn’t that be fun?” Something like a quick hot tide seem to fill him up, and his mouth worked in embarrassment. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Please,” he said, “just promise me—no more branch riding.” “That’s an awful lot to promise,” she said. “But if you’re asking, I guess I will.” “Good."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Thank you.” But she had reminded him of something he’d been trying not to think about. “What now?” Fhena asked. “Now?” he sighed. “Well, speaking of being reborn, I have to go back to the sump and check on the recent implantations.” “Stay a little longer,” she pleaded. “I have to go,” he said. “Besides, you’ve got your own work to do. I don’t want to get you in trouble.” “Well, very well. Tomorrow?” “Tomorrow.” He left, but the thought of Fhena as an Argonian—or at least in the form of one—stayed with him. In fact, he was so distracted that he realized he’d reached the implantations and had just been staring at them for several moments before he really saw them. They looked so much like small Saxhleel. Their eyes were very large. He’d known since he first saw them, but put it off. He couldn’t face it then. No matter what happened with the kitchens and the lords, the skraws wouldn’t be free of the vapors. They would die, one by one, and be replaced by things that looked like him, that didn’t need the vapors to breathe beneath the waves. When they were all dead, the agony of the skraws would be over. But that meant Wert and Oluth and everyone he actually knew was going to die horribly. He’d hoped to save them, to give them a better life, but instead his mere existence as a template had doomed them irrevocably to misery. And they were so close. Toel’s kitchen would win, and the skraws would be rewarded with a healthier life. Then let the worms become Argonians, and the skraws live out their remaining years decently. So he did what he had to do. He carefully killed them all, took them back up the Fringe Gyre, and threw them over the edge, where their tiny figures became smoke and then nothing. It was the morning before the day of the banquet when Toel came to her, his eyes icy with fury. He wore a shirt and pair of breeches that appeared to be made of sharkskin, or something similar. He placed garments like them on her table. “Put those on. You’re going with us.” “Chef?” “I have good information that the sump feed from our midden is going to be sabotaged again,” he said. “Soon.” “But that’s okay,” she said. “That won’t affect the meal, at this point.” “It’s not that,” Toel shouted. “I’ve simply had enough of this. Someone is going to die for this presumption, and I’m going to be there to see it. And so are you.” Mere-Glim drifted nearly still amid twenty-foot-long strands of slackweed, watching the party approaching the maw where the midden was supposed to empty into the sump. They weren’t skraws, and swam even more clumsily. They were armed with long, wicked-looking spears, and there were six of them."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He waited until they had passed into darkness, then followed behind them into the dark fissure, trying to decide what he could do. He hoped the armed figures would make some noise his comrades would hear, but they moved pretty quietly and altogether without talking. They stopped to examine the tertiary sphincter, already closed, and then swam to the side, toward the maintenance tunnels. These were narrow, flattened tubes that worked around the big valve into the last of the seven chambers that waste from the middens passed through. It was dark with sludge, but not nearly as thick as it should have been. They produced some sort of underwater lanterns, and the beams stabbed through the murk, revealing a wide-eyed Wert holding a nutrient injector. “You there,” a man’s voice said. “What are you doing?” Wert’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “Just checking the muscle, sir,” he said. “These have been seizing up lately.” “Yes, they have,” the man said. His companions were positioning themselves in a hemisphere around Wert. “I wonder why you have a nutrient injector. Those are used by farmers, on the Fringe Gyre. To my knowledge they have no purpose in the sump.” “Well, it fell, I guess—from up there,” Wert attempted lamely. “I was wondering what it was.” “Don’t lie to me!” the man exploded. “Unbelievable! Phmer has turned the skraws against me! No wonder!” “Phmer?” Wert said, puzzled. “Not just the skraws,” another said. “The nutrient injector—they must have help from the Fringe Gyre.” “Well,” the man said. “We’ll see about all of that. If the skraws and the farmers are involved, the lords will have to take notice.” He poked his spear toward Wert. “You’ll tell us everything, skraw.” “It’s just me,” Wert said. “No one else is involved. Just me.” “I doubt that. But we’ll be sure before it’s over. I’ll find everything in that little mind of yours.” Glim was convinced the man was telling the truth. That meant trouble not only for the skraws, but for Fhena. The first man probably never knew he was there before Glim’s claws sheared through his neck. The second had only time for a short shriek. The third—the man doing most of the talking—he was quick. He managed to get his spear up fast enough to cut a gash along Glim’s belly before Glim grabbed the shaft and slammed his thorny crest into the man’s face, the man then gurgling and drifting toward the bottom. Glim spun in time to avoid another spear, this one wielded by a red-skinned woman with horns. They were all so clumsy, so slow. He dodged the tip and disemboweled her. A merish-looking woman was thrashing about with the injector in her back, and Cilinil appeared from somewhere and wrapped her long legs and arms around another, while Wert drove one of the spears through that one’s neck."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Glim felt a humming in his veins he’d never known, a terrible, black joy that made it hard to think. The fellow he had butted was coming back. Glim swam down, caught him by the hair, and pulled him up to eye level. “Incredible,” the man said weakly. “Do you know who I am? Have you no idea what you’ve done?” “None,” Glim snarled. “I am Chef Toel. Do you understand? Now let me go.” “I don’t think I can do that,” Glim said. “No?” Toel’s eyes suddenly glowed a strange silver color and the water started to hiss with bubbles. “Xhuth!” Glim gasped as agony coursed up his arms. The muscles clenched uncontrollably and his fingers lost their grip. Toel came toward him, snarling, and his remaining companion was coming from the side, quickly. Wert and Cilinil were much too far away to help. It was almost over before Annaïg realized what was happening, that it was Glim attacking them. She struck toward him as he confronted Toel. She saw the water around Toel stir, and Glim was suddenly thrashing, choking with pain. Toel steadied himself in the water, and the familiar look of self-satisfaction on his face was suddenly more than she could bear, much more. As she approached, his lips curled up and he started to say something, but something he saw stopped him. What he saw was her. She felt the blade snick out from her arm, and she acted on instinct, slashing clumsily with the invisible knife. Toel managed to get his arm in the way, and the blade sliced cleanly through the joint of his elbow. She felt a terrific shock, and her lungs stopped working. All she could see was his face. “I was wrong about you,” Toel gasped. Then his features seemed to blur into light and dark arabesques that made no sort of sense. She came to herself again in Glim’s arms. They were still underwater. The two skraws were looking on in shock at Toel’s body, which besides missing a forearm, was now mostly decapitated. “Glim,” she murmured. “I didn’t know who you were,” he said. “I might have killed you. What the kaoc’ are you doing down here?” “He made me come,” she said. “He was furious—wanted to set an example, or something.” She looked back at the destroyed body. “Oh Stendarr, Glim, what did I do? I’ve never—” “Neither have I,” he said. She felt flimsy, like wet paper. She could see the dead bodies, the dark blood swirling in the water, more black than red, like chocolate. But none of it seemed real. She had just been talking to Toel. She had kissed him! “What do we do?” Wert sputtered. “You killed a chef! That’s almost as bad as killing a lord!” No, no, Annaïg thought. No one is dead. It’s a mistake. You weren’t supposed to be here … “The first thing,” Glim said, “is we clean up.” That sank in a little."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Yes, they had to do that, didn’t they? What a mess. “But he’s going to be missed,” Wert went on. “They’ll send more divers to look for him.” “Right,” Glim said. “That’s why we’re going to fix it so they don’t find him. Or any of them.” “How can we do that? Even if we cut them up and put them in a midden, a sniffer could find them.” “Don’t worry,” Glim said confidently. “I know what to do. They won’t be found.” “Then they’ll start interrogating us.” “The four of us are the only ones who know what happened,” Glim said. “What do you mean by that?” Cilinil asked, swimming away a bit. “No one’s going to hurt you,” Glim said. “That’s not what I’m getting at.” Something suddenly fit together inside Annaïg’s head. “Listen to me,” she said. “Just listen. No one knows the skraws are involved, right? Each kitchen will think the other killed Toel. We don’t need to get rid of the bodies—they need to be found. But they need to be found hidden in Phmer’s midden. Everything here—and I mean everything—must be cleaned up. I can make a scrub that will scour this place as if we were never here. Then you can make it look like Toel was killed trying to invade Phmer’s kitchen, you understand?” Glim’s membranes filmed his eyes and then drew open again. “Did you—” he began, then stopped. But he didn’t have to finish. She knew what he was thinking. “No, Glim,” she said. “I didn’t plan this. It never occurred to me to—you know. But if we play this right, it can work. For all of us.” “They’ll suspect you,” Glim said. “The only survivor.” “Everyone who knows I came down here is right here,” she replied. “When Toel can’t be found, I’ll be as surprised as anyone as to where he went in the first place.” Glim seemed to sort that for a moment before nodding. “If you think it will work.” “It’s a gamble,” she admitted. “We could be found out. We could die horribly. But that was probably going to happen anyway, right?” “I suppose so,” Glim agreed. “Well, then,” Annaïg said. “Let’s go do what’s needed, and try to live until tomorrow.” And so they began doing that."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel ONE It happened around midday, beginning as a murmur ghosting up from the pantry and swelling. Toel’s underchefs—Intovar and Yeum—got into a shrill argument in the hall. When Lord Irrel came down, everything hushed. Annaïg had never seen a lord before. She had supposed they looked like everyone else, possibly in finer clothes. She was right about the clothes. Irrel’s robe seemed to be made of black smoke within which winked thousands of tiny sparks. The form-fitting garment beneath might have been made of liquid iron. Irrel himself was somewhat translucent. When he turned his head, flashes of skull showed through his fine, long features. His large eyes glowed with a soft purple light that shone through his lids when he closed them. He stood a head taller than anyone else in the room. “Toel is dead,” he said. His voice was soft, but it carried easily to every corner of the kitchen. “Who is his second?” Intovar and Yeum glanced at each other, and then Intovar stepped forward. “I am, Lord Irrel.” Irrel nodded. “The contest tomorrow. Can you win it? Tell me now, and do not dissemble.” Intovar cleared his voice softly. He looked terrified, and Annaïg could see his fingers shaking. “Lord, without Chef Toel, our chances are much diminished.” “Much diminished?” Irrel said, raising an eyebrow. He gestured—as if flicking something from his finger—and Intovar shrieked and dropped to his knees before falling on his face. He didn’t move. “I’ll ask the question again,” Irrel said. “Can we win it?” “N-No,” Yeum stuttered. “We cannot, lord. Not without Chef Toel.” Irrel nodded, and Yeum flinched. “There,” he said. “A simple answer to a simple question. Thank you.” He sighed. “It is an unpleasant inconvenience to withdraw, but better that than to look foolish.” He turned and took a step toward the door. Annaïg closed her eyes and pushed back her fear. “We can win, Lord Irrel,” she said. A little gasp went up around her, but she kept her gaze focused on the lord. “And you are?” he asked. “Annaïg, lord,” she replied. “Ah. Toel’s whimsical inventor.” “Yes, lord.” “I have been pleased with many of your creations,” he said. “But that does not make you a chef.” “We can win, lord. The menu is planned, the preparations are made. We will not make you look foolish—we will make you proud.” Irrel glanced at Intovar’s body, then back at Annaïg. “It would irritate me greatly to learn this is false bravado,” he said. “It is not, lord,” she replied forcefully. “Very well, then,” he said. “We’ll just see.” No one uttered a word until he was out of sight and presumably out of earshot. Then it began. “Are you insane?” Yeum shouted. “You’ve just killed us all!” A chorus of agreement went up from the staff. “What did you think was going to happen anyway?” Annaïg asked. “Irrel must have a kitchen, and he must have a good one."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Did you think you were going to be made chef, Yeum, for telling him we aren’t—you aren’t—competent? He would have brought in a new chef, with a new staff, and most of you would end up in the sump.” That struck home—she could see it, so she pressed. “We can do this. We don’t need Toel. If you agree to follow me, cook what I say the way I say to, we can win. I know it.” “I don’t understand,” Aelo—one of the dicers—said. “You’re probably right about what would have happened to us—all of us except you. Any chef would be pleased to have you. Now, if you fail—” “I’m tired of being passed around,” she said. “If we win, Irrel will make me chef, I’ll keep all of you, and everything will be fine.” “But I’m the senior cook,” Yeum protested. “No, she’s right,” one of the others said. “You can’t be chef now, Yeum. It has to be her.” “No, she’s crazy,” Yeum retorted. “Irrel wouldn’t …” Her eyes wandered over to Intovar’s body, then she shook her head. “Sumpslurry,” she sighed. Yeum looked back at Annaïg. “Fine,” she said. “What are we cooking?” “But this is absurd,” Loehsh asserted as Annaïg looked over his shoulder at his preparations. “Rhel is a lord—he will not eat the raw flesh of an animal, no matter how prettied up with froths and suspirations.” “He will,” she replied, “and he’ll like it. Just—stop. Give me the knife.” “Why?” he asked. “Because you’re cutting it wrong,” she snapped, repositioning the fat-veined slab of meat on the table and cutting paper-thin slices from it. “It won’t matter how thin it is,” Loehsh muttered. “Loehsh,” Yeum’s voice piped up from behind. “You see how she wants it done?” “Yes,” he said sullenly. “Then do it that way,” Yeum replied. “Would you have questioned Toel this way?” “Of course not. But he—” “Is dead. Unless you wish to join him before even the rest of us do, I suggest you stop asking questions and do things as Annaïg says to.” “Very well,” Loehsh said sourly. He returned to his task, this time cutting the meat properly. “Come on,” Yeum said to Annaïg. “We need to talk.” They went into the little room where Toel used to work on his menus. “You need me,” Yeum said. “How is that?” “You know how to cook—I look at the menu and I’m amazed, I admit. Maybe we do have a small chance of coming through this. The problem is, you don’t know how to be a chef.” “What do you mean?” “You try to do everything yourself. It’s impossible. You have to delegate, and you have to do it with authority. You haven’t the most basic idea how to go about it.” “What are you suggesting, then?” Annaïg asked. “That we work together,” Yeum replied. “I know how to give orders and spread the work around. I know how to get things done."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt", "text": "You know how to make them right.” “Work together,” she considered. “I worked together with Slyr and she tried to kill me. Why should I trust you?” “Because I’m not stupid like Slyr. It’s impossible for me to steal credit for this—Irrel was right here. He knows whose dishes these are. I’m only asking that if we succeed, I get to stay here as your underchef.” Right, Annaïg thought. So you can find another time to slip a knife into my back. “That’s reasonable,” was what she said, however. “Okay,” Yeum replied. “In that case I have some recommendations concerning the preparations.” “I should like to hear them,” Annaïg said. Yeum paused, and a sly little look passed across her face. “What?” Annaïg asked. “Did you kill him?” Yeum whispered. “What?” Annaïg felt a little chill in her vertebrae. “The chef. Did you kill him? It was made to look as if Phmer did it, but I can’t imagine her being that sloppy. If, on the other hand, you set it up to look like that—” “I’m not going to dignify that with a denial,” Annaïg said. “Don’t misunderstand me,” Yeum went on. “If that were the case, you would have nothing but my admiration. Do you know how many people Toel murdered to get here? It’s how things are done.” “Well, it’s not how I do things,” Annaïg snapped back. She was outraged. Yes, she had killed him, sort of, but it had been an accident. She wasn’t what Yeum thought she was. Yeum shrugged. “Anyway,” she said. “Do you have those recommendations or not?” “I do.” She slept a scant three hours that night; even with Yeum’s organizations of the kitchen, there were hundreds of details that only she could handle. Rhel, fortunately, was not like Irrel, who preferred up to a hundred distinct dishes at a meal. From what she had learned, Rhel considered himself more essential than that, and thus she only prepared three, each to be served in a separate course. She scrutinized each plate as it went to the servers. First came the quintessences of sulfur and sugar, congealed into a glutinous web that held suspended drops of human blood and denatured snapadder venom, which glittered pleasingly—like tiny rubies and emeralds. The web stretched over the cavity of a halved and hollowed durian fruit, whose sweet, garlicky scent she had enhanced with metagastronomics and infused with the lust of a monkeylike creature from the Fringe Gyre, killed just as it was about to mate. Next came the thin, translucent slices of raw bear loin, collected like the durian from the world below. She had turned the fat of the bear into a room-temperature vapor that clung to the tiny bits of meat, which were pillowed on a nest of glassy yellow noodles that, when bitten, would erase the taste of everything else within a few seconds, but leave deep longing to remember what had been lost."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt", "text": "An hour passed after the second course went up, and Annaïg began to feel nervous. The third course—a complex preparation based on the smoke of clove, cardamom, cumin, mustard, pepper, hornet, black widow, and rage—would begin to mellow and lose its edge if it wasn’t served soon. The servers finally came a half hour later, a few minutes too late for the smoke to be at its best, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. When the final dish went up, Annaïg wiped her brow. “I’m going to lie down,” she told Yeum. “We did well,” Yeum said. “I wonder about your choice to include so much carnal matter, but what you did with it—Toel could not have done better.” She hesitated. “Do you still believe we will win?” “I don’t know,” Annaïg replied. “But I’m too tired to worry about it anymore. If I’m going to die, I want a little rest first.” She wasn’t sure how long she dozed, but when she woke, at first she thought it was Lord Irrel standing there, for he had the same translucence. But then she noticed the slow, constant shifting of color beneath his skin, the squarer face and voluptuous lips. “Lord?” Annaïg said, coming shakily to her feet. “Rhel,” he murmured in a detached manner, as if he wasn’t so much speaking to her as recalling the conversation out loud. “How did you know?” he asked. “Know what, lord?” “The first dish made Lord Ix vomit, which I much enjoyed, and it made Ghol laugh, which is extremely pleasant. Each dish was for me perfect, but affected my companions in ways that I very much appreciated. How could you have known all of these things? Are you able to pick into my mind? I sense no such talent in you.” “Does this mean we won?” Annaïg asked. “Yes,” Rhel conceded. “And yet in doing so you have raised questions, you see.” “I can’t explain it, lord,” she lied. “It is my art, that is all. When it comes to food, I know what people want. I believe one of the gods must have blessed me.” His gaze settled for a moment, and then he blinked. “You are from below—from the world we travel through.” “Yes, lord.” He smiled. “I think I shall enjoy your world, when we are done.” “Done with what, my lord?” He waved his hand. “Oh, never mind that. You are my creature now, and I value such as you. I look forward to the day that you have full access to the goods of your world, rather than just the smatterings the taskers bring up. In any event, Irrel will have to find another chef.” “And my staff?” “Keep those you wish—dismiss the rest. Three days from now you will cook another meal, this one for Umbriel himself. I will be interested to see if you can please him as much—and as specifically—as you did me.” “Thank you, lord,” she said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I endeavor to do my best.” “Of course,” he replied, and then left. She passed a terrified-looking Yeum as she left the kitchens for her quarters. “We won,” she said. “You’ll stay. We begin preparing tomorrow.” Then she found her bed, and slept more soundly then she had in a long, long time."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c11_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel TWO Mere-Glim was finishing off a sheartooth steak when Wert burst into the chamber they shared with four other skraws, a damp stony room grown up in phosphorescent moss. He had an agitated look on his face, even for Wert. Oluth came in right behind him. “They’re coming for you,” Oluth gasped. “You have to go.” “What? Who is coming for me?” “Guards from one of the lords—Ix, I think. They’ve been questioning people. They broke poor Jith. I know he didn’t mean to—” “You have to hide someplace until they’re gone,” Wert said. “That will only put you in more danger,” Glim replied. “If they’re after me, they probably know you’re my second. I’m not going to leave you here to face them.” “I’ll run, too, just in a different direction,” Wert said. “Glim, we need you. The skraws need you, especially if they’ve caught on to us. You know how to think about these things—we don’t.” “It’s just I don’t see how they found out,” Glim said. “It was supposed to look like the kitchens were doing it to each other. It was working, I’m sure of it.” He saw Oluth start at that, but before he could say anything, Wert began trying to push him into the water. “Go,” he said. “Go someplace deep.” He saw them as soon as he was in the water. They were smart; they probably had sent someone to run him down in the caves, but figured he would come out here—and he had, right into their hands—if not their net, which he saw descending from above. He only had one way out, and the four figures ahead were blocking it, so he went straight at them with all the speed he had, which was clearly more than they were expecting. He avoided their spears and bowled right through them, diving for the Drop. He thought he was free when something hit him in the side, hard. He spun down to his right, but after a few yards something yanked him back and sent waves of agony through his ribs. He looked back into a cloud of blood. His blood, pouring from where a harpoon was stuck in him. One of the men was lashing the other end of the line around a spike of coral. With a harsh cry, Glim hurled himself back at them, but they were more ready for him this time, three of them setting their spears and the harpooner reloading his weapon, which looked a lot like a crossbow. He jagged at the last moment, but one of the spearmen managed to shift his point so it hit him in the forehead. He screamed as the tip found his skull and deflected, slicing all the way to his ear. The pain was terrific, but it only seemed to make him stronger as he jerked his way down the shaft and buried his claws in the man’s throat."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c11_r1.htm.txt", "text": "One of the others gripped him from behind, and then they all had him. He rolled and pitched furiously, smashing them into coral. Two let go, but the other managed to hold on by grabbing the harpoon, and this time his senses were shattered by the pain, and for a moment he wasn’t sure what was happening. The next thing that came to him clearly was Oluth, trying to say something. Blood was coming from his mouth. A quick look showed his attackers all dead or too badly wounded to do anything. “What?” he asked Oluth. “I’m sorry,” the boy said. “We did it, the glimmers. We thought it was what you wanted.” “What?” Glim demanded. “What did you do?” “They were supposed to know, so they would do something about the vapors. We were proud, proud to be a part of—” He coughed, and a great gout of red poured from his mouth. “We broke a tree-root feed,” he said. “We left our sign there, the sign of the vapors.” “Sign of the vapors?” “Right,” Oluth said weakly. “You wouldn’t have seen it. It’s on the door to the chamber. Four wriggling lines, in a spray.” He closed his eyes. Glim saw the wound now. The knife was still in it. “Let’s get you fixed up,” he said. “No,” Oluth said. “More coming. I’ll wait here for them.” “I can’t let you, not alone.” “Please,” Oluth said. “Please, for me? If you forgive me, please go.” Glim cut the line to the harpoon and was trying to pull it free when several figures emerged from the cave entrance. Oluth launched himself forward. “Go!” he screamed. Glim saw he had the harpoon gun. More guards came out, seven now. So he did as Oluth asked and swam deep. When Glim had put some distance between himself and his pursuers, he found a crevice in the side of the sump, wedged the other end of the harpoon into it, and finally managed to yank the barbed head free. He almost passed out, and for several long breaths he couldn’t swim, but then he started stroking again, trailing more blood than ever. He couldn’t get Oluth’s last words out of his head. Where had he gone wrong? Hadn’t he explained well enough? And what were they doing breaking a tree-root feed? That hadn’t even been one of the targets he had approved. But it did give him an idea. He took a twisting course, past where a cluster of middens emptied into the sump, hoping the turbulence would disperse his blood trail, then swam toward the capillaries that drew water up to the Fringe Gyre. It took him a few minutes, but he found the one with the lines crudely etched into the stone above—the sign of the vapors. They had smashed the filter, so the capillary was pulling up debris that in time would choke the feed. Hoping it wasn’t blocked already, he went up it."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c11_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It was nearly too tight for him; he had to writhe up the thing for the first hundred feet or so, but finally it met a larger tube and he let himself drift for a moment before continuing on. He’d never been in these passages before for the simple reason that none of the filters were ever broken. Older skraws who had made repairs said they formed a webwork that brought water to the roots of the Fringe Gyre. He hadn’t wanted to take his usual path up, because it would have been far too easy to track him. Now, as he passed dozens of branching tubes, many far too small to admit him, he wondered if he hadn’t merely managed to trap himself. If they found him here, his speed and maneuverability wouldn’t count for much. Not that he had that much of either left anyway. He didn’t know how much blood he had lost; his wounds stanched themselves pretty quickly, but he was still bleeding. Hoping he wouldn’t pass out before he found a way up, he swam on, through passages that became increasingly more dizzying and labyrinthine."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel THREE Attrebus fell, but before he could start a scream he crunched into something cold and wet. Gasping, he came to his hands and knees, swiping at the clotting stuff on his face, wondering what horrible Oblivion realm Malacath had banished them to. But then he understood that he’d landed in snow, and the air coming into his lungs was clean and filled with evergreen scent. When he looked up, the sky was blue and traced with high, thin clouds. “He did it,” he said. “So it would appear,” Sul replied. “This is not Oblivion, at least.” “It’s cold.” “If this is Solstheim, that makes sense.” Like him, Sul was still naked; his dark skin stood in sharp contrast to the snow and spruce trees surrounding them. Near him lay a bundle, and the older man stepped over to it, discovering their clothing, weapons, and armor. Everything was still torn, filthy, and blood-caked, but Attrebus felt warmer and more secure back in his gear. “Which way now?” he asked. They were on a low ridge. Jagged peaks stood off in one direction. “I thought he would drop us right in front of—wherever we’re going.” “That’s not always possible, even for a daedra prince,” Sul replied. “He probably put us as near as was convenient.” He looked around, and then jerked his chin toward the peaks. “I’ve no interest in climbing mountains just for sport. Downhill is likely more hospitable, and we’re more apt to find someone to ask directions of.” “I won’t argue with that,” Attrebus said. The land rolled up and down, but took them generally lower, until they came to a little valley with a small but enthusiastic river laughing over polished stones. They began following that downstream. It was about midday, and the sun was warmer, the ice turning to mush under their feet. As the sky paled to slate and the outlines of the moon Secundus began to brighten, the snow began to crackle under their feet, and the inadequacy of their clothing became clear. They searched the valley wall for a rock shelter, but failing to find one, they stopped, gathered wood, and built a fire to huddle around. “I thought we would find people sooner,” Attrebus said, watching the flames dance and trying to avoid the resinous smoke. “Why?” Sul asked. “Well, because so many Dark Elves came here after the red year—” He broke off, realizing he was in uncomfortable territory, but Sul clapped his hands together and rubbed them over the fire. “I had many unpleasant surprises after returning from exile in Oblivion,” he said. “I knew that Vivec City was destroyed. Vuhon told me he had seen as much, when he was torturing me. But it wasn’t until I went there that I understood how badly my homeland had been ravaged, or how they had suffered from the Argonian invasion. Still, I had an idea."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But that Skyrim had offered Solstheim as a haven for my people, after ages of enmity between our races—for that I was unprepared.” “ ‘Untithed to any thane or hold,’ ” Attrebus quoted, “ ‘and self-governed, with free worship, with no compensation to Skyrim or the Empire except as writ in the armistice of old wheresoever those might still apply, and henceforth let no man or mer say that the Sons and Daughters of Kyne are without mercy or honor.’ ” Sul raised an eyebrow. “I learned it from my tutors,” Attrebus explained. “I memorized it. I’ve always been moved by it.” Sul poked at the fire, his brow furrowing, then tossed his head to indicate their surroundings. “It’s not the most fruitful land,” he said. “And in my day almost unpopulated, and then by scraggly tribesmen with no clear allegiance toward Skyrim or the Empire. Morrowind had always laid theoretical claim to the place. If Skyrim hadn’t given it freely, odds are the refugees would have settled here anyway, forcing the Nords to either fight or lose face. This way they came out looking like saviors.” “Stendarr,” Attrebus swore. “Can’t you ever imagine that people actually act from kindness? From mercy?” “People might, or at least might imagine that’s what moves them,” Sul said. “Nations don’t.” “I don’t believe that,” Attrebus said. “Nations are ruled by people. When did the Nords ever back down from a fight with Dunmer? Your people were weakened, Sul—battered, without home or resources.” “They were desperate,” Sul replied. “Desperate and dangerous. You’ve too many romantic notions in your head.” “Maybe,” Attrebus said. “And maybe nine times out of ten, you’re right—nations act from cold self-interest. But sometimes, at their very best, they act for a greater good, just as some men and women do.” Sul waved that off. “I’m not going to argue any further,” he said. “Believe what you want. But to return to your question, my guess is that most Dunmer settled in the South and along the coasts, and I think we’re in the interior.” “You’ve been here before?” “No, but as I said, it was always a disputed territory, and therefore its essentials were a part of my education in the ministry.” Despite Sul’s pronouncement, Attrebus wanted to press the debate, but at that moment he heard a soft noise from his haversack, both artificial and birdlike. “Annaïg,” he whispered. “She’s alive. I tried to contact her earlier but—” “Go on,” Sul said. “But don’t stray far from the fire.” Attrebus nodded and stepped a bit away from the flames, into the muffling spruces, for a bit of privacy. Then he hesitated at the cold, wondering why he needed discretion, why Sul assumed he did … He pulled out Coo, the mechanical bird, an exquisitely crafted object, detailed down to the feather. He opened the small latch on its belly. And there she was, Annaïg, with her curly black hair and mouth curving up in a wide, happy grin."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Attrebus,” she said. “I—I thought you were dead. It’s been so long.” “Has it?” he asked. “I’m afraid I’ve lost all sense of time.” “What happened?” she asked. “Where are you?” “Things didn’t go exactly as planned,” he said. “Sul and I reached Umbriel, but Vuhon was too much for us. We barely escaped into Oblivion with our lives, and there—we were quite busy. I tried to contact you a few times but I never managed it.” He felt sick as he said it, and realized he was holding his gut scar. He forced a smile. “But now we have returned to Tamriel.” “Vuhon? Who is Vuhon?” “You haven’t heard of him? He’s the lord of Umbriel. He created it.” Her brow furrowed. “When they speak of the lord of Umbriel, they call him Umbriel,” she said. “I’ve never heard of anyone named Vuhon.” “That’s odd,” Attrebus said, but he remembered Vuhon suggesting that he didn’t go by that name anymore, that he was only answering to it out of convenience for Sul. Then he caught the tense of her verb. “You speak as if you’re still there,” he said. “I thought you had managed to escape.” “My plans didn’t fare so well either,” she replied. “It seems Umbriel has some hold over us. We flew out a few hundred yards and our bodies began to—ah—evaporate.” “Evaporate? Like the larvae you told me about? I remember you said the inhabitants of Umbriel all believed they couldn’t leave.” “And it seems they can’t. And now Glim and I can’t.” “I’m sorry,” he said. “All this time I thought you were safe. I tried to contact you once from Oblivion, when we had a moment’s respite, but there wasn’t an answer. There must be some way.” “There is, I’m sure,” she said, but her eyes shifted away and her tone was unconvincing. “What’s wrong?” “I just haven’t made much progress, that’s all,” she said. “We learned a few things from Vuhon that might help you,” he told her. “Really?” she asked. “Such as?” “Umbriel used to be a city in Oblivion, in the realm of Clavicus Vile. Vuhon—the lord of Umbriel—was trying to escape that realm with his companion, Umbra, but Vile essentially hardened the walls of his domain so no one could leave it. Vuhon found a way to sort of turn space around the city, though, and then break that free, like twisting a sausage casing and then tearing it.” Annaïg blinked. “So Umbriel is in a bubble—a bubble of the wall Clavicus Vile made it impossible to pass through?” “I think that’s right,” he said. “Sul has tried to explain it better, but we’ve been rather busy—” “But that helps,” she said excitedly. “Attrebus, that helps a lot. If I were there I would kiss—” But she broke off and blushed. “You know what I mean,” she said after a moment. “I think I could suffer through a kiss from you,” he said. Her brows drew in."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Oh, could you?” she asked. “Sure—if it wasn’t too long, or wet.” “I’ll keep that in mind, your highness,” she said. But then her face changed, as if she’d just remembered something awful. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is someone there?” “No,” she replied. “No, privacy isn’t the problem it used to be.” “How is that?” “I’ve—moved up. I’m the chef of a kitchen now.” “That’s good?” “I think so. It puts me in a position to learn more about Umbriel. I think I may have found some weaknesses.” “That’s wonderful, then. Are you safer?” “I don’t know,” she said. Her good mood seemed to have all but left her. Now she sounded tired. “In a way, certainly. But every step up just means a new kind of danger. In two days I will make a meal for Umbriel himself.” “Vuhon?” “I guess so. I don’t know.” “He’s a Dunmer, Annaïg. From Morrowind.” A thought occurred, but he felt reluctant to voice it. She must have seen it on his face. “You’re wondering if I can poison him.” “No,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.” “I—” She closed her eyes. “I’m confused, Attrebus. To survive, to get to this position—I’ve had to do things. Things I’m not happy about or proud of.” “I’m sure everything you’ve done was necessary,” he said. “Look, I know you’re not an assassin. I shouldn’t have—” “If I thought I could succeed, I would do it,” she said. “The fact that he was once an elf, a person of flesh and blood like you and me—that’s interesting. But I don’t think he is that anymore.” “No,” he said, “you’re probably right. He said that everything on Umbriel was a part of him, and he part of it. And he was so strong …” Her expression had changed again, become thoughtful. “If that’s true …” she began. “Yes?” “I’m sorry,” she said. “I need to think about this. Tell me everything you remember him saying, everything you know about Umbriel.” He recounted the meeting with Vuhon and everything he could remember Sul saying about him, Clavicus Vile, and Umbra, continuing long into the night. “I should go now,” she sighed. “I have more privacy, but I have a kitchen to run. I’m—it’s good to talk to you.” “To you, too,” he said. He hesitated, then went on. “There’s so much that’s happened, so much I want to tell you about when we really have time—” “I never got that description of Rimmen,” she said. “I know. But gods willing, I’ll get the chance to give it to you. When you’re free, and alone, always try me. I’ll answer when I can.” “I know you will,” she said. Her image persisted a moment, and then vanished as she put away the locket. It was only then that he realized he was freezing. “Watch it,” Sul warned. Attrebus looked down and realized he was about to put his foot into a jagged crevice a yard deep. “Thanks,” he said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Just—watch yourself.” “I didn’t really sleep last night,” Attrebus explained. “Cold and hard dirt can do that.” “That wasn’t it. Believe it or not, I’ve slept perfectly peacefully under those conditions before. I just couldn’t stop thinking.” “I can believe that,” Sul grunted. Attrebus felt irritation flare but pressed it down. “Look, until a few weeks ago I thought I was a warrior, a leader—a hero. I slept like a baby because I didn’t have any worries. Every fight I was ever in, I won, every battle went my way. And I was too stupid to figure out the whole thing was a sham.” “You’re not that stupid,” Sul said, to his surprise. “That’s an easy sort of thing to believe, when you’re young. I thought I was invincible at one point, too, and I didn’t have any of the excuses you do for thinking so.” “Well, that’s—thanks.” For a moment he continued in silence, wondering over the rare almost-compliment. “Sul,” he finally began, “you made me face the facts, and then you gave me a way of making it through with my sanity. You told me to try to become the man people think I am. And I am trying.” “Good for you.” “But I need you to tell me something. I need you to tell me if you think we have any chance at this, or if you’re just so angry and guilty …” Sul drew to an abrupt stop. “Do you think I’m out of my mind?” he asked quietly. “What?” “I asked,” Sul said, his voice rising to a shout, “if you think I’m out of my mind?” Attrebus felt a stir of fear in his gut. If Sul chose to kill him, there was no way he would be able to stop him. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “If everything Vuhon said was true, I honestly don’t know.” “Does it matter?” Sul asked. “Yes, it does. Umbriel is headed toward the Imperial City. Toward my father, my mother, everyone I know. And yet here we are, halfway across the world, looking for a sword that might help us destroy Umbriel. But I’ve met Vuhon and seen his power. Even with all of your art, we barely escaped with our lives, and I hadn’t the slightest chance against him. I don’t see how this sword is going to change things.” “It might not,” Sul admitted. “But what else would you do?” “You could take us back through Oblivion, get us to the Imperial City before Umbriel reaches it. We know things that can help the Empire against Vuhon.” “We do? What would you tell him?” “Everything we know.” “And how would that help him? Have you worked out how to destroy Umbriel?” “No,” Attrebus said. “Neither have I,” Sul replied. “Until we know that, I can’t see what use going there will do. Even assuming I could do it at this point, which is anything but given."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt", "text": "You’ve seen now what can happen if I don’t have my trail to follow through the realms.” “We know Vuhon wants the White-Gold Tower for something. My father’s mages might be able to figure out why.” “They might,” Sul conceded. Attrebus paused, uncertain if he wanted to continue, but he knew he had to. “We could go to Clavicus Vile,” he said. “Now there’s an idea,” Sul replied. “And you’re wondering if I’m out of my mind.” “But it makes sense. Vuhon is fleeing Vile, trying to be free of him. If we tell Vile where he is—” “Vile can’t come into Tamriel, at least not in an aspect potent enough to do anything about Umbriel. And if he could, he would probably make a far bigger mess than Vuhon will. If Clavicus Vile could take his power back from Umbriel, he already would have. What he needs in order to do that is what we’re looking for.” “You’re sure of that?” “No. But Vuhon went way out of his way to try to retrieve the sword. Azura gave me visions of it, and even Malacath seemed to think we’re on to something. Anyway, our last little forays into Oblivion have left me weakened. If I dare try going there again anytime soon, it will have to be for a very good reason, and not just because you want to be with your daddy.” “Look—” “The Imperial City is that way,” Sul said, pointing. “You’re free to go there anytime you like.” Attrebus pursed his lips and drew himself a little straighter. “Did you kill your lover? Did you destroy Vivec City?” Sul’s bloody eyes narrowed. “I did what I did,” he said. “I bear some of the blame. But Vuhon made this as well, and when I am done with him—” He stopped abruptly. “What?” Attrebus asked. “Yes, what then?” “Come with me if you wish,” Sul said. “I won’t speak of this anymore.” And with that he started walking again, his lean legs stretching in long strides. Attrebus watched him for a moment, sighed, and followed."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c13_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel FOUR “That was even stranger than the last meal,” Yeum said, sipping her wine. The two of them sat at one of the cutting tables. The last dish had gone up for Umbriel’s banquet, and the rest of the kitchen swirled around their still point, cleaning up. “I liked it, especially the one with that plant, what is it called …?” “Marshmerrow,” Annaïg replied. “It grows in Morrowind, one of the countries we passed over.” “It was delicious. Before, I would have questioned the choice—but I’ve heard that since Rhel’s tasting, the other lords have begun demanding coarser, less spiritual food. You’ve started a trend.” “More a fad, I would think,” Annaïg said. Inwardly, she wasn’t so certain about the meal. She’d heard that Umbriel often ate plain matter, but beyond that neither the skraws nor anyone else knew anything about his specific tastes. She’d had two things to go on—Attrebus’s assertion that he’d at least once been a fully corporeal Dunmer, and Rhel’s preferences, which seemed in that light perhaps an aping of his master’s appetites. In any case, it was done now. Hours passed and no one came down, so she bid Yeum goodnight and went to her bed. Sleep eluded her, however, despite her fatigue, so instead she rose and went to her old workbench in the kitchens, where the tree-wine vats were, and idly sifted through the powders and potions while she thought. She was a chef now, master of a kitchen, and not a negligible one. But for how long? She doubted there was anywhere to go from here but down. She might have tried to poison Umbriel, but she knew in her gut that any such attempt would fail, and she’d lose any chance she had of accomplishing anything. But if Attrebus was right, if Umbriel, the ingenium that kept it aloft, and the Histlike trees Mere-Glim had discovered were all connected by a flow of soul-force, then she ought to be able to poison the whole system. Lord Umbriel was likely untouchable; she knew where the ingenium was, but Glim hadn’t found any way to reach it other than through the apparently deadly connexion at the bottom of the sump. But the trees—them, she could reach. And so she began making a poison. Some believed that poison was the antithesis of food, but Annaïg knew better. Most food was poison to one extent or another, especially plants, many of which had to be pounded or soaked or boiled or all three to divest them of enough toxins to make them even edible. Too many beans eaten raw could be fatal—the same was true of almonds, cherry pits, apple seeds. Nutmeg, when taken in large amounts, could give strange visions, and in higher doses, death. Alcohol, while pleasant, was indisputably a poison. The body dealt with these things, but over time, eventually, the body failed."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c13_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Everything one ate brought one closer to one’s last meal, and not just in a metaphorical sense. So while she hadn’t made much in the way of poison, it came as naturally to her as cooking or concocting tonics to allow flight or breathing water. And in learning how to use the stolen souls that pulsed through the cables of Umbriel, she now had the knowledge to create a venin of a more than merely physical nature. She could blacken the whole system if she did things right. And she could make gallons of it—tons, maybe—before anyone questioned what she was doing, now that the kitchen was hers. She worked almost until dawn, when she had something she was almost happy with. The only problem was testing it, and she couldn’t think of any good way to do that. In the end she knew she would have to take a risk. She hid it in her cabinet. Tomorrow she would work on it a bit more, and then set up a larger production in the tree-wine vats—and then, well, she would see. She had sent Slyr to certain destruction. She had killed Toel. Neither were good people, but if in the end their deaths didn’t serve some higher purpose, she didn’t think she could bear it. If she was now a murderer, it had to have been for something. And maybe, as Umbriel died, she and Glim might find a way off of it. Maybe. But if not … such was life. Everyone died. When she reached her room, she found two men and a woman waiting for her. They wore simple robes of gray and white. They didn’t seem armed, but when they asked her to go with them, she didn’t argue. They took her directly to Toel’s balcony. Two of them gripped her beneath her arms, and she gasped as they all lifted silently into the night air, rising up through the glittering, shifting web of glasslike strands she had only seen from below, and farther, to a fragile-looking spire, the tallest in the city. Umbriel was a massive inkiness below, and above, the stars were glorious. Masser was a gargantuan opal dome on the horizon. They took her through an opening in the spire and put her down. Then they left. It was more a gazebo than a room, with a floor of polished mica and a dome of nearly black jade supported by silvery filaments pulsing with souls. A single figure welcomed her, a Dunmer with a long white braid, dressed in a robe similar to the ones her escorts had worn. “I haven’t had a meal like that in a long time,” the man said. “I hope it pleased you, lord,” Annaïg replied. The words were hardly out before she wanted to suck them back in; the man had spoken in clear, perfect Tamrielic, not the strange Merish dialect of Umbriel. She had answered in the same language. He chuckled softly, probably at her expression."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c13_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I thought so,” he said. “The references to the cuisine of my homeland were rather too obvious.” “Are you Lord Umbriel?” “I am Umbriel,” he said. “I am me, I am my city and my people. You aren’t part of me, though. And yet I didn’t invite you here or have you captured. They’ve been hiding you from me, down there in the kitchens. Using you in their little intrigues, I expect. Where are you from?” “Black Marsh,” she replied. “From Lilmoth.” “Everyone in Lilmoth is supposed to be dead, certain particular Argonians aside. How is it you are here, and alive?” “It was an accident,” she replied. “I made an elixir that gave my body flight.” “And you chose to come here?” “No, I didn’t,” she replied. “I was trying to flee, actually. Anyway, I was south of Lilmoth, not in the city.” “I suppose you lost family there? Friends?” “My father,” she said, trying to keep calm, to keep away from where her feelings lived. She wondered if her invisible knife could kill Umbriel. Six steps, a swift swing … “And you’re angry with me about that?” “At first, yes,” she said. “But I have learned a certain pragmatism. I have done well here in Umbriel. I have risen to a fairly high place in a short time.” “Indeed you have,” Umbriel replied. “You made no attempt to poison me last night, which can be interpreted in several ways. One would be that you’ve no wish to harm me. Another would be that you were too smart to try.” “Or perhaps a little of both,” she replied. “That’s an interesting answer,” Umbriel said. “I like it.” “My father and I weren’t close,” Annaïg told him, “and I had no real love for Lilmoth. I always dreamed of leaving, going somewhere exotic and exciting.” “And here you are,” he said, a neutral little smile at the edge of his lips. “Yes, Lord Umbriel.” He tapped his forehead, and the line of his mouth flattened out. “What bothers me is this,” he said, his voice rising a bit. It was shocking, like seeing a shark fin break the surface of a perfectly placid bay. “Part of me, long ago, was Dunmer. How in all of the worlds and not-world could you have known that?” “I did not know it, lord,” she said. “And yet several of your dishes were obviously inspired by the high cuisine of Morrowind. Why would you make such things if you had no inkling of my history?” His tone was very dangerous now, and she felt herself trembling involuntarily. “Lord, since I’ve been on Umbriel, the familiar components the taskers have brought me were first from Black Marsh and then from Morrowind. I was inspired by the ingredients, my lord. Marshmerrow begs to be made into hluurn or echar, urgandil into vverm. I learned something of Lord Rhel’s tastes by asking questions of those who know him."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c13_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I could find no one to question about you, so I guessed that Rhel, as your valet, would have discrimination similar to yours. There is no more to it than that.” “There isn’t?” He seemed to be calming a bit. “No, my lord.” “Well,” he said, pacing suddenly like a caged tiger. “Well, in that case, there is this other thing.” “What is that, lord?” “There is an Argonian in the sump. Did you know that? Did he come with you?” She was paralyzed for a moment, but she knew that if she dissembled and he knew she was lying, it was all over. A lot of the people who had actually seen them arrive together were dead, but she could not be certain they all were. “Yes,” she said. “He is my friend.” “Did you have him kill Toel for you?” “My lord—” “It doesn’t matter,” he said, waving her off. “The chefs are always murdering one another. But it seems your Argonian friend is up to a bit more than that. He’s organized some sort of rebellion among the skraws. That’s going to stop.” “Are you asking me to talk to him, lord?” “No. I’m asking you to kill him.” Her throat closed, and for a second she couldn’t breathe. “L-Lord?” she stuttered. “He’s hard to catch, this one, and the skraws are loyal to him. And even if I were to really bend my mind to it and catch him, killing him would only make him a martyr. I don’t need that at the moment, any more than I can afford to slaughter all of the skraws and start again.” She tried to still her shaking, which had grown worse. “What do you want me to do, then?” “He’s the only Argonian in the sump. It should be simple enough to introduce something into the water that will kill him without affecting anything else. I want it to look as if he died of natural causes. Do that for me.” She tightened her mind, pushed herself further out—away from her weak corpus—and met Umbriel’s gaze squarely. “I will, lord,” she promised. And so she returned to her kitchen, and she made a poison."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel FIVE After another two days of mostly silent trudging, Attrebus smelled salt air, and the land dropped jaggedly until they emerged onto a strand of black sand where gray waves lapped halfheartedly at the shore. Up the beach, perhaps a mile away, he could make out what appeared to be crenellated towers rising from a promontory. “Do you think that’s it?” he asked. “Well,” Sul said, “it’s someplace.” He turned and set off toward the castle. For a time they saw only sea birds and occasionally odd three-tusked creatures sunning on some of the rocks. They had slick but hairy hides, paddlelike forelimbs with three toes, and no hind limbs at all, but instead a tail shaped like that of a shrimp. On land they were clumsy, but once in the water they seemed at ease, even elegant. Attrebus’s stomach was quite empty, and he found himself wondering if the things were edible. They reached the castle a few hours before sunset, or at least the rock it stood on and the small village between it and the sea. There wasn’t a dock as such, but a number of boats pulled up on the beach—some with substantial keels—suggested deep water offshore. A group of mostly women was crowded down near the boats, picking through fish lying in a couple of large troughs. Most had the flaxen hair and pink cheeks of Nords, although he saw a young Dunmer woman among them. The village was no more than about twenty buildings, one of which had a placard with the promising words char bucket printed on it. He and Sul made their way there. It was a tight little place with walls of undressed stone, a shake roof, and no windows, but inside it was warm and smelled pretty good. The oldest elven man Attrebus had ever seen watched them enter with obvious curiosity. “You want to eat?” he asked. “That would be good,” Sul told him. “Do you have money?” For answer Sul tossed a couple of coins onto the counter. The man nodded and left through a side door, returning a moment later with two steaming bowls of something and some bread. It turned out to be some sort of chowder, and despite some unfamiliar flavors, Attrebus thought it was the best thing he had eaten in a long time, possibly because he hadn’t eaten anything in a long time. A few moments later two flagons of spiced mead joined the stew, and Attrebus felt officially happy. He looked up and saw the old man still regarding them. “It’s okay?” he asked. “Delicious,” Attrebus replied. “My compliments.” “You come up from Oleer Mar?” he asked. “Down from the mountains,” Sul said. “Not much to see.” “What is this place?” Attrebus asked. “The village?” the man asked. “Sathil, after the castle, I guess. We don’t call it much of anything.” “Sathil? They were allied with house Indoril, yes?” Sul said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Not Hleryn Sathil, not for a long time,” the fellow said. “Declared himself independent when he came here back in ’sixteen.” “Why?” Attrebus asked. “Why not? If the Great Houses couldn’t stop the wrack of Morrowind, what good are they?” “I see your point,” Attrebus replied, although it actually made very little sense to him. “Did you come up here with Sathil?” “No, I settled here a few years ago when my ship wrecked on the coast. I like it up here. It’s mostly quiet, not like the city. A few raiders now and then, but Sathil is still capable of handling that.” “Still capable? Is something wrong with him?” “Never mind,” the man said. “I talk too much.” “Do you think he would mind if we pay him a visit?” Attrebus asked. “Sathil?” He looked surprised, then contemplative. “Well, you never know, do you? He might. Do either of you have any sorcery?” “A little,” Sul said. “He used to entertain a lot of sorcerers. Not as much lately. Anyway, his gates will be closed by now, but you could go up there in the morning. In the meantime, how about a couple of nice beds?” “And a hot bath?” Attrebus asked hopefully. “Now, that’s just crazy talk,” the fellow gruffed. The beds weren’t so nice, but they were better than cold dirt. Breakfast wasn’t much either—a thin porridge and a bit of dark bread. But it was enough, and the cocks were still crowing when they started up the approach to the castle. The path was wide enough for wagons and not too steep for them, but by the time they reached the top of it, Sathil village was tiny below them. The walls of the castle were living rock for the first fifteen feet or so, polished smooth as glass, and then for another ten feet they were carefully fitted stone. It would be a hard place to take; except for the road, there wasn’t any place for siege engines, and the two towers that overlooked the gate seemed pretty capable of defending the approach. The gate, a thick wooden affair heavily banded with steel, was closed, but a fellow on the wall hailed them as they approached. Like most of the villagers, he seemed to be a Nord. “Haven’t seen you before,” the fellow commented. “We’re travelers,” Attrebus said. “Naturalists, actually. We hope to catalogue the flora and fauna hereabouts.” He saw Sul’s eyebrow lift, but otherwise his companion didn’t react. “Do what?” the Nord asked. “You know—those things on the beach, for instance, with the three tusks …” “Horkers? You’ve come to look at horkers? Must be a boring place you’re from, lad.” “I’m from the Imperial City,” Attrebus said. “I’ve been commissioned as part of a project to write a new guide to the Empire and surrounding countries.” “Well, this isn’t the Empire, you know,” the man said. “Right,” Attrebus agreed. “Hence the ‘surrounding countries’ part."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I was rather hoping to gain Lord Sathil’s patronage for a time, while we’re doing our cataloguing.” “Cattle hogging? What does that mean?” “No, I mean—writing down types of things and describing them.” “You’re going to write about horkers?” “Yes, and whatever other things might be of interest in the area. Wildlife, geography, culture and customs, places and objects of power, those sorts of things.” “Places of power, eh? Are you a sorcerer?” “I am not. That is my companion’s specialty.” “Hang on there, then,” the man said. “I’ll convey your request to his lordship.” He vanished from the wall. “Naturalist?” Sul asked. “I’ve always been interested in those sorts of things,” Attrebus said. “Not enough to actually read about them, so far as I’ve seen,” Sul said. “Well, here’s my opportunity,” Attrebus replied. An hour passed and most of another before the gate creaked and finally opened. The man from the wall was there, and a thin, ascetic-looking Dunmer woman with a long queue, clad in a flowing black robe embroidered with the stylized form of a draugr. Her gaze flicked over them a bit distastefully. “Welcome to Sathil Manor,” she said. “Isilr was a bit confused about your purpose here. I wonder if I could prevail upon you to reiterate it.” “Of course,” Attrebus said. “It’s nothing complicated, really. The Emperor in Cyrodiil has commissioned a new guide to the Empire and independent realms of Tamriel. I’ve been sent here to collect general information on the area for the guide.” “You’re not just spying on our horkers, then, but on us as well?” “Spying? I wouldn’t put it that way, my lady.” She smiled thinly. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I have been instructed to offer you lodging and whatever help you require—within reason, of course.” “Of course, lady. That is most hospitable.” She nodded wanly. “I am Nirai Sathil, daughter of Hleryn Sathil. With whom do I make the acquaintance?” “My name is Uriel Tripitus,” Attrebus lied, “and this is my companion Ozul.” “Ozul,” she said. “From what house?” “I belong to no house,” Sul told her. “I understand you,” she said. “We have also foresworn allegiance to the houses. Please, follow me and be welcome in our home.” She led them across a bare stone yard surrounded by what appeared to be barracks and into a central keep that rose quite high before sprouting six slender towers. The place was smaller than it looked from the shore, but still quite large—and to Attrebus’s eye, undermanned. He didn’t see nearly enough guards or servants. They entered a large central hall with an enormous table. The walls were hung with the busts of animals—bears, wolves, wild bulls, lions—and also with various sorts of arms and armor, some of which seemed quite exotic. “I must leave you here,” Nirai said, “but servants will attend you shortly."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Only tell them your needs, and they will see to them.” And with a whisking of robes, she was gone, and they were alone in the hall. Attrebus paced, examining the swords, spears, maces, and falchions that adorned the walls. “What does this ‘Umbra’ look like?” he asked. “A black longsword with red runes on the blade,” Sul replied. “At least when it was seen last.” “What do you mean?” “Legend says it has worn other shapes—but it is always a bladed weapon.” Attrebus started in a hurry, but as the minutes stretched to more than an hour, he had ample time to assure himself that no weapon approaching that description was to be found—not in the great room, anyway. He was just starting to consider wandering through the rest of the castle when he heard a soft whisper, then a giggle. He turned, and caught a flash of gray vanishing from the doorway. There was a sudden furious whispering he couldn’t make out, and then, after a moment, a rounded woman with fading red hair came in. She studied them for a moment, then gave a little curtsy. “My apologies, sirs,” she said. “I hadn’t been informed of your presence. May I be of service?” “I’m not sure,” Attrebus said. “The lady Nirai brought us here, and said we would be provided with rooms and so forth.” “Nirai,” she sighed, then cocked an eyebrow. “And so forth?” “Well, I’m here to do a bit of exploring,” he said, then rambled off his invented job description. The woman looked a bit disapproving, but she nodded. “I’ll get rooms ready for you. Meantime I’ll take you to the kitchen—I don’t know what Nirai is thinking, but there will be no meal in the hall tonight.” “We were hoping to meet Lord Sathil,” Attrebus said. “Were you?” she replied. “Well, perhaps you will.” She didn’t sound convinced. She showed them to the kitchen, a smoky, low-ceilinged room with an enormous hearth and two massive oaken tables. To Attrebus’s vast surprise, about thirty people were seated there. None of them were elves; most seemed to be Nord, although there were two Khajiit. They were dressed in plain working clothes. All stood when they entered. A gnarled old woman at the head of the table raised her head. “Who is this, then, Yingfry?” she asked. “Lords Uriel and Ozul,” their escort reported. “From the Empire. Nirai brought them up. They’re here to see the country.” “Well,” the old woman said, “you gentlemen look hungry. Join us, won’t you?” “We would be honored,” Attrebus said. He heard a familiar giggle, and his attention was drawn to a honey-haired young woman with mischievous green eyes. “Irinja!” the woman said sternly. “I’m sorry, Eld Ma,” she said. “It’s just he speaks so fine, as if he’s in court.” “All the more reason to mind your manners,” Eld Ma said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Lords, please, sit.” A couple of men made room on the bench, and Attrebus and Sul were soon seated in front of thick trenchers of black bread, boiled venison (or at least it tasted like venison) with wine and honey sauce, fish with butter and vinegar, and roast duck. Their hosts were silent as the two began eating. “I hope it is to your liking,” Eld Ma said. “It’s delicious,” Attrebus replied. “Very good,” Sul added. “Different.” Eld Ma leaned back. “We know the food of Morrowind, lord,” she said. “If I had known you were coming, we would have cooked in that manner.” “You misunderstand me,” Sul replied. “I was paying a compliment. I don’t care to be reminded of Morrowind.” “Ah,” a bald-headed fellow piped up. “Lord Sathil is the same; he prefers our cuisine, our ways. But the lady, she prefers the tastes of her people—especially hluurn, and other things made from Marshmerrow.” “Val,” Eld Ma said, quietly, “didn’t the gentleman just say he didn’t like to be reminded?” “Oh, right,” Val said. “Sorry.” “No harm,” Attrebus cut in. “We’re just glad of the hospitality.” He lifted his mug of warm ale. “To each of you,” he said. They all toasted, and when he didn’t continue, began talking among themselves, a low chatter rising—talk of tasks to be done that afternoon, complaints about the work of the morning, simple things, confirming his suspicion that these were castle servants, not masters. He ate and listened, hoping to hear something useful, but when the end of the meal came he didn’t know much more than when it began. Yingfry took them up three flights of stairs to two adjacent rooms, both quite large, both with fireplaces already blazing. When she was gone, they met together in Attrebus’s room. “What do you think is going on here?” Attrebus asked Sul. The Dunmer scratched his chin. “I don’t know much about the Sathils, other than remembering the name.” “Don’t you think it’s odd that we haven’t met him yet? That we were left to eat with servants?” “Not really,” Sul said. “I don’t know the man. Neither do you. Perhaps he is reclusive. Or very busy.” “Very busy with what?” “Again, I don’t know him, and we hardly know anything about this place.” “Well, if we never see him, how do we find the sword?” Sul blinked. “Was that your plan? Just to ask him about it?” “I suppose so.” “Then why this whole demented story about you being a naturalist?” Sul demanded. “I don’t know. ‘Hello, I’m crown prince Attrebus, I’ve just come from Oblivion, where I was eviscerated by something and then healed by a god so I can try to find the sword that will help me defeat the flying city of Umbriel and its army of undead’ just seemed like an implausible way to go.” “Right,” Sul grunted. “You had a good instinct."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But asking outright where the sword is would seem to run counter to it, wouldn’t you think?” “I could just ask him if he has any unusual artifacts I can write about. We don’t have a lot of time, Sul.” “He let us in,” Sul said. “He seems to have an interest in sorcerers. Let’s continue to follow your first instinct and see what happens. At least for another day.” Attrebus studied Sul for a moment, trying to see if he was making fun of him. Even now it was hard to tell. “Okay, then,” he said. “Get some sleep,” Sul replied. Attrebus turned in, but every time he closed his eyes, he felt his belly open and the wet, impossible gush of his innards into the basket of his arms. Sleep felt too near death, and after half an hour of lying there, watching the faint crack and glow of the flames, he rose, dressed in breeches and shirt, and quietly padded into the hall. He dithered for a moment, feeling vulnerable in the near-black. He’d thought he might explore a bit, but without a torch or lantern, he wouldn’t be able to see much. He took a few steps along the wall and stopped, not entirely sure why. Then he felt breath touch his face."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c15_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel SIX “Anything I can help you with, inspector?” Colin looked up from the tome he was studying to find a bent and withered fellow in a burnt umber robe furnished with what was possibly a hundred pockets. His nose took up most of his face, but his keen blue eyes were what drew your attention. “Professor Aronil,” he said, standing. “No need for that, old fellow,” the mage said. “Are you finding what you’re looking for?” “I don’t really know what I’m looking for,” he said. “Well, that can either be good or bad, can’t it?” Aronil said. “But I don’t remember you as a browser, Colin. You always wanted to get to the point, to the answer. I don’t expect you’ve changed that much.” “No, I don’t expect I have.” Aronil peered down at the pages. “Pneumatology? That’s rather your strong suit.” “Well, I thought so,” Colin replied. “Is this about the flying city or what-have-you? Because the College of Whispers has the most up-to-date information on those things. I’ve just seen their most recent report—fascinating, really. The things aren’t bonewalkers—they’re more like flesh atronachs, although they don’t respond the same to arcane stimuli.” “No, it’s not about that,” Colin said. “I’m assigned internally.” “I understand,” the mage said. “I shan’t pry more.” He began to walk away. “Actually, I would welcome your help,” Colin said. “It could take me weeks at this rate.” “Well, what’s the problem, then?” “The problem is that something nearly killed me the other day, and I don’t know what it was.” “Well, the ‘nearly’ part is encouraging anyway,” Aronil said. “I don’t like my chances if I meet another one,” Colin said. “I don’t know if that’s even likely, but I always prefer to be prepared.” “Tell me about it,” Aronil said, pulling over a seat. “I was searching an apartment,” Colin began. “At first I thought it was a ghost—” “Presenting, or had you prepared yourself?” “I went there looking for spiritual remnants,” he admitted. “So it was probably invisible to the untrained eye.” “Oh, I’m sure of that,” Colin replied. “The apartment has a resident. I checked into him a little and he’s apparently never claimed his place was haunted or whatever.” “And he isn’t a mage?” “No.” “Fine. Go on.” Colin related the rest of the encounter, and the old Altmer just sat there for a moment, nodding absently. “And afterward—the spirit you were looking for?” “She was there. Not much left of her, though.” Aronil stood and took a couple of paces. “You’re in dangerous territory here, Colin. I wonder if you know exactly what you’re doing.” “Just my job,” he replied. “I can check that, you know,” Aronil said. “I am privy, if I wish to be, to any investigation our organization is running."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c15_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And one of my charges is to make certain that the library of the Penitus Oculatus isn’t being abused in any fashion.” “I’m aware of that, sir,” Colin said, as ice formed in his belly. “I don’t believe I’m abusing anything.” “Last I checked, you were assigned to find any possible Thalmor connection with our current problem. This seems far afield from that, to me. How did you meet this thing? What did you hope to learn?” He sighed. He couldn’t pretend Aronil didn’t have the clearance. “You’re right,” he said. “I think the Thalmor angle is a dead end. I’m looking into something else.” “We’re alone here,” Aronil said. “Tell me.” “I believed there was a connection to Black Marsh,” he said. “The spirit I was looking for was of a woman who witnessed what may have been the calling of Umbriel into our world.” Aronil folded his arms. “I’ve heard the speculation that it must have been summoned here, or at least invited. It arrived in Black Marsh, so I suppose that makes sense, on the surface of it. Do you have proof?” “Only a strong suggestion,” Colin said. “Strengthened, perhaps, by the fact that the witness to this event was murdered, presumably for what she saw?” “Yes.” “Have you gone to Marall with this?” “No, I haven’t,” he replied. “Why?” “I’m not sure, to be honest,” Colin said. “Part of it is that I’m not sure who I can trust anymore.” “And yet you trust me?” Aronil said. “How touching.” His kindly tone had been replaced by a dark rasp. “Well, I hadn’t thought about whether I trust you,” Colin replied. “I didn’t expect to have to.” Aronil snorted. “Well, it’s a good thing you can, you idiot.” He strode across the room and up a ladder, and without even looking, it seemed, selected a book and pulled it down. It was bound in some sort of dark red leather and blackened iron bands, but it was quite small, not much bigger than his palm. “The thing you’re talking about is a very specific variety of daedra. They were often summoned by the Nibenese battlemages who ruled during the times of the Alessian order, but after the War of Righteousness, the relationship they cultivated with this species deteriorated. The knowledge to summon them was lost, or almost so—confined to this volume, do you understand?” “I’m not sure I do,” Colin answered. “It was powerful, yes—and I don’t want to face another one unprepared—but far worse things are conjured now, from what I’ve heard.” “Of course. It’s not the creatures themselves you need to worry about. And that’s why I asked if you know what you are doing.” “Sir?” “There are certain spells here in the library that few know about. If a book is touched, I can tell who touched it."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c15_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Before this moment, this book hadn’t been touched in twenty years, and then by only one man, one of the few not of our order with the authority to do so. Would you care to guess who that was?” “I’m pretty certain I know,” Colin replied. “But it would help me a lot if you told me.” “Minister Hierem,” Aronil said, his voice nearly a whisper. “He has a curiosity for knowledge of that era. And so why, Colin, are you investigating the second most powerful man in the Empire?” “Because I have to,” Colin said. “I have no choice.” “Always aiming for the answer? The point?” “I guess so.” The mage looked at the book for a moment before handing it to Colin. “It can’t leave here,” he said. “Is there anything else?” “Maps,” Colin replied. “But I know where to finds those.” “You should take what you know to Marall. He’s a good man. You can trust him. On a more pragmatic level, you might well lose your position for this sort of rogue activity.” “I’m aware of that, professor,” Colin replied. “Thank you for your help.” “I always liked you, Colin,” Aronil replied. “I’d hate to have to attend your funeral.” “If this goes wrong, I doubt there will be a funeral,” Colin said, “a burial, maybe—funeral, no.” Far down the corridor, light appeared, orange and shivering. Shadows moved in it, and then it was gone. “What was that?” Arese asked, her whisper so faint as to be almost inaudible, though her breath tickled his ear. “That’s one of the main tunnels,” Colin said. “I’m sure they’re securing them against the siege. They won’t bother with this passage because it doesn’t go anywhere—or doesn’t seem to.” They had to walk crouched over for another hundred feet before he found the recess in the wall and the mechanism it hid, and then they passed into a chamber large enough to stand in. He closed the hidden panel and then produced a stone that, although it glowed only faintly, illumined everything about it at exactly that same dim luminescence, so it did not outshine what it revealed: a largish room decorated in ghoulish splendor; furniture adorned in grinning, gold-leafed skulls and articulated vertebrae, velvet upholstery figured with obscene rituals of sex and death. “What is this place?” she asked. “It was a sort of warren for Julius Primus,” he said, “about twenty years ago.” “I don’t remember the name.” “I shouldn’t think so. He rather fancied himself the new King of Worms, a necromancer supreme, a prince of death. In the end he was moderately clever at hiding and being a nuisance. The Penitus Oculatus rooted him out and sent him to his own long sleep.” “It seems a little silly,” she said, picking up a carving of a skull with a serpent wound about it. “Pretentious.” “He was theatrical, to say the least."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c15_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It didn’t save him.” “And this is underneath the ministry?” “Relatively so.” “It’s not on any of our maps,” she said. “Well—we have better maps,” Colin replied. “We’ve been at it longer.” “Hmmm. Unless Hierem has charts I don’t know of,” she said. “After all, he might well have been involved with this Julius character.” “I rather doubt it,” Colin said. “Anyway, this place is not connected to anything in or beneath the ministry.” “Then why are we here?” “Because this is where you’re staying,” he said, “until I have this sorted out.” “Nonsense,” she replied. “We’re partners in this. I recruited you, remember?” “I could hardly forget that,” he told her. “But for what I’m about to do, you would only impede me. You have your gifts, but the shadows aren’t friendly to you, I can see that much. Here you should be safe. I brought food and wine down yesterday. I also left some little tricks to show if anyone has been here since then, and they haven’t.” She sighed. “Well, that all makes sense, but—” “If I’m not back in four hours, you can worry about your next move,” Colin said. “But I’m safest working alone.” She nodded. “I trust you’re right,” she said. “I’m often wrong,” he replied. “But not about this.” “About being better able to get in unseen, perhaps—but what then?” “I’ll find the Emperor’s proof.” “The journal didn’t satisfy him. What do you imagine will?” “Documents concerning the voyage, with Hierem’s signature. Even a ship’s manifest would do. He is connected to Umbriel—there must be some evidence of it.” She looked skeptical. “Even with the key to his private chambers, I doubt you will find anything like that.” She sighed. “I don’t believe the Emperor thinks so either.” “Why give me the key, then?” She brushed his bangs with her fingers. “You’re being naive,” she said. “It’s sweet, but now isn’t the time for it.” “Do you really think the Emperor wants me to kill him?” “Of course. Why else give you the means?” “Well, I take him at his word. If he wanted the minister dead, why wouldn’t he just tell me to do it? Or send a more experienced inspector?” “When Hierem is dead there will be many questions, and they will all lead to you, a member of the Penitus Oculatus, yes, but operating without permission. You were never assigned to follow me, or spy on Hierem, by any superior. It will be easy to paint you as a rogue because—in fact—you are.” Colin let that settle across his shoulders for a moment. Everything she said made sense; it was all reasonable. He reviewed his conversation with the Emperor and her case grew stronger. Perhaps Titus Mede did mean for him to end Hierem’s threat and then absorb the blame, pay the penalty. What of it, then? He had signed on for this, hadn’t he?"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c15_r1.htm.txt", "text": "To serve and protect the Empire, even if that meant doing the nasty, horrible things no one ever sang about in ballads? Even though he was looking down, he could feel Arese’s gaze upon him. “It may be you’re right,” he said. “It won’t be easy,” she said. “I believe you will need my help. Together we might manage it.” “If it comes to that,” he said. “If the Emperor tells me in plain words to kill Hierem, I will. But until then, I do what I’ve been told to.” “Since when?” she exploded. “We’ve just been over this. You’ve been operating on your own for some time now. Why are you suddenly so concerned with permission and commands?” “I’m not arguing with any of that,” Colin said. “But I won’t kill Hierem unless I have to.” “I can’t stay down here forever,” she said softly. “If you won’t help me, I’ll have to try myself.” “Then this is about your own life.” “That’s not fair,” she replied. “You know it isn’t.” “Look, let me try it my way. If it doesn’t work, if I can’t find anything to convince the Emperor to move against Hierem, then we’ll come back to this conversation again, okay? And I’ll at least know more about the layout of his rooms—we won’t be going in blind.” She stayed stiff for a moment, but then he saw the cords in her neck soften. “Okay,” she said. “Don’t get yourself killed.” “I won’t,” he said. He hesitated, and then leaned forward to kiss her, but she drew back. “Not now,” she said. “I—just not now.” “That’s fine,” he said, feeling something twist in his gut. It was still twisting when he was back out in the sewers. Did she think she’d made a mistake? Did she regret what they had done? If so, he ought to be relieved. It wasn’t like they were going to get married, raise children, and live in the country. There was no sort of future for them, and pretending there was would only make them stupid now, when they needed all their wits about them. But it didn’t make him feel any better, and it took him longer than usual to find his way into the darkness that few could see into. But he finally got there, and made his mind as clear as it could be, and moved to the secret door that led into Hierem’s private office and quarters. The key fit, turned, and the door opened. And, as in the house of Delia Huerc, there was something waiting for him."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c16_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel SEVEN Attrebus jumped back with an inchoate shout, reaching for his sword, but of course it wasn’t there. He realized his hands were up in a defensive position, and left them there. “Who is it?” he demanded, backing quickly toward the light of his room. “I—I’m sorry,” a woman stammered. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” “Well, you did,” he said. “Sneaking around in the dark—who are you?” Her face appeared then, a young woman, probably about his age, with golden hair and a quirky, wide mouth and very blue eyes. He’d seen her before, at dinner. “My name is Irinja,” she said. “I’m just a serving maid.” “What were you doing outside my door?” “I made up your room,” she said, moving a bit more into the light. He saw that she was wearing a heavily quilted robe and thick, knitted footwear. “I was just coming to make sure everything is good for you.” She looked up boldly. “Anyway,” she went on, “it looked as if you were about to do a bit of sneaking on your own.” “Why didn’t you have a lamp, or something?” “I grew up here, sir. I know these halls like I know my own toes. Besides, I have excellent vision at night. They say I get it from my grandfather.” “Okay,” he said, nodding. “Everything is fine. The room is acceptable.” “Good,” she said, but continued to stand there. “That’s it, then,” he said. “Thanks for your concern.” “Right,” she said, nodding. “I’ll just be going.” “Good, then.” She started to turn, but then spun back. “What are you really about, your highness?” she asked. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear.” “What?” he managed. “No one else reads in this bloody castle,” she said. “They really don’t have a clue who you are. They completely fell for your story. But I’ve read every adventure about you I could get my hands on.” Attrebus felt a peculiar warmth steal over his face, and realized he was blushing. “Listen,” he said, “I think you’ve mistaken me—” “Don’t you dare!” she said. “You’re not really going to lie to me and tell me you’re some sort of horker-watcher? I’d know your likeness anywhere.” He sighed, knowing she wasn’t going to be convinced. “Very well,” he said. “But you really mustn’t tell anyone my true identity.” “I knew it,” she said. “You’re incognito, on some sort of adventure, aren’t you?” “Well, now that you bring it up,” Attrebus said, “yes, I am. And it’s of a very secret nature.” “Oh, I want to help,” she said. “Surely I can be of help.” As he was considering that, he saw a ghostly face appear over her shoulder. The smoldering eyes were those of Sul, and in that instant he felt the girl’s life was hanging by a thread. He shook his head violently. “Oh, please?” she said, mistaking the object of his gesture. “Come in,” he replied."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c16_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Shut the door.” “Your highness,” she murmured, lowering her eyes, “I hope you don’t take me for the sort of girl—” “No, no,” he said. “I just want this conversation to be private.” “Well—okay, then.” She stepped in and closed the door, but even before she did, Sul was no longer visible. “Irinja, you say?” “Yes, highness.” “Okay, Irinja. The first thing is you have to stop calling me highness, or prince, or anything like that. I’m Uriel—do you have that?” “Yes, hi—Uriel.” “Good. The next thing—tell me about this place. You say you grew up here. Tell me about Lord Sathil. I’m puzzled that I haven’t met him.” “Well, he’s changed,” she said. “When I was a little girl, he was always around, always in good cheer. We all went on excursions to the sea, and in the summer played bowling on the lawns. My brother used to hunt with him. It was nice, back then.” “And now?” “Well—things happened,” she said. “He’s not the same now. He hardly ever comes out. But he doesn’t mistreat us. You shouldn’t think that.” “Things happened? What sort of things?” Irinja looked uncomfortable. “I’m not really supposed to say,” she replied. “Nobody talks about it.” “You said you wanted to help me,” he reminded her. “And I do,” she replied. “But if this is about Lord Sathil …” “I mean Sathil no harm,” Attrebus assured her. “Or anyone here.” “There are just things we don’t like to talk about,” she said, sighing. “Okay,” he said. “Have a seat. I’m going to explain to you why I’m here, but it will take some time.” “Very well,” she said. And so he told her about Umbriel and its undead army, and Annaïg, and how he and Sul had gone through Oblivion, first to Morrowind and now here. He showed her his scar. When he was done, she looked down at her knees. “You’ve come here for the sword, then,” she said. “For Umbra.” “Yes. Because I believe it is the only thing that can stop Umbriel.” “Don’t tell anyone else that,” she said softly. “Don’t ask about the sword at all.” “Why?” She looked up at him. “I want to help you,” she said. “But I have to think.” “Listen,” he said. “Every moment we wait, more people die, and the more soldiers the enemy has. Minutes are precious, days are treasures.” “I know,” she said. “But I can’t just—I have to think.” “Will you come back here, tomorrow night?” She nodded. “It’s probably the only time we wouldn’t be noticed and heard.” “Good, then,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She left, and when he was certain she was gone, he went next door to Sul’s room. Sul was waiting for him. “How much of that did you hear?” he asked the Dunmer. “Most, I think. Are you sure that was wise, telling her why we came?” “I had to do something."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c16_r1.htm.txt", "text": "At least we know that the sword is a hornet’s nest, somehow.” “Yes, and that girl is one of the hornets. You’ve asked her to betray the rest of them, and you don’t know why or what’s at stake. For all we know, someone will be back here to cut our throats before morning.” “I trust her,” Attrebus said. “She might not help us, but she won’t do anything to hurt us.” “Hurt you, you mean.” “Look, unless you’ve had another vision that tells us where the sword is, we’ve got very little chance of finding it without help. You saw how big this place is. Even if we could move through the castle at will, unobserved, it could take weeks, months. In fact, we don’t know it’s even here, do we?” “I’m just wondering how much you thought this through and how much comes from your pike.” “My what?” But then he got it, and felt his face warm. “Now, really—” he began. “That woman I found you with—the one who kidnapped you. The one I killed. You trusted her, didn’t you? Slept with her?” “Well, yes, but—” “And this whole chase, this quest of yours—that started with a girl, too—this Annaïg you’re so set to rescue.” “Maybe that was part of it, yes, but Umbriel did rather sound like something that needed taking on.” “Your judgment just seems a bit hasty and simple when pretty girls are involved.” “Well, possibly,” he admitted. “But it’s done now.” “There’s still time. Something could happen to her on the way to wherever she’s going.” “No,” Attrebus snapped. “No, do you hear me? She’ll help us or she won’t, but I won’t have her hurt.” “Well,” Sul muttered, “let’s hope she feels the same about you.”"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel EIGHT Glim wasn’t aware when silence and darkness claimed him; he didn’t know how long they had lasted—it might have been hours or days. But after the quiet came the voices, the gentle murmur of the trees, drawing him into the dream of thought, where past and future were irrelevant illusions and his mind was unhampered by reference to anything at all. And so he remained for a time, until finally the ache of hunger and the pain of his wounds brought him nearer to the world. The voices were still there, leading him through the twisting roots, finally into the light, amidst the great boughs of the Fringe Gyre. He climbed higher, until he could see the buildings above and get his bearings. None of them looked familiar, which could only mean he was on the wrong side of the rim. Groaning, he began picking his way from tree to tree, hoping his quivering limbs didn’t fail him. It was nightfall before he found the place, and all he could do was collapse and hope he didn’t die before Fhena found him. “I’ve never seen anyone hurt like this,” Fhena murmured, pressing something that looked like yellow fur against the wound in his side. He finished swallowing the whatever-it-was she had given him to eat. “That feels good,” he said, looking around. They were in some sort of cavity in the tree, irregular in shape. Light came in from around the bend, but he couldn’t see sky. Then her comment registered. “You’ve never seen anyone hurt? How do you know what to do?” “No, of course I’ve seen injuries. Ixye broke his leg in a fall yesterday. I meant I’ve never seen someone hurt on purpose.” He coughed out a little laugh. “I don’t understand. Murder seems to be the most common pastime in Umbriel.” “Not up here,” she said. “Not in the trees. I know below is horrible. I’ve heard about it. But bad things don’t really happen up here.” “Maybe it’s the trees themselves,” Glim mused. “Their influence. Anyway—I’m sorry to be your first.” “Well, if someone had to be—” she began playfully. “I can’t stay long,” he interrupted. “Right,” She agreed. “You need to hurry back down there and get something else stuck in you. I understand.” “They’ll look up here for me,” he said. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.” “They looked up here for you yesterday,” she said. “I hid you. They passed by.” “Yesterday? How long have I been up here?” “Three days, reckoned by this sun,” she replied. “I gave you something to help you sleep.” “I—Three days?” “It’s what the trees prescribed,” she said. “The trees?” “Yes. Our usual medicines didn’t help you very much, so I asked the trees what to do and they told me.” “Okay,” Glim said, trying to sit up. “Three days?"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt", "text": "From now on, when the trees tell you to do something, you ask me first.” She frowned. “There wasn’t much ‘asking you,’ ” she said. “You weren’t really in much of a state to answer. Nor would you be now, if I hadn’t done what I did, for that matter.” She turned away from him. “Look, Fhena—” “And now you’re just going to go right back down there. Stupid!” “They’ll search here again,” he said. “Besides, the skraws are counting on me. Who knows what’s been going on?” He saw her head sink a little. “Wait,” he said. “You know. You’ve heard something.” “Glim, please—” “What is it, Fhena?” “They think you’re dead,” she said. “They’ve gone crazy, started breaking things all over the place, and the lords have been trying to pacify them.” “Well, then—” “I’m not listening,” Fhena said, covering her ears. He sat up and scooted next to her, gently taking her hands and pulling them down. “You have to understand,” he said. “I’m responsible for this and I have to deal with it.” She looked at his hands, holding hers. “Well—how about this?” she asked. “Send them a message. Tell them you’re okay and they need to stop. You need a little more time. Please.” Glim blinked, realizing that actually made a lot of sense. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll see if that works, and if it does, I’ll stay up here until things calm down a little. But eventually I have to go back.” She smiled, and then a little tear appeared in the corner of her eye. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Nothing. It’s just that you listened to me. You really listened to me.” “I did,” he replied. “But understand—I can’t stay up here forever.” “I understand,” she replied, standing up. “But you will for now.” “Yes.” “Okay. I’ve got to go—more work for us with the sump in such a mess. But I’ll find time to send word down.” After she was gone, he managed to struggle to his feet and look around. The wooden cave curved a bit, and he saw the hole above where the light was coming through, and a sort of slope going up. He climbed slowly but already felt fatigue when he found the opening. It was covered with a filmlike substance, possibly a large leaf of some kind. Deciding to leave well enough alone, he went back down to his pallet, curled up, and in no time was asleep again. He woke with something warm nestled next to him. The light was gone, but he recognized Fhena by her smell and realized that she was spooned against his uninjured side, with her head up in the pit of his arm. She snuffled when he moved. “What?” she murmured. “It’s just me,” Glim said. “Oh.” She lifted her head. He hesitated a moment, then positioned his arm under her, so her cheek rested on his chest."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt", "text": "A few moments later her breath evened out again, and he lay there awake. Once again he let his mind simplify, listening to the trees, but after a bit he understood there was something else, something like music, color, and tactile sensation braiding and unbraiding, sometimes together, sometimes breathtakingly separate, but always as recognizable as a scent. It was Fhena, dreaming next to him, connected to him by the root. “Longer,” she begged him two days later. “Stay longer. Things are better down there. They’ve calmed down.” “Because they’re waiting on me to tell them what to do,” he said. “If I stay gone too long, they’ll start to wonder if I’m really alive.” “The lords will kill you,” she said. “They’ll be waiting for you.” “They didn’t catch me before,” he replied. “They won’t catch me this time either.” “You weren’t this weak before.” “Nonsense,” he replied. “I feel fine—you’ve done a good job healing me.” “Don’t go,” she said. “I know you want to stay with me.” Glim closed his eyes, wondering what Annaïg was doing, knowing he had to find out, because he had to talk to her. He had never been this confused in his life about anything. Because Fhena was right—he did want to stay with her. He didn’t feel any sexual attraction toward her—they were too different for that. What he did feel was much more compelling and thoroughgoing than lust, and it was weaving knots in his brain. “I’ll come back tonight,” he promised. “I’ll be back.” “You’d better,” she said. He made his way back down the tree, to his more usual path, and in a few moments was back in the sump. It felt good to have water around him again, and for a while he let himself enjoy the feel of it, marshaling his thoughts. Wert was supposed to meet him near the bottom of the Drop, in a stand of slackweed. But what was he going to tell him? Push forward or give up? If he agreed to give himself up, could he win some concessions for the skraws? He had even less idea what to tell Annaïg, when and if he managed to see her again. His toes and fingers were tingling oddly; it had started almost below perception, but now it was beginning to bother him. He touched them and realized that the ends were completely numb; the pain was at the first joint. A moment later it was at the second, and progressing up his limbs at a terrifying pace. He turned and began swimming as fast as he could, back the way he had come, but before he went a hundred yards, he couldn’t move his arms or legs anymore, and all he could do was scream as the agony crept into his torso, surrounding his heart. He drifted down, toward the light in the deepest part of the water, toward the ingenium. He felt his heart stop and icicles grow in his brain."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt", "text": "For an instant he felt the trees again, and through them a little echo of Fhena, like a butterfly. And that was all."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel NINE “Irinja is avoiding me,” Attrebus told Sul as he tested his weight on the frozen stream. It was solid as stone. Fruth—one of the hunters assigned to help him with his “research”—gave him a funny look. For a moment he thought the fellow had overheard him, even though he was sure all of Sathil’s people were out of earshot. But then he realized the Nord just thought he was an idiot for being so tentative about the stream in such bitter cold. “Well?” Sul asked. “I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad sign.” “She’s betrayed you,” Sul said. “Maybe not. Maybe she’s still thinking.” “Maybe,” Sul said. “If that’s the case, we might come back from this expedition.” “Why would they take us out into the mountains to kill us?” Attrebus wondered. “I should think it would be easier in the castle—say, while we’re asleep.” “No blood to clean up,” Sul said. “Well, there is that,” Attrebus said. “But even if murder isn’t in their plans, I’m not very happy about this trip.” “You shouldn’t have told them you were a naturalist, then,” Sul whispered. “They’re just doing what you asked them to.” “True enough. But every second we waste here seems like an eternity.” “I have some ideas,” Sul said. “If they involve torturing Irinja, forget it.” “If she knows where the sword is, probably most of them do. But leave that. I tried some minor cantations last night. The sword is in the castle, or very near it.” “Do you know what part?” “No. But I can try something a little riskier. There are daedra who sense enchantments much as we smell things. I can summon one of them and let it find the sword.” “Why didn’t you do that last night?” “Because if Sathil or anyone else in the castle has any proficiency in the arts, they’ll know a conjuring has taken place. Or someone might simply see the daedra. I was hoping we would find it some other way, but as you say, we don’t have much time to lose.” “Tonight, then, if Irinja doesn’t tell me anything.” “That was my plan.” Attrebus nodded. Up ahead, Fruth beckoned them toward a ridge. Beyond the rise, a valley spread, and beyond them mountains whose peaks vanished into the oppressively low clouds. “Ensleth Valley,” the guide said, lifting the point of his red beard. “Good hunting here. Elk, deer, muskrey.” “Very good,” Attrebus said, scribbling that in his book. “And those mountains?” “Moesring Mountains,” Fruth said. “We don’t go there much.” “What makes this valley so good for game?” Attrebus asked. “It looks just like the last one.” “Salt,” Fruth replied. “Big salt lick along where the stream comes out. Only one on this side of the mountains. You’ll want to see that.” “Sure,” Attrebus said. “I suppose so.” As they were about halfway down the slope, Fruth’s head jerked up sharply toward the mountains."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Attrebus followed his gaze and saw what appeared to be a white cloud rolling down it toward them at impossible speed. Fruth’s gaze darted around, but then he gestured back upslope. “Hurry!” he shouted. But they had only gone a few steps before it hit them. Attrebus had heard of avalanches, huge slides of snow coming down mountains, destroying everything in their paths. He assumed that’s what this was, and braced for it, yet what hit him wasn’t a wall of snow, but an unbelievably cold mist. Snow came with it, but whirling in the air, biting at his face. He couldn’t see anything. He stumbled, then struck his foot against something and went tumbling down the slope, flailing wildly, thankful at least for the layers of fur and leather the servants of Sathil House had given him to wear. Even so, he felt the temperature dropping impossibly fast. Someone caught hold of him and drew him along with terrific strength, and after what seemed a long time, pulled him down into what felt like a stony grotto. “Keep close,” a voice said—he recognized it as Fruth’s by the accent. A moment later something warm and faintly luminous appeared between them. It looked something like flame caught in a ball of glass, and after a few moments it seemed to push the worst of the cold away. “What was that?” he asked. “It comes down like that sometimes,” Fruth said. “Never seen it come so fast, though. Unnatural, probably Frost Giant.” “Frost Giant?” “Yah. Unpredictable, this new one, and very strong.” “What about Ozul?” he asked, using Sul’s false name. “And the others?” “We’ll find out when this is over,” Fruth said. “We go out now, we freeze. Freeze anyway, if this stays too long.” Sul managed to scramble far enough up the hill that the wave of freezing air went below him, but it enveloped Attrebus and Fruth, blotting them from view. He started down but was arrested by an eldritch tingle that told him—as his common sense should have—that the event wasn’t natural. He spun, fingers clenching on the hilt of his sword, an invocation already begun in the back of his throat. He faced six well-armed and armored footmen, all of Nordic cast, all wearing the Sathil draugr on their surcoats. A seventh man sat a thick, shaggy horse. He was wrapped in a dark green cloak and cowled in black, but even shadowed it was easy to make out the crimson eyes of one of his countrymen. “Lord Sathil,” he guessed. “Yes, that’s right,” the man said. His voice was soft, almost apologetic in tone. “My companion—” “Yes, I’m sorry we didn’t arrive in time,” Sathil said absently. “The new Frost Giant is somewhat feckless. He usually doesn’t haunt this side of the Moesrings until midwinter.” “Frost Giant,” Sul replied dubiously. Sathil didn’t seem to notice his tone. “You’re friend is with Fruth."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He should be fine—and if he isn’t, there isn’t much you can do at the moment.” “I’ll take my chances,” Sul said, “and do for him what I can.” “Talk to me,” Sathil replied. “We’ll wait here for the cloud to settle.” Sul got the emphasis and relented. “What shall we talk about, Lord Sathil?” he asked. “Oh, so many things,” Sathil replied. “Do you have sons, Ozul? Daughters?” “I do not,” he replied. “Did they perish when Morrowind was destroyed?” “I never had any children,” Sul said. “I don’t know whether to pity you or envy you,” Sathil answered. Sul didn’t think that needed any sort of reply. Sathil might have disagreed, for he paused for a long time. Finally he rode his horse nearer. “Who sent you?” he whispered. “Was it him?” “No one sent me,” Sul replied. “Ah, if only that made sense,” Sathil said. “But many have come here, to this place where no one should come, to where I try to keep my peace. All sent, in the end, by him. They all admitted it, before it was over.” He leaned forward. “Shall I tell you the story? Do you already know it?” “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” Sul said. “Who is the person you keep referring to?” “Person?” Sathil’s teeth showed in either a grimace or a grin. “Person.” He jerked his head toward the valley. “Do you think your friend will live?” “He had better,” Sul answered. Sathil’s eyes narrowed and he mumbled something. The air took on a sharp, chlorine smell, and every nerve in Sul’s body seemed to hum. “I will defend myself,” Sul warned. “Stand still,” Sathil hissed. The air snapped like tiny twigs burning in a fire, and Sul felt his lips tighten. He thought to call something, but its name stayed just beyond him. Then it was over. Sathil sat back in his saddle. “You are strong,” he said. “Stronger than I thought. But you don’t have his stench on you. Another prince, I sense, but not the one—not the one. I can’t be fooled out here, in the clean air, beneath the righteous sky. You are none of his.” He twitched his reins and the horse began to turn. “Stay as long as you like,” he said. “I will not likely see you again. I do not often leave my rooms.” “Lord Sathil, if you have some problem—” Sathil stopped his horse and looked over his shoulder. “There was a time I sought help,” he said. “I offered rewards. But that time is long past. Things now are as they are, and I live only to curse him.” “Who?” But Sathil turned again, and without another word he and his entourage rode back toward the castle. Even in the near-boiling water, Attrebus still somehow felt cold. Sul and the Sathil’s leech had both assured him he would keep his fingers and toes, but by the gods it didn’t feel like it."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The tub was portable, made of some sort of thick, oily hide on a wooden frame, and had been brought into his room. He hadn’t seen who poured the water, but a kettle depended from a wooden arm steamed away near the fireplace. Sul sat on the corner of his bed. “Frost Giant,” Attrebus muttered. “No,” Sul said. “Sathil did it himself, I’m sure of it. He wanted to separate us.” He handed Attrebus a bottle. “Drink this. You’ll feel better.” “Some sort of remedy?” “Whiskey,” he said. Attrebus took a swallow. It hurt going down, but left a pleasant glow behind. “So he wanted us apart. Then why didn’t he slough you down into the freezing cold?” “He wanted to talk to me,” Sul replied. “He thought we were working for someone. A daedra prince, from what I could gather. Others have been here before us, it seems.” “Others? Come for the sword?” “He didn’t say anything about the sword. It might be something else entirely.” “That would be a big coincidence.” “Yes.” Attrebus started to say something, but then lowered his voice. “Could they hear us? If Sathil is a wizard—” “Our privacy is secure, unless Sathil is himself a daedra prince or something equally powerful.” “Okay. I was going to say, if these others he mentioned came for the sword—and if they were sent by a prince of Oblivion—wouldn’t Clavicus Vile be the obvious one behind it?” “Yes.” “Daedra have no true forms, right? They can appear as almost anything.” “Correct.” “What if that wasn’t Malacath we met? What if it was Vile?” “Could have been,” Sul said. “Although Sathil seemed convinced we hadn’t had any dealings with Vile. It doesn’t matter either way. Whether Malacath or Clavicus Vile sent us here, we have to get the sword—and not for either of them. We have to keep it.” “Right,” Attrebus said. “But if we’re caught up in some plot of Clavicus Vile’s—” “Then we have to keep our brains in our heads,” Sul finished. “Same as if he’s got nothing to do with us.” “Okay. But if Sathil has the sword, and Vile knows where it is—I mean, how strong could Sathil be?” “From everything we’ve heard, Vile is weak. And all daedra are vulnerable here, in Tamriel. They can’t come here unless summoned, and even then their power is curtailed. He could send his followers, but they would be mortal, like us.” “Right. So what now?” “I’m going to my room to think. I’ve changed my mind about summoning daedra to explore the castle. From what I saw of Sathil, he would notice that, and I’m pretty sure we won’t survive his suspicion a second time.” “Okay. I’m staying in the bath for a while.” “Easy on the whiskey. We may have to fight at any time.” “Sure,” Attrebus said, taking a final swallow of the stuff. Sul left."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Between the bath and the whiskey, Attrebus felt pretty human, and after a while the water actually seemed too hot, so he got out and wrapped himself in the heavy robe he’d been provided. He pulled out Coo and opened the little door, but Annaïg wasn’t there, so he set the mechanical bird on a table next to the bed. He was tired, but not sleepy, and sat on the mattress turning the day’s events about—and wondering what Sul would do—when he heard a light knock at his door. He answered it and found an anxious-looking Irinja. “I heard what happened,” she said. “I hope you weren’t hurt.” “I’m fine,” Attrebus assured her. “But I need to know—did you tell anyone about our conversation? Did you tell anyone that we were looking for the sword?” “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t do that.” He studied her face for a moment, searching for signs of disingenuity, remembering the conversation with Sul about his weakness for women. “Come in,” he finally said. “Your highness isn’t dressed for company.” “I’m covered and comfortable,” he replied. “Come in.” She did, and he saw the expression on her face, the same as he’d seen on many young women. Not long ago he would have taken advantage of that look in an instant, without thinking. Now he found himself uninterested. But he needed to know where Umbra was. “I was having a bit of whiskey,” he told her. “Would you care to join me?” “Highness?” “None of that, remember? Do you want the Frost Giant to come after me again?” “Oh, no,” she replied. “Yes—a dram of whiskey would be nice.” He gave her the dram and then some. She drank it nervously. “I want to help you,” she said finally, but he could hear what was coming next, and put his hand on hers. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve put you in a bad position, I can see that. Just keep me company.” He filled his glass. “I’m going to have a bit more. Join me?” “I shouldn’t,” she said, so predictably that he could have mouthed the words along with her. As predictably, she took the drink. “I must seem very stupid to you,” she said. “That’s not true,” he said. “You speak intelligently, you’re thoughtful, you don’t make important decisions without thinking them through. If I had met you at a ball in the Imperial City, I would have imagined you the educated daughter of Skyrim nobility.” “Rather than a maid,” she said bluntly. “Listen—my father was once just a soldier with ambition. Now he’s Emperor. He fought for everything he ever got, and I was born with it. Who should be admired the most?” Unbelievably, as he said this, something seemed to shift in his chest, and his face became warm. “What’s wrong?” Irinja asked. “Are you—are you crying?” Attrebus realized a few tears were indeed trickling down his cheek. He laughed."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Have you ever said something because it seemed like the right thing to say and then realized it was true?” “I guess.” “When I saw my father last, I said terrible things to him. What I’ve never told him is what I just told you.” “And now you’re afraid you’ll never see him again, never get to tell him.” Attrebus paused for a moment. The epiphany was that some part of him had always known he was less than his father but refused to admit it. That’s why he’d been so easily convinced of his own greatness, why he had been so blind to all the signs of deception that he should have noticed. But where her mind had gone was more useful, wasn’t it? “That’s right,” he said. “He won’t flee when Umbriel arrives. He’ll stand, and he’ll fight, and he’ll die. And he will never know how I really feel.” “That’s awful,” she said, pouring herself another drink and gulping it down. He took another, too. She wiped his cheeks, and he took her hand, looked into her eyes, let her know that he was going to kiss her, and then did it. She tilted her head back, eyes closed. “I want to help you,” she said when their lips parted. “I’m not asking you to,” he said, and kissed her again. This time she kissed back, hard, with lots of enthusiasm and not much technique. And he felt guilty, which was absurd. He kept seeing the little image of Annaïg’s face. But that was all he had seen, wasn’t it? Below the neck, she might be hideous. And now he felt even guiltier, for such a horrible thought. He pushed Irinja back, gently. “I can’t,” he said, and sighed. “I’m not asking you for anything,” Irinja said. “I’m not wanting you to marry me or take me away from here or—I just want to be part of your adventure. A part of something important.” He noticed she was shuddering. “May I have another drink, please?” He gave it to her, and poured himself a large one. “It’s his son,” she said softly. “Lord Sathil’s son, Elhul.” “What about him?” “Lord Sathil sent him down to Morrowind, to the ruins of Vivec City. Sent him after that sword, Umbra. But when Elhul picked it up, he went mad and started killing his guards. They had to bind him in chains. They took the sword away from him, and he seemed to get better, but then he found it. He killed his mother, Lady Sathil. He killed his two brothers and half of the guards before they dragged him down again. And then they couldn’t make him let go of it.” “What then? What happened?” “Lord Sathil prepared him chambers, deep in the stone. That’s where he is now, with the sword he can’t let go of. He’s been there for eight years.” She wrung her hands. “Elhul was so sweet,” she said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“He used to play with me, pretend to be my knight, my defender. But when he had the sword, he almost killed me. His eyes—he wasn’t there. Nothing was there.” “And you know where this place is? How to get there?” She nodded, then threw her arms around his neck and began kissing him again. His head was starting to swirl, and he realized that he’d really had too much to drink, but he didn’t care about that. The kisses felt good, and why shouldn’t they? He had promised Annaïg a lot, but nothing to do with this … Then the world spun, and he was on his back on clean bedding, and flesh was meeting flesh, and for the first time in a long while he gave up worrying, thinking, analyzing, and just was."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel TEN Annaïg was acutely aware of Lord Rhel watching her as she studied Glim’s corpse, but she couldn’t control the burn of tears in her eyes. They seemed to come from someplace in the middle of her, a place where everything had been seared out. Soon she would be nothing but skin, and fall in a pile on the floor. “I’m sorry, Glim,” she said in their private cant. “Umbriel is pleased,” Rhel said. “What’s going to happen to him?” she asked softly. “First he’ll be shown to the skraws, so they know he’s dead. He’ll be cut in pieces, and each of the skraw dormitories will get one, to remind them.” “That’s barbaric,” she said. “I don’t know what that means,” Rhel said. “But you’ve done well for yourself. You should be proud.” “That will take me a bit of time,” Annaïg replied. “Umbriel told me you might show grief. He said you were not to be punished for it, that it would come to you naturally. He also said that it will pass.” “It will,” Annaïg agreed. “May I be alone with him for a moment?” “Why?” “To tell him goodbye.” “He’s already dead. He can’t hear you.” “Umbriel would understand,” she said. “Very well,” Rhel yielded. “But only a moment.” She waited until she could no longer hear his footsteps before she bent down and hugged Glim’s still body. Hoping against hope that no one was watching, she pried open his mouth and took the crystal growing at the base of his tongue. Closing his mouth, she kissed him on the snout. She put the crystal in her pocket, straightened, and wiped her eyes. Then she left to prepare Rhel’s evening meal. Annaïg had endured long nights before, but she had never felt as lost as she did after the work in the kitchen was done that evening. She drank nearly a bottle of wine, remembering drinking with Glim on her father’s balcony as the rains came in Lilmoth. Eventually she opened her locket. At first she didn’t know what she was seeing, but then the tangle of limbs and blankets sorted itself out. Attrebus was in profile, asleep. The woman—whoever she was—was facing Coo. She snapped the locket shut and sat there a moment as the feeling of betrayal settled over her. On the surface of her mind, she knew she shouldn’t feel this way, that Attrebus had never implied that he had romantic feelings for her. And yet, something about the way he spoke to her, as if they had always been friends, as if when this was all over … But no, of course not. He needed her, that was all. To do this thing, destroy this city. He had to keep her on his good side, motivated, willing to do whatever was required, even murder Glim, for the gods’ sake."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt", "text": "This probably wasn’t even the first time, just the first time he’d slipped up and left Coo open. And who was she anyway? Nobody. A silly girl, worshipping a prince. Probably sillier than the one who lay with him now. What must he actually think of her? She was really stupid about people, wasn’t she? She’d thought that Slyr was her friend. She’d thought that Attrebus might— Before she could finish the thought, she hurled the locket at the wall, then finished her wine."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel ELEVEN Colin reached into his pocket, but motion brought the thing’s attention to him, and it came at him, just as the last one had. He withdrew a small metal box—only an inch on each side—flipped open the lid, and held it out. For an awful moment he didn’t think it would work, that Aronil was either wrong about what he faced or that the Ayleid soul-maze was old beyond functioning, but then the daedra suddenly dwindled, formed a stream that flew into the box, and was gone. Colin closed the soul-maze and put it back in his pocket, silently thanking Aronil for showing him the book. Then he looked around to see what other wards were waiting to kill him. What remained was more of the usual sort, and he was able to neutralize them without destroying them. It might take Hierem a while to discover the missing guardian, but if all of his protections were stripped away, the minister would know for certain that someone had been in his rooms. He knew he should have a few hours—the minister was at court—but it was hard to resist the urge to hurry. Hierem’s private suite had a bedroom with a dining area, a bath, and a conventional library; Colin noted them and passed on. He also discovered a room that had been converted into a small dungeon with four cells, all currently empty and clean. More interesting was a spacious room with various workbenches and a large sigil painted on the floor. Avoiding the latter, he looked over the benches, where he found a number of strange objects. Some—like his soul-maze—looked to be of the ancient race of mer known as Ayleids; others appeared more recent and probably of Nibenese origin. He didn’t know what any of them were so he didn’t touch them. There were shelves of powders, liquids, salts, and such, along with a scattering of alchemical equipment. What most interested him was a large desk, built with several deep drawers. A few papers lay on it, covered with scrawled notes and a few puzzling drawings, but the language wasn’t one he knew. The drawers were locked in both mundane and magical fashion, and it took him a laborious ten minutes or so to deal with that and begin going through them, looking for something—anything—to connect Hierem to the Black Marsh trip or Umbriel. But after a frustrating half hour, he didn’t find anything. He was feeling for hidden panels when he noticed a long tube propped against the side of the desk. One end was open and a large sheet of paper was rolled inside. He spread it on the desk and regarded it. It seemed to be plans for a device of some sort, but the conventions of the drawing and an unreadable notation left him with no understanding of what it was."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He did recognize bits of it from the notes and sketches on the table, however, which suggested that it was something of present concern to Hierem. So he studied it more carefully, and this time saw one word in the notations he understood. Umbriel. It could be anything. For all he knew it was a weapon designed to destroy the city, something the Synod had come up with. But he had the feeling that this was somehow key. If he actually took it, however, Hierem would instantly know something was wrong. He toyed with the idea of waiting, of murdering Hierem as Letine had suggested. Instead, he stole some paper from deep in one of the drawers and began copying, as best he could, the things that seemed most important. Letine traced her fingers over the lines of Colin’s drawings as he stroked his down her bare spine. “I’ve no sense of scale,” she said. “It could be the size of a thumb or a siege engine.” “And it might not be anything at all,” he said, and sighed. “It certainly isn’t the proof the Emperor asked for, at least not in this form. If only I could understand the language.” “Well, it’s not a language,” she said. “Or not exactly. It looks like Synod encryptions, the sort they use for secret communications. I’ve intercepted a few of them.” “Can you read it?” “No, but I recognize some of the symbols,” she said. “Obviously, you can see they use the same letters Tamrielic does, but the words are nonsense. Some of the symbols—these small ones after the passages, that look like funny letters themselves—these contain the key to reading the previous passage. I’m told once you have them memorized properly, it’s almost as effortless as reading. These others, these large ones—they represent whole ideas—usually spells, artifacts, certain sorts of energies—” She broke off. “How faithfully did you copy this?” she asked. “As well as I could,” he replied, “without understanding what I was reproducing. The drawing was most difficult—I can’t tell even what the parts are, what holds it together. I mean, this seems to be the bottom,” he added, pointing, “but that doesn’t make sense. It looks like it would just fall over.” “It’s not a drawing,” Letine said. “Or at least not a blueprint for a device. It’s more like a map.” He could hear the excitement creeping into her voice. “This, for instance—I’ve seen this before where it represented a soul gem—or at least the idea of something that can trap a soul. And here, this represents something that flows in only one direction, like a river.” “Then it is a plan, of sorts?” he asked. “Right. It could be a device, or a spell, or a series of spells involving—well, at least two arcane objects, this one and that one.” Colin drew himself closer. “If that’s the case,” he said, “this one might represent Umbriel.” He leafed through his copies of smaller sketches and notations."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“You see? The word ‘Umbriel’ is in the passage next to it.” “Possibly,” Letine allowed. “But if so, what is this one?” “You know, if you turn it this way,” he mused, “it looks familiar to me—I’ve seen it before, or something really close. Not in Hierem’s chambers, but when I was studying to enter the Penitus Oculatus.” “That’s a very different context,” she warned. “I know. It was used by necromancers, back before the Mages’ Guild schismed. It was used to designate ghosts, but the meaning was more complicated. I think it could also mean ‘shadow,’ or even ‘echo.’ ” “I don’t see how it can mean that here,” she said. “Not knowing any more than we do.” “What, then? Do you know anyone you trust in the Synod?” “Hierem is a member of the Synod,” she said. “Maybe we should just ask him.” “Well, it might come to that,” he said. “I know someone,” she said. “But he won’t like it if I bring company. You’re going to have to let me out of your custody for a little while.” “The Dark Brotherhood is still out there,” he said. “They don’t give up easily. I would rather you stayed put.” She turned and kissed him. “I’ll be careful. I’ll avoid anyplace I usually go, and I’ll go at night. Your protecting me is all very sweet, but I’ve been looking out for myself for a long time.” “Things are different now,” he reminded her. “Yes, and I’ll take that into account, right?” A flicker of irritation passed over her face. “Look,” she said, “just because you saved my life and we’ve been playing tussle-bug for a few days doesn’t mean you own me, Colin. What we have here is a common goal and mutual respect. If we don’t have that, then—” “Easy,” he said. “You’re right. You have as much right to risk your life as I do mine. I just selfishly don’t want you to die. Be that as it may, if you know someone who can tell us if we have something important here or just a recipe for soup, please, go find out.” “I’ll be careful,” she said again. “What will you do?” “Well, I still have a job,” he said. “Marall will want a report tomorrow. How long will this take?” “I don’t know,” she said. “It depends on a few things. A couple of days at most.” “Days?” “I have to leave the city.” “The city is surrounded,” he pointed out. She smiled. “A girl can’t give up all her secrets right away. Meet you back here in a day or two?” He nodded. “Right,” she said, and started dressing. “You’re going now?” “It’s dark outside,” she replied. “And time is of the essence, right?” “Yes,” he admitted. Despite his words, he wanted to grab her, tie her up if necessary. He had a terrible, wrong feeling in his gut, as if he were never going to see her again."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But he didn’t stop her when she went through the door. He walked along with her until their paths parted, and she gave him a little kiss on the cheek. Then he returned to his own apartment."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c21_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel TWELVE Mazgar gnashed her tusks as Brennus cleaned the cut in her back, but managed not to let any sound escape her. “You’re lucky,” he whispered. “Another inch and it would have been your spine.” “Luck is all I’m having lately,” she grunted back softly. “Hey,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically serious, “at least we got through. I’m not sure how many of the others did.” “I saw Falcus go down,” she said. “And Tosh.” She closed her eyes as he rubbed something in the wound and began to bandage it. She strained her senses at the young night but couldn’t make anything out but silence. Too much silence—no night birds, no dogs barking or wolves howling—just the wind and the rustling of leaves as hundreds, maybe thousands of the wormies strode through the forest below the rock shelter they’d found at dusk. Brennus used his sorcery to further hide them, deaden the sound of their voices, their scent, the life force in them. It had exhausted him, and they still hadn’t been certain it would be enough, but the wormies had been passing for more than an hour without noticing them. “At least we got a few decent meals,” she said. “And beer! I’d almost forgotten how good it is.” “We’ll get another,” he said, “when we reach the Imperial City.” “Yah,” she agreed. “That’s something to look forward to.” “Divines,” Brennus breathed. “Now, don’t get silly and start praying,” she said. “No, no,” he said. “Look.” She turned, and there it was, a blackness taking up the whole sky. Beneath it, long flickers like lightning reached up from the ground into the shadows, giving the illusion that something huge was walking by on hundreds of tentacles, only a few of which were visible at any given time. “Each of those is a death,” Brennus murmured. “A soul, drawn up to feed that thing’s engines.” “Do you think it’s caught up to the others?” she asked. “Not yet,” he replied. “Not at that pace. We gave them a good head start. Those must be farmers or hunters who either never got the word or were stubborn, like those who stayed in Cheydinhal.” “Idiots,” she muttered. “That’s likely them passing us down there right now.” “Right,” he murmured. He didn’t sound good. “You’re not dying on me, are you?” she asked. “I can’t reach back there, and in a few days it’s going to be itching.” “There you go,” he said. “That’s incentive to keep living—the promise of scratching your knobby back.” “Happy to help,” she said. “Now get some sleep. I’ll let you know if anything changes.” “You’re the one with the wound,” he said. “Yes, and it hurts too much to let me sleep, so do as I tell you, okay?” “Okay,” he said. He curled up on the stone floor, and in minutes he was snoring."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c21_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Mazgar watched Umbriel pass, running the battle back through her head: the mad charge with the Cheydinhal guard, breaking the wormies’ line. That hadn’t been so bad. But then they had to set up their own lines on either side of the gate as Cheydinhal evacuated, and that hadn’t been so much fun. It took hours, and the wormies didn’t rest, didn’t retreat or regroup. They just kept coming, wave after wave of them. In the end their line had been rolled up, and Falcus gave the command to fall back and regroup on the Blue Road—just before he took a spear in the throat. She and Brennus had been driven miles from the road, and now here they were. Suppose they managed to get around the army and rejoin what was left of the Cheydinhal guards and the Imperial company. Suppose they managed to stay ahead of that thing long enough to reach the Imperial City. What then? Another evacuation? Because, by Mauloch, what was going to stop that? As dawn slid red claws up from behind the world, she saw that the wormies had all passed, at least for the time being, so she shook Brennus awake. “You let me sleep all night,” he accused. “I never got sleepy,” she said. They packed quickly, starting off south and then turning west, alternating between jogging and walking, hoping to flank the main mass of the wormies. It was easy enough to see where they were, at least—Umbriel could be seen from any clear, elevated spot. But that also made it obvious they weren’t gaining very quickly on their objective. Most of the undead army marched together, but they were constantly sending out hunting parties in search of more bodies to steal. Brenn and she avoided two successfully, but were spotted by a third a few hundred yards behind them as they were crossing some fallow fields. They picked up their pace, but Mazgar knew Brennus wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long. She was right; less than an hour later he began to falter, and their pursuers started gaining. She spotted a farmstead up ahead and steered them toward that. It was abandoned, so they broke in and barricaded the door. There were no windows. “How many of ’em do you think there are?” Brennus asked as various implements began thudding into the door. “Fifteen, I guess.” “You can’t count any higher than that,” he said. “It could be thirty.” “Could be,” she said. “Doesn’t really matter, does it? They can only get at us one or two at a time.” “Oh, well, I can’t dispute that logic,” he said. There was a splintering sound, and daylight and the edge of an ax appeared. Mazgar rested Sister, point down, and took long, deep breaths, watching as the door disintegrated and the leering, rotting faces of the enemy appeared. “Stand back a bit,” Brennus said as the first of them came through."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c21_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“You save your strength,” she snapped, but it was too late. A sheet of white fire erupted from the earth a few feet on the other side of the door. She saw at least three of the things more or less disintegrated immediately. Half of one fell into the house, but it didn’t move again. She glared at Brennus, but he was sitting against the wall, eyes closed, face pallid. “All yours now,” he said. So she waited until the eldritch flame began to subside and then placed herself in the frame of the door so Sister could swing freely outside. But when the spell dissipated, she saw there weren’t any wormies left standing. She found herself regarding instead about twenty men in heavy armor, most astride barded horses. Two were dismounted, making certain the wormies weren’t going to get up. When they saw her, one of them doffed his helmet, revealing a dark Dunmer face. “I’m glad we got here in time,” he said. “We spied them chasing you from the hilltop a while back, but we had a lot of ground to cross.” He bowed his head a little. “I’m Ilver Indarys, and these are the Knights of the Thorn.” “Mazgar gra Yagash,” she said, “Imperial scouts.” “You were at Cheydinhal? You can tell us what happened? We were dealing with some of these things in the South—had no idea a whole army of them was coming down on the city. We found it empty.” “Most evacuated,” she told him. “We held them back long enough to give the refugees a head start, and that’s when we got cut off.” “Thanks Azura,” he murmured. “That’s good to know. They’re on the Blue Road, then? Ahead of that monstrous thing?” “Yes, so far as I know,” she replied. “We need to join them, then,” he said. “We have extra mounts, if you would like to ride with us.” “I would love a horse,” Brennus said from behind her. “Knowing you, you probably would,” Mazgar said. “Would you read it poetry first?” “Whatever it wants to hear,” he replied. “I was implying—” she began. “Right,” he said. “I got it. Can we go now?”"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel THIRTEEN When the stonework of the castle gave way to living rock, Irinja stopped. “It’s farther down there,” she said. “There’s a gate, with a lock. I don’t have the key. And I … I won’t go any farther.” “Why not?” Sul asked suspiciously. “I don’t want to see him. Or hear him,” she replied. “They say he wails and curses.” “Who comes down here?” Attrebus asked. “No one,” she replied. “Someone has to feed him.” She shook her head. “He quit eating after the first year. We kept bringing him food for another year more, but it always went untouched.” “And after he hadn’t eaten for a year—he was still wailing and cursing?” “Yes.” “Thanks, Irinja,” Attrebus said. “This will be far enough.” Her face seemed to darken in the light of the lantern and she looked down. Sul rolled his eyes and stepped a bit away. When they had a bit of privacy, Attrebus gave her a little kiss. “I hope you’re not sorry about last night,” he said. “I’m not,” she replied. “It was nice. I just don’t want you to think ill of me.” “I couldn’t do that, Irinja.” “I know you’re a prince. I know I was just a dalliance, and I never expected more. But I don’t want you to think I’m like this all the time. That I’m a bad person.” “I think you’re an excellent person,” he said. “Now—are we straight on that?” “Yes,” she said. “Just be careful. I don’t want you to get into trouble over this.” She shrugged, then kissed him lightly on the lips. “Goodbye,” she said, then turned and quickly retreated back up the stairs she had just led them down. “That wasn’t wise, letting her go,” Sul said. “Well, I don’t make a habit of punishing people for helping me,” Attrebus replied. “Anyway, it’s done.” “It certainly is,” Sul said. “Look, we know where the sword is, at least. You can thank me for that.” “I suppose I could thank parts of you, anyway,” Sul replied. “Your brain not among them. Never mind—let’s go.” The passage was roughly hewn, and continued down into the bedrock the castle stood upon for another sixty feet or so, then opened into what appeared to be a natural cavern. The gate Irinja had mentioned was there, but when Attrebus pushed experimentally on it, it swung open. He drew his sword and looked around, but on his side of the gate there was no place to hide. “I don’t like this,” Sul said. “Why? I don’t hear any wailing or cursing, do you? He’s dead. He’s been dead for years. Probably whoever tried to feed him last didn’t bother to lock the gate.” “I still don’t like it,” Sul said. “You stay here. I’ll go and find the sword.” “If he really killed all those people—” “Weren’t you just arguing he’s dead?” Sul snapped."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I was, but you don’t believe it.” “Just stay here and watch the gate.” “Fine. But if you need help—” “Right,” Sul said, waving him off. “I’ll call if I need you.” Attrebus watched him stride off into the darkness, until all he could see was the lamp he carried, growing smaller. Then Sul must have passed behind something. He rubbed his head. The hangover wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and for that he was grateful. Irinja’s attitude about their little tumble together was fortunate, because now that he was sober, he couldn’t shake the nearly unfamiliar feeling that he had done something wrong. He’d been with a lot of women, and never had any sense of guilt. That had changed now, and he knew that against all reason, he felt some sort of loyalty to Annaïg, a woman he had never seen in the flesh, much less been with. He was going to have to sort this out, because he didn’t like feeling guilty. But he understood that it couldn’t happen until they were actually together, face-to-face. As it was, the relationship was too fantastical. His ruminations were interrupted by the poke of something sharp in his back. He leapt forward—away from the pressure—and spun, drawing his sword, Flashing. The gate slammed in his face. On the other side stood Nirai Sathil. She smiled. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “I should rather ask what you are doing, sneaking around down here,” she replied, wagging her finger at him. “We were just exploring the castle,” Attrebus said, “and we got a bit lost.” “A bit,” Nirai replied sarcastically. “Look, I can explain,” Attrebus said. “I’m—” “Attrebus Mede,” she interrupted. “You’ve come here looking for the sword, Umbra, and you seduced—or think you seduced—our dear little Irinja to find out where it is.” “Irinja isn’t to blame,” Attrebus began, then stopped. “ ‘Think’ I seduced?” “I sent her to you, of course,” Nirai said. “After she told me what you wanted.” Attrebus closed his eyes, glad that Sul was out of earshot. “So you know what I want,” he said. “What do you want? Your father spoke to Sul yesterday, and he apparently didn’t know who I was.” “That’s because he doesn’t know,” Nirai said. “He doesn’t know about this either. He’s still protecting Elhul. After what he did! And he’s determined not to let any servant of Clavicus Vile take the weapon.” “Why?” “My father made certain pacts with Vile, and in exchange the prince asked him to find a certain sword in Morrowind. What Vile didn’t tell my father was what would happen when someone picked the sword up. The rest I think you know.” “I don’t serve Clavicus Vile.” “I don’t care if you do,” she said. “That’s my father’s obsession, not mine. I want this to be over with, finally. If you can get the sword from Elhul, you can have it, for all I care.” “Then why this game?"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Why lock us in?” “It’s just tidier this way,” she said. “And if one of you ends up picking up the sword and losing your mind, you’ll be safely jailed.” “We won’t pick it up,” Attrebus said. “Can’t count on that,” Nirai said. “Sorry. Good luck.” From somewhere in the back of the cave he heard Sul shout, and then an unholy sort of shriek. “You’d better hurry,” Nirai said. Cursing under his breath, Attrebus turned away from her and, holding his lantern in one hand and Flashing in the other, made his way as quickly as he could over the rough floor in the direction Sul had gone. The howling continued, a nerve-shivering, inhuman rasp that sometimes broke into what might be words in a language he didn’t know. Another few moments of stumbling brought him to the source. Sul had dropped—or maybe thrown—his lantern; it had shattered and was now a brightly burning pool of oil. In the ruddy light, Elhul Sathil was hideously revealed. He had skin but no flesh, and the skin fit him so tightly his bones were all plainly revealed. As he continued his terrible shrieking, Attrebus could see the apple of his throat bobbing, reminding him of a lizard or a frog. There was something strangely childlike in his gestures, the way his almost white eyes darted hesitantly between Sul and Attrebus. Attrebus almost didn’t notice the sword, it was so much a part of Elhul, just an extension of his arm with its tip resting on the floor. He glanced at Sul long enough to see the dark stain spreading on his arm. “I told you—” Sul began, but Elhul was suddenly bouncing toward Attrebus with unbelievable speed. There was no attempt at technique; Umbra chopped down toward him like a cleaver. He met the blade with Flashing’s flat edge. The blow drove him to his knees and sent arrows of pain into his shoulder. Gasping, he flung himself forward in an attempt to tackle the apparition—but although Elhul looked as if he only weighed sixty pounds, he felt as if he were made of cast iron. Elhul boxed his ears, and Attrebus stumbled back, his head ringing exactly like a bell. Elhul came after him. Lightning crackled about him but he didn’t miss a stride. Elhul lifted the black sword to strike again, and Attrebus drove Flashing into his solar plexus. Or tried to; the point didn’t break the withered black skin. Still, the impact sent Elhul back a step so that his swing smacked into the cave floor rather than Attrebus’s skull. Attrebus cut hard at his foe’s head; it felt like hitting a statue. Elhul shook it off as Attrebus backed away. Elhul stopped screaming, and then spoke. “Take it from him,” Elhul said, his voice curiously high-pitched, but imperiously demanding. “What?” Attrebus said, trying to gain more ground. “Take the sword from him, you idiot.” He seemed to have a hard time talking."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "His gaze was full of fury. Then his eyes changed, and so did his tone. “Please,” he whispered. Then he flung himself at Attrebus again. Attrebus jumped back and tripped, throwing Flashing’s point up in a feeble attempt to ward off the thing that had been Elhul Sathil. But Elhul stopped in mid-stride, his mouth open as if to scream again, though no sound issued. Instead a smoking green fluid vomited out. He clapped his free hand to his head as the same viscous stuff jetted from his eyes and ears. Holes began to burst in his abdomen, and he crumpled, breaking into pieces. Where the vitriol touched stone, it too began to dissolve. “Get back,” Sul said. “Don’t touch it.” “I wasn’t considering that, believe it or not,” Attrebus said, trying to keep his breakfast down. “That was—” But he didn’t have a word strong enough for whatever magic Sul had just used. “It worked,” Sul replied. “I was starting to think nothing would.” “Congratulations. How’s your arm?” Sul glanced at the wound as if he had forgotten it. “Not bad,” he said. “Nothing that won’t heal.” Attrebus looked back at the remains—which now consisted of a fuming green puddle—and the sword, which seemed untouched. “What now?” he asked. “We can’t pick it up without becoming like him, as I understand it.” “Probably not,” Sul said. “Look around—find something to wrap it in. It’s going to be a while before all the acid is gone anyway.” Only then did Attrebus notice the bodies. Most were merely bones, but a few were still fresh enough to smell. The light from his lantern and the dying flame that had been Sul’s were enough to reveal half a dozen. He didn’t want to know how many lay outside that illumination. As it turned out, they didn’t have to hunt hard or long; in a moldering pile of clothes and bedding they found a sheath. After about twenty minutes, when the floor finally stopped smoking, Sul pushed the scabbard onto Umbra. He stared at the blade for a few minutes, then picked it up by the sheath. His eyes widened and he muttered something under his breath that might have been some sort of incantation. “Even in its sheath,” he said, “stay away from this, Attrebus.” He tore one of the blankets and cut it into strips, first winding them around Umbra’s grip—careful not to touch it—then around the scabbard as well, until there were several layers of wool covering the whole weapon. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” “Yes,” Attrebus said. “About that …” Nirai was still there, and when she saw them—and the bundle they carried—she began to weep. “You did it,” she said. “I had begun to believe it was impossible.” “You’re going to let us out now,” Attrebus said. She lifted her head. “No,” she said, “I’m not. Not unless you leave the sword.” “You know who I am,” Attrebus told her. “I’ll be missed.” “You’re already missed,” Nirai said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“But no one knows you came here except a handful of us in this castle—and we keep to ourselves. Besides, from what I’ve heard, the Empire has more to worry about than a wayward prince.” She glanced at Sul and shook her head. “Don’t,” she said. “These bars are sorceled to turn spells back on their casters tenfold. Try to harm me, and you will pay the price.” “Wait,” Attrebus said. “We can talk about this. I know you don’t want us to die.” “I don’t,” she agreed. “Go back into the cave. Leave the sword there. I will return here with sufficient guards to protect me and set you free, on your honor to never return.” “What you just said about trouble in the Empire—you’re talking about Umbriel,” Attrebus said. “But that’s exactly why I need the sword. We need it to destroy Umbriel.” “For all I know, it already controls you,” she said. “I’m not at all certain the sword must be wielded to possess its owner. Proximity might be enough. But even so, at some point someone will put hand to it again, and then the sword will walk its new thrall right back here to kill all of us.” “Why?” “Don’t you know anything about that thing?” “Some.” “My father sent for every book and manuscript in existence, and some that were believed lost were found.” “Tell us what you know,” he said. “Convince me that we should leave Umbra here.” She dithered for a second or two, and he knew in that instant that Nirai wasn’t going to let them out no matter what, but was still trying to make herself easier about it, to convince herself there was no other choice. “The daedra prince Clavicus Vile wished a weapon made,” she said. “It was to be an instrument of mischief in Nirn, a source of amusement for him, a weapon that would send him souls. At first, however, he couldn’t find a smith who could do the work. He spent months—some sources say years—in frustration, until the witch Naenra Waerr came forth. She made the weapon, but it was unstable, and she told the prince that he would have to imbue it with some of his own power to make it whole and communicate with it on the mortal plane. Vile gave her the power she asked for. But it appears she tricked him, and some even speculate the witch was actually none other than Sheogorath, the Madgod, in disguise.” “Tricked him how?” “I said appears,” Nirai said. “It’s unclear whether what happened was part of a plan or merely the result of tampering with daedric forces. The sword is a soul stealer, and over time it comes to possess its owner."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But whether by design, or by contact with human souls, or simply because it is in the nature of daedric energies, in time the part of Vile that was in the sword became a thing of its own, a sentient being.” “Yes,” Attrebus said. “We know of that. The being of whom you speak has escaped the sword and now empowers the city of Umbriel. We wish to draw him—or his energies, I guess—back into the sword.” “I surmised that the creature Umbra was no longer in the sword,” Nirai said. “It still steals souls, but it is unstable, driving its wielder insane almost instantly. I believe this is because it is still in communication with Vile in some way. I have, in fact, come to believe that when Umbra left, Vile himself—or some significant fraction of what comprises him—is now, in turn, trapped in the sword. Whatever the truth is, no mortal mind can long survive the rage and madness in that weapon.” “Then let us make it whole again, and bring down Umbriel.” “But that’s what Vile wants,” Nirai replied. “And if that is what Vile wants, he shall not have it.” Her voice firmed up, became more confident. “And so I’m sorry. You must remain here.” “I thought that was your father’s obsession,” Attrebus said. “So did I,” she replied. “What if we agree to leave the sword, as you offered before?” “I’ve changed my mind,” she replied. “I no longer believe you would honor such a truce. You might have ways of making the sword invisible, or come back for it with others. I cannot release you.” The air quivered and then snapped in sharp report, and a slavering fiend appeared, hurling itself against the gate. Nirai screamed and leapt back, but the monster’s cry was ear-splitting. It caught fire and melted in great gobbets. “You see!” she gasped, then turned and fled. “You might have summoned it on the other side,” Attrebus said to Sul. “I tried,” he replied. “She’s right about that gate. There’s power at work that I can’t undo.” “What then?” Attrebus asked. “I have a feeling she’s not just going to let us starve to death now.” He brightened. “If she sends guards, they’ll have to open the gate to get to us.” “If it were me, I would send down clouds of noxious fumes,” Sul said, “or seal the passageway and let us suffocate. Or pour down barrels of oil and set them aflame, if there is no one here with such arcane knowledge.” “If her father made that weather at the valley, I’m sure he can do something pretty nasty to us if we’re trapped down here.” “My thought, too,” Sul agreed. “Can you take us into Oblivion?” Attrebus asked. “I don’t sense any weak spots in the walls between the worlds here,” he said. “At least not of the usual sort. Even if there were, it could take us anywhere."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt", "text": "When we traveled to Morrowind, we were on a trail known to me, one it took me decades to work out. When we escaped Vuhon, we survived only due to the whim of a daedra prince.” “Then—wait, what do you mean, ‘of the usual sort’?” Sul glanced at the wrapped-up weapon in his arms. “I sense something here,” he said. “And if what Nirai says is true, we might have a chance at entering Oblivion and escaping this place.” “But wouldn’t that take us straight to Clavicus Vile?” “I think so, yes.” “And didn’t you tell me that would be a bad thing?” “Yes,” Sul said, “but now our options have dwindled, and here we’re faced with the bad thing and the worst thing.” “Maybe there are options we haven’t considered.” “Name them. I will consider them.” “Just let me think.” Sul nodded and sat down. After thinking for about fifteen minutes, Attrebus heard odd sounds coming from the stairwell. “Anything?” Sul asked. Attrebus shook his head. “Nothing. Not a single thought. Except that even if we get through that gate and out of the castle, we’ll still never reach Umbriel before it gets to the Imperial City, not unless you have some other little trick I don’t know about.” “If we could get back to the ruins of Vivec City, I could take us back onto my track. But getting there will take weeks, probably.” “Assuming we can find a boat that will sail boiling water without cooking us. No, I think we might as well pay Clavicus Vile a visit. Maybe he’ll be in a hospitable mood.” Sul took out the ointment he’d made back in Water’s Edge, what seemed ages ago, and dabbed some on Attrebus’s forehead. Then he stood the sword on its tip; he didn’t unwrap it, but instead closed his eyes and put his skull against the wrapping on the hilt. For a long time nothing happened, except the air began to stink. Then something like a fist seemed to grab him, yanking him so hard the blood rushed from his head and black spots danced before his eyes. He struck something, hard, and the wind left him. The air still smelled bad, but it wasn’t the same stench that had been building in the cave. And as Sul managed to lift his head, he saw they weren’t in the cave any longer, but elsewhere."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c23_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel ONE Annaïg drifted across a floor of rose-colored crystal that gently rose and fell like the frozen swells of an ocean. It met the walls in gradual curves and then lifted into a vast, lucid canopy veined with softly shifting hints of color. Men and women danced on the uncertain floor, stepping, sometimes gliding, often leaving the surface altogether for a time, as weight was less present here than it was elsewhere in Umbriel. Filmy gowns of viridian, azure, hazel, and lemon spun out impossibly wide as they turned, and each garment chimed musical notes that subtly harmonized or clashed with those around them. “Who are they?” she asked Rhel. “Why, your peers, of course,” he replied. “There can’t be this many chefs in Umbriel.” “Certainly not,” he replied. “Only eight chefs stand high enough to join this company. But surely you don’t believe cooking is the only art valued by the lords of Umbriel? We love artistry of every sort, and thus value artists of all kinds. These are the most successful of them. Luel, there, he helped create this very room. Ten days ago it was a dark jungle, an homage to the first land we saw on coming here—your homeland, as I understand it. It was wonderful, of course, but a few days and everything becomes boring. There is no worse taste than stasis, and I won’t be accused of it.” “This is all yours?” “Rhel Palace,” he said. “Greatest of the eight, if I say so myself.” “How long has it been yours?” Even with eyes as strange as his, she sensed his puzzlement. “It has always been mine,” he replied. “I built it before Umbriel ever began its voyaging.” “Oh,” she said. “I am a high lord, Annaïg. We do not move through cycles as you do. We have always been and we remain. We were here at the beginning, and if there is an end we will be there, too.” “I didn’t know,” she replied. “No one ever spoke of it to me.” “I’m sure they assumed you knew, as I did. You mean to say that the lords in your world are not immortal?” “For the most part, no,” she said. “The world down there isn’t much like this one at all.” “Well, that’s a pity,” he said. “But you’re here now.” He touched her shoulder. “Enjoy yourself—I must attend to Umbriel.” She nodded and, not quite knowing what to do with herself, walked carefully to the wall and looked out upon the Fringe Gyre and the landscape of Tamriel beyond. She saw mountains in the distance, forest and fields nearer, and wondered where they were now. “Congratulations,” someone said. She turned and found Phmer towering over her. “Thank you,” she replied, not knowing how else to respond. “I always knew that Toel’s arrogance would be his downfall,” Phmer said, following Annaïg’s gaze out into the world beyond."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c23_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“He certainly underestimated you.” “I’m not sure what you mean,” she replied. “Don’t insult my intelligence,” she said, and sighed. “Toel’s body was found in my kitchens. Now—I know that I didn’t put him there. I wondered how you could have done it until it became common knowledge that your friend was the leader of the skraws, and now it all comes together. You set us at each other’s throats. Perhaps you killed Toel by your own hand; perhaps your friend did it. It was all clever enough, I grant you. But I’m going to give you just this one warning, because there is something I like about you. You were able to accomplish all of this because no one knew just how devious you are—you played the guileless foreigner so well. Toel should have understood his danger when you framed Slyr, but—as I said—his arrogance got in the way. I will never underestimate you again, however. I do not think I am alone in that.” “I’ll bear that in mind,” Annaïg said. Phmer smiled, and lifted a finger toward the crystal wall. “Do you miss your world?” “My world doesn’t exist anymore,” she said. “I don’t even know what country that is down there.” “It is very large,” the chef said. “I find the idea of such a large world unappealing. One would always be lost, I should think. One would have trouble finding one’s place. Look how quickly you found yours here.” She wanted to protest, but the fact was, it was true. In Lilmoth her life had been essentially aimless. She might have spent her whole existence without discovering a direction, never learned what a monster lurked beneath her skin, just waiting for an excuse to manifest. But Umbriel had brought it out of her in quite a short time. Maybe this was her destiny. Maybe this was where she belonged. Did she really care what happened to Attrebus and his empire? Hadn’t that just been a childish affectation, like everything else about her before coming here? She noticed that Phmer was walking away, and was glad. She idled another hour, speaking to no one, and then returned to her kitchen. Yeum looked up when she entered. “How was it?” she asked. “Perhaps Rhel will allow me to send you as my proxy,” she said. “That way we should probably both be happier.” “Toel enjoyed the company.” “Well, I’m not Toel.” Yeum bent back to her task. “They caught someone sneaking in from the pantry,” she said. “Do you want to see her, or shall I just have her killed?” “Sneaking in to do what?” Annaïg asked. “She had a knife. She was looking for you.” Annaïg stood still for a moment, feeling as if she were shrinking somehow. How many people wanted to murder her now? How long could she last? Divines, was Yeum even telling the truth, or was this some sort of prank or trap? “I’ll see her,” she finally said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c23_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Where is she?” “In the cell, of course.” “We have a cell?” “Certainly. Where do you think Toel put his prisoners?” “I didn’t know he had prisoners,” Annaïg said. “In any case, where is it?” “I’ll take you,” Yeum said. She led the way, and Annaïg was careful to stay a few steps behind her. The woman glared at Annaïg through the bars. She was young and pretty, and looked like a Dunmer. She wore peach-colored knee britches and a brown top. She didn’t look much like a killer. “Are you her?” the woman blurted. “Annaïg?” “Yes. Who are you?” “My name is Fhena.” “Mere-Glim’s friend.” “So he told you about me,” she said defiantly. “I came down here to kill you. Everyone knows what you did. He thought you were his friend. He loved you. And now his poor body is all cut up.” “I loved him, too,” she said. “So you killed him? That doesn’t make any sense.” Her eyes were wide and sad, and Annaïg felt just how fragile her anger was, sensed the artless innocence that lay behind the brave facade. Or was that only how it seemed? Was she just trying to get a chance to strike? But this Fhena was Glim’s friend, and she owed Glim. “I want to show you something,” she told the woman. “If I let you out of there, will you promise not to try to hurt me?” “I don’t think I could have done it anyway,” Fhena said after a moment. “I just don’t understand. I have to understand why you would do this to him.” “Then come with me.” She took the woman to her rooms, which had once been Toel’s, and led her back to the bath. “There,” she said. Fhena knelt and stared into the water at the translucent sack and the reptilian figure it contained. She looked up with tears in her eyes. “It looks like him,” she said. “Smaller.” “It doesn’t just look like him,” Annaïg said. “It is Glim.” Fhena’s red eyes were huge as she looked back at the embryo. “Is it?” she breathed. “If I hadn’t killed him, someone else would have,” Annaïg explained. “This was the only way, as far as I could see.” “But his body was cut up, parts of it everywhere …” “True. They had to believe he was gone. The drug I put in the water killed him, but it also made his body grow a crystal, a matrix containing his soul, his thoughts, memories—him. It’s similar to what we call a soul gem—and also, I believe, to your ingenium. I used that to quicken a proform, and here he is.” “How long?” she wondered. “How long does it take?” “I was able to speed up the process with him,” Annaïg said. “He’ll have an adult body in a matter of days.” “And he’ll know me?” “He’ll remember everything.” Fhena clapped her hands together in delight. “That’s wonderful,” she said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c23_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“He thinks so much of you—I should have known. I should have known it wasn’t true.” “I did kill him, Fhena. His body died, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for that. Or if he will ever forgive me, for that matter.” “But you just said it was the only way to save him.” “It was the only way I could think of,” she replied. “But that doesn’t clean my hands.” “But he’s coming back to us,” she said. Annaïg nodded, not knowing how to respond. She had been forced to delay poisoning the trees until Glim could come out of the water—otherwise he would die with them. But the instant he was conscious, she planned to do it. If it worked, Umbriel would be crippled or destroyed, and there was a small chance that she and Glim might be able to escape. If it didn’t work … “Listen to me,” she said softly. “There are other Argonian bodies growing in the sump. Only you and I will know this is Glim, do you understand? No one else can know, or he won’t be safe.” “I understand that.” “Make him understand that,” she said. “Why can’t you?” Fhena asked. “I hope to, but it may not be possible. If anything happens to me, you have to take care of him.” Fhena turned her gaze back to the tub. “I’m not very smart,” she said. “I’m not strong at all. But I’ll do my best.” She ran her fingers gently over the sack. Annaïg’s throat felt tight, so she left Fhena there with him and sat on the balcony, watching the life of Umbriel, wishing for its ruin."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel TWO Attrebus found himself on his back, staring up at what appeared at first to be a few cottony clouds in a perfectly blue sky. But as he garnered his strength to rise, he noted odd unsettling patches, greenish-gray streaks that didn’t appear to be clouds but were more like stains on the sky itself. He pushed himself up and saw Sul doing the same. They had landed in a field of white clover—a woodland meadow that might have come right out of the paintings of Lythandas of Dar-Ei. But like the sky, a close look revealed withered, twisted foliage and odd melted-looking places that his eyes couldn’t focus on. Beneath the perfume of wildflowers, the breeze carried a scent of profound decay, like a wound gone to gangrene. “That was different,” Attrebus said, glancing at Sul. “It never felt like that when we traveled in Oblivion before.” “That’s because we didn’t travel here,” Sul said. “We were summoned.” Attrebus caught a motion from the corner of his eye and faced it. A small white dog was watching them from the edge of the clearing, where a little path wound off into the woods. It twitched its head toward the trail and wagged its tail excitedly. “You think he wants us to follow him?” “I think that’s safe to say,” Sul said. “Safe to say, but safer to do,” the dog added in a yappy little voice. Attrebus felt he should have been surprised, but somehow he wasn’t. “Do we have a choice?” Attrebus asked, pointing the question at Sul. Unless the dog was really Clavicus Vile—which, given his experience with Malacath, wasn’t impossible—they didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger. The Dunmer shook his head in the negative. “Follow the dog,” he said. The dog led them from the clearing along the little trail, where the vegetation seemed to grow progressively sicklier. They crossed a brook on a fallen log, and he saw fish floating on the surface, their gills working desperately. Something fluttered by in the trees, which he at first perceived to be a bird, then a butterfly the size of a hawk, and finally a caterpillar with wings. They wound along a spiral trail up a hill, where they found a table large enough to seat thirty or so, with whimsically slim legs that terminated in hooves. Now and then one of the hooves would lift and stamp, rattling the empty plates and cups on the table. Beyond the hill, the colors of the world seemed to melt and flow before the sky gave way completely to shimmering chaos. From this height, Attrebus could see that the trees and grass only extended a mile or so in any direction before similarly dissolving at the edges."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Seated at the head of the table, on a large wooden throne, was what appeared to be a boy of perhaps thirteen or fourteen years, although his lack of shirt displayed a paunch that would have been more at home on a middle-aged beer glutton. He had what appeared to be a goat horn growing from above his right eyebrow, but over the left there was a festering sore. He had his bare feet up on the table crossed at the ankles, and a mean little smile showed on his face. His eyes were most peculiar; Attrebus somehow could not focus on them, but his impression was contradictory: They seemed empty, but empty in a way that nevertheless held limitless meaning. When the boy saw Sul and Attrebus, he laughed. It was an eerie laugh, almost like the imitation of one, although there seemed to be a tinge of genuine madness there as well. The dog hopped up on the table. “I give you Prince Clavicus Vile,” it announced, and then fell over and began licking itself. The boyish figure inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment. Then he pointed a finger. “You, Sul. Bring me that thing.” “We bring it in good faith,” Sul said. “We wish to discuss a compact.” “A compact,” Vile said, exaggerating Sul’s Dunmer accent. “Oh, do you? Oh, very well. Why don’t you sit here, and be the daedra prince, and I’ll just stand down where you are and be the stupid mortal who doesn’t know exactly how close he is to being a turnip. Or a boil on a turnip.” He turned to the dog. “Do turnips get boils?” “Galls, I think,” the dog replied. “Not boils.” “Whatever,” Vile said. He turned back to Sul. “I don’t have to ask nicely, you know. It’s mine.” Something happened, but it was too fast for Attrebus to see. Sul grunted and dropped to his knees, and Vile—still in his chair—had Umbra. “Don’t think I’m weak,” Vile said. “Everyone who comes here now thinks I’m weak, just because a wee bit of my stuff has been stolen. The trick is, if you’ve got less to work with, you just don’t spread it so thin. My realm may be a little smaller than in happier times, but in it I’m just as strong as I ever was.” “Well,” the dog said, “I wouldn’t go that far.” “Hush, Barbas, before I feed you to my hounds.” “Which would be me, sir,” the dog said. “If you’re after making a point, I really don’t take it,” Vile said as he unwrapped the blade. When he touched it, a shudder went through him, and he cast it on the table. “Well, it’s no good to me like that,” he said. “Sul, don’t you at least know better than to bring it to me like that?” Sul was having trouble answering, however. He was still on his hands and knees. “What are you doing to him?” Attrebus demanded."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“What?” the daedra asked, and then blinked. “Oh, right.” Sul suddenly heaved a deep breath. He sat back on his heels, gasping. “Haven’t I always done my best by you people?” Vile asked. “Haven’t I always tried to provide instruction and opportunities for you to improve yourselves? I’ve treated you with good humor, like equals, really. And where is the respect I’m due? Really, I’m just tired of it now.” He sat back. “Just tired. Really.” “We know what happened to Umbra,” Attrebus said. “We know where he is. That’s why we’ve been looking for the sword in the first place.” “First of all,” Vile said, “let’s not go calling anyone ‘Umbra.’ There is no Umbra. This—thing—that suffers from the delusion that it is its own—person—is actually nothing of the kind, do you understand? No more than a stone rolling down a hill is capable of real self-locomotion. Or an abacus of doing math by itself. What was in this sword was me, plain and simple. If someone cut your leg off and the leg starting calling itself ‘Umbra,’ it would still be your leg, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t humor it, would you? Help it out with its delusions of grandeur?” “No, certainly not,” Attrebus said. “There you go,” Vile said. “That’s just what I’ve been saying. Not nearly so dumb as you look.” His strange eyes narrowed and he put on a boyish smile. “But go on. You were telling me where the rest of me is.” “In Tamriel, in a city known as Umbriel.” “Again,” Vile snarled, “the name of the city isn’t Umbriel. I created it, me. Its real name is—” He scratched his chin. “Well, I don’t remember. But it isn’t Umbriel. More, with the putting on airs.” Vile swung his feet from the table and leaned forward, bracing his hands against the table. “So it’s in Tamriel now? I’ve caught glimpses of it, now and then, but how could he possibly have gotten into Nirn?” “We’re not sure of that ourselves,” Attrebus said. “But we’re determined to stop Um—ah, your city.” “By returning what was stolen to the sword,” Vile said thoughtfully. “Yes.” “And then you were just going to bring the sword back to me, weren’t you?” Vile said. “Ah—of course,” Attrebus agreed. “You most certainly were not,” Vile said. “But that’s fine, things have changed. You’ve come to me for a reason.” Attrebus looked at Sul, who gave him a warning glance. “The city of which we speak is destroying Tamriel,” Attrebus said. “It’s on its way to the Imperial City.” “Is it?” Vile said. Attrebus thought the daedra’s ears actually twitched. “Ah, I see. And you found the sword in Solstheim. So you don’t have time to get there. This is really funny.” “I don’t see how,” Attrebus said. “I should think you would want us to reach it.” “I want what was stolen from me,” the daedra admitted."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“That means someone has to stab this nonentity that calls itself Umbra with that sword. Given the circumstances of the city’s existence, I can take it from there. But it doesn’t matter to me if that happens sooner or later, does it?” “But if you wait until my country—my people—are destroyed, why would I help you then?” “It needn’t be you; I have mortal followers, lots of them.” “I don’t understand, then,” Attrebus said. “What do you want from us?” “What he wants is a deal,” Sul said. “A contract.” “Now, there you go,” Vile said. “A man who knows the ways of the world. Or worlds, as it were.” “What sort of deal?” Attrebus asked. “Well—one of your souls will do.” “That’s outrageous,” Attrebus said. “Very well,” Vile said. “I’ll just send you on your way, then. Without the sword.” “If it’s a soul you want—” Sul began. “Stop!” Attrebus commanded. And Sul actually did, his lips in mid-syllable. “The pup is barking,” Barbas said. Sul and Vile both turned withering gazes on him, but he held himself straight. “Vuhon is taking Umbriel to the Imperial City for a reason,” Attrebus said. “It has to do with the White-Gold Tower. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I think you do. I think if he gets to the White-Gold Tower, you lose, which means you need us, now—not some followers who might or might not do the job in the future. You’re just trying to trick us, get a little extra out of it. So there is only one deal here, Prince Clavicus Vile—you get us as close to Umbriel as possible, and you do it immediately. We get your missing power back, we’re rid of Umbriel. No conditions.” Vile hunched forward, his face wrinkling in a sneer. “Do you honestly think you can talk to me like that? That after that little bit of impertinence I’ll just let you alone?” “You don’t have a choice, unless you plan for this dreary little realm to be all you have for the rest of time,” Attrebus rejoined. Vile smiled and leaned back. “Right then,” he sighed. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll let you alone. There are costs, whether a bargain is struck or not. You’re clever, but you don’t think toward the long term, and you will regret it eventually. But here we are. Fine. Take the sword, but be careful not to wield it until it’s time to thrust it in, yes? And I’ll put you close. I can’t put you in my city because he’s made it so I can’t see it, but if it’s going to the Imperial City, why don’t I just send you there?” “That sounds good to me,” Attrebus replied. “Well, what are we waiting for?” the daedra asked, his tone brightening. “Good meeting you fellows. Best of luck to us all, eh? At least for now.” He gestured for Sul to pick up the sword."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The Dark Elf rewrapped it and slung it on his back. Then Clavicus Vile waved them away with his hand, and they were gone. Attrebus had come to expect surprises moving to and from Oblivion, but that didn’t stop him from yelping when he appeared ten feet off the ground. He waved his arms desperately, striking a tree, which overbalanced him. He landed on his heels going back, and his butt took a lot of the force before his spine slapped into the pine needles and the all-too-solid earth they covered. He kept his wind, and almost felt like laughing. Had Vile dropped them on purpose? Or was the daedra prince even weaker than he let on, and not in good control of his powers? Sul would know. Attrebus stood up and brushed off, then looked around for his companion, but didn’t see him in the immediate vicinity. What he did see was a large stone statue of Clavicus Vile with a dog at his side, albeit a much larger animal than the one they’d just encountered. A clearing surrounded the statue, but gave way to forest pretty quickly in every direction. He had heard rumors that there was a shrine to Vile somewhere west of the Imperial City, not far from the Ring Road. If this was it—and that made a certain amount of sense—then they didn’t have too far to go. He looked around again, this time more carefully. Dark things were supposed to happen at places like this, and even though the daedra himself had sent them here, that didn’t mean they were safe from his followers. Closer inspection didn’t reveal anyone else, but he did notice Sul’s boot sticking out from behind the shrine. “Sul?” he cried, running across the clearing. Sul was breathing, but his eyes were closed and he was bleeding from a nasty gash in his head. He must have fallen, too, but hadn’t been as lucky as Attrebus. “Hey, Sul!” Attrebus patted him on the cheek, but that didn’t draw a response. He poured some water from his skin and washed the wound. He couldn’t see any bone, and the skull didn’t seem dented. He stripped off the heavy coat he wore and cut strips of the lining, then tied the bandage around Sul’s head. Through all of that, the Dunmer showed no signs of waking up. Attrebus sat there for a moment, trying to decide what to do. He felt very alone, and it began to sink in exactly how much he relied on the old man for strength, knowledge—even occasional encouragement. What if the wound was more serious than it looked? What if Sul was dying? Would he have any chance of finishing this? A chance, maybe, but a much bleaker one than if he had the sorcerer at his side. He couldn’t just sit here, could he? But on the other hand, sometimes those who were injured ought not to be moved. Maybe he should go for help."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But the nearest village could be hours away—even if he knew which way to go—and that would give wild animals far too much time to find a fine, easy meal. He cut up more of the horker hide coat and chopped off some willow branches, which he then spent an hour or so fashioning into a travois. A few moments later he was dragging Sul through the forest, worried, but feeling a sense of accomplishment. He was pretty sure he knew which direction the Ring Road was, and from there he could find almost anything. It was slow going in the woods, and he had to stop frequently to reposition the makeshift harness or to rest. He was sure there was a better way to design a travois, but he’d never had occasion to build one before, and although he had seen them, he hadn’t studied their structure. He dithered a bit about where he ought to go. If they were west, the Imperial City was close, but so was his hunting lodge in Ione. Should he go there first, get Sul tended to, acquire some guards? Or go straight for the Imperial City? Attrebus reached the road more quickly than he thought he would, an hour or so before sundown. Lake Rumare was the most beautiful thing he had seen in a long time, its familiar waters turning coral as the evening deepened. The familiar cries of curlews and coots were music to him. And then there was the Imperial City itself, standing proud and strong on its island, the White-Gold Tower at its center like a pillar holding up the heavens—as some claimed it actually did. For Attrebus, however, it was proof that his quest had been worth it, that he wasn’t too late. His father would listen to him now. With or without Sul, they would invade Umbriel somehow and return Umbra to his sword. It still wasn’t dark when he saw a small fishing settlement, built on an old stonework that probably dated back to Ayleid times. He was vacillating about checking to see if they had any sort of healer when he thought he heard something odd behind him. Turning, he saw them. For an instant his heart took wing at the sight of a military formation; to run into a patrol at this point would be excellent luck. But he’d apparently had his allotment of that today, because a few seconds of watching them approach resolved the truth. They wore no uniforms and carried a motley assortment of weapons. These were Umbriel’s unholy warriors. He turned off the road, picking up his pace, dragging Sul toward the village. It seemed like a long way, but frequent glances back didn’t show pursuit, so maybe they hadn’t seen him. Hiding behind a house built of driftwood, he watched the hideous procession pass, reckoning their number at about twenty. The sun was gone by then, but Masser stood bright in the sky as he searched the village."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It had been abandoned, he couldn’t tell how long ago. At the little floating dock, however, he found a small boat, complete with oars. He glanced at the silhouette of the Imperial City. He hadn’t seen Umbriel in the sky; he thought he should if it were here. That meant the walking corpses could go far from their city, which surprised him a bit, although given what Annaïg had told him, there wasn’t any reason why they shouldn’t be able to do that. He didn’t have any idea how many were here, but it was a good bet that if they were moving freely on the Ring Road, there were a lot of them. Possibly the city was under siege. Either way, the boat looked better than the road at the moment. Sul needed help sooner rather than later, he was starving, and he didn’t think there would be food or medicine in the abandoned village. So without further deliberation, he got Sul off his traveling frame and into the boat, then began rowing toward the distant lights of the Waterfront District."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c25_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel THREE Around midnight Sul began to moan in his sleep. His arms jerked and fingers twitched, and Attrebus hoped he wasn’t trying to conjure something or set fire to an imaginary foe. He took it as a good sign, although he knew that didn’t come from any medical knowledge, but rather from the feeling that when it came to a man who was unconscious, it seemed better if he was doing something rather than nothing. It suggested his soul was still bound up with his heart. That there was no obvious pursuit he did not take as any sign at all, although it gave him plenty to think about. He knew from experience that Umbriel’s creatures didn’t need boats or anything of the sort; he’d seen them emerge from the boiling waters that surrounded the shattered remnants of Vivec City. If any of them were following him, he wouldn’t see them. Still, those on the road seemed not to have spotted him, or at least not to have cared if they did. That didn’t fit his previous experience with them or Annaïg’s testimony. Their pattern was to kill everything they came across—or at least everything with a soul of the sort Umbriel preferred, which seemed to be those of sentient beings. But then again, Annaïg had said that the souls of the dead were drawn up into the city by crystalline threads, and so only those killed directly beneath the city fed it. The ones he’d just seen weren’t beneath Vuhon’s city, and by the way they marched, he imagined they were on task—either looking for Imperial patrols to slaughter or, more likely, heading to the causeway to put it under siege, or to join one already in progress. In that case they well might ignore the stray traveler. Another thing occurred to him as well: The last time he had met these creatures, they had somehow known who he—or at least Sul—was. Would they know him if they saw him here? Or was he even making the right assumption? After all, Vuhon might have ordered them to capture anyone at the site where the sword was supposed to be and only recognized Sul later. Maybe Annaïg would know more, and since his arms felt like they were about to fall off from rowing, he withdrew Coo from his battered haversack and opened the locket door. At first there wasn’t anything, but then her face appeared. He felt a grin start on his face, but then saw hers wasn’t nearly as welcoming. “What is it?” he asked. “Are you able to talk now?” “I am,” she said. “I’m so happy I can accommodate you.” “Something’s the matter,” he said. “What’s happened?” She appeared to be in a bedchamber illuminated by several glowing orbs. There wasn’t anything furtive about the way she acted, not like usual. No, she actually seemed to be mad at him."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c25_r1.htm.txt", "text": "As if she knew about Irinja, which hardly seemed possible … But then he felt a guilty little burn in his belly-pit. He remembered taking Coo off the table that morning. Had the door been open? Had she seen … “Look—” he began. She waved him off. “You don’t owe me any explanations, Prince,” she said. “I’m not as foolish as you might think. It’s just that things here are very—complicated.” “How so?” “I’d rather not say right now,” she said. “I’m still working it out. I’ve a list of things you might like to know, however, if you have a moment.” “A few,” he said, starting to feel a little angry himself. “Things are a little tough here, too, you know. Sul is hurt—he may be dying. I’ve just had to face down another Oblivion prince, and I’m trying to paddle across Lake Rumare, which on a pleasant day with a picnic basket might be nice but at the moment is rather a lot, considering. I’m sorry if your feelings were hurt somehow. I can only tell you that anything I did was to further our cause, not to—” “For our cause?” she half shouted, her eyebrows lifting high. But then she closed her eyes, and her forehead smoothed until she just looked tired. “What is our cause, Prince?” she asked softly, looking at him again. “I’m not sure what my cause is anymore.” “Look—” “No,” she said, cutting him off. “You don’t understand. And it’s my fault, because I don’t want to tell you. Not right now. I just don’t want to talk about it. You think it’s about that girl, but it’s not, you see? It’s about who I am. I’m not who I thought I was. The person I believed I was could never—” She stopped and passed her hands over her eyes. “I can’t argue now,” she said. “I don’t have the strength for it. I’m going to try something in a few days. It might work and it might not. If it doesn’t, I want someone else to know what I’ve learned since we last spoke. That’s all I want of you, Attrebus. That’s all I need you for.” “Listen,” he said. “I’m almost to the Imperial City, Annaïg. You just have to hang on a little while longer. But I understand you. Tell me what you’ve learned, and know we’ll put it to good use.” She nodded, and then spoke of strange trees and stranger births and poisons that might bring it all down—but nothing about herself. “Have I ever told you how brave you are?” he asked. “How strong? Stronger than me. I know something about making unpleasant discoveries about yourself. But I know that whatever you may have done, you had to do it, and it was for the best.” “How?” she murmured. “How can you?” “Because I’ve listened to you,” he said. “I’ve heard you."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c25_r1.htm.txt", "text": "And I believe in you.” Something flickered a little in her eyes, and her mouth quirked to the side. “Those are fine words,” she said. “I have to go now.” “Wait,” he said. “May I contact you tomorrow?” “If I’m still alive,” she replied. Then she closed her locket. He sat there for a moment, watching Sul breathe, and then put his back into rowing. When Secundus rose, he could see the waterfront not far ahead. It was on an island, separated from the city, with the harbor facing inward. The old stone buildings formed a semicircle enclosing the harbor, and he was coming up from behind. In the pale light he could see the hundreds of shacks, shanties, and lean-tos that crowded between the wall and the water, and in fact many were built raised up from the water. He smelled the stink of it already, the various stenches of human waste, rotting fish and offal, cheap beer. He thought about going around, but it was a long way and he was tired of rowing, so he passed as noiselessly as possible through the stilts and ladders of the outer houses. He’d been to the shantytown before, when he was fifteen, curious to see the poorest and most dangerous part of the city and attracted by its reputed vices. He didn’t remember it being this silent—even at night there was usually drunken singing, screams, fighting. Now it was as still as the village he’d taken the boat from. Had the people here also fled Umbriel’s hosts? He slowed his approach, squinting to make out if anyone was on the shore. The boat rocked, gently, then more forcefully. He looked back to see what he’d bumped and saw a hand gripping the hull. For an instant he just stared at it, but then it was joined by another, and another, as decaying limbs rose from the water and gripped the gunnels. With a shout he drew his sword and began chopping at them. They came off easily, but he felt the boat rise and realized there were more of them—many more—beneath, lifting the vessel. He leaned over and tried to cut at them, but he couldn’t get a good angle, and the boat continued to ascend as its bearers took it ashore. Desperate, he tried to get Sul on his back, planning to fight through them. If he could get around to the harbor, it might still be manned by Imperial guards. But then the boat tipped and dumped them both unceremoniously into the stinking, muddy shallows. He swatted blindly for a few seconds before they had him disarmed and held tight. And as before, they didn’t kill him. Instead they dragged him farther inland, to one of the nicer cabins, and milled about it for a while. They didn’t appear to care if he called for help, so he did, with sinking hopes that it would do any good."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c25_r1.htm.txt", "text": "After a time, however, the door opened and he saw a lantern. The face revealed in the light appeared human and alive. He was probably on the other side of forty, with a large bald spot in his reddish hair. He had a notch in his left ear. “Well, now,” he said. “What’s this?” “Came from the water,” one of the things gripping Attrebus rasped. “Can we have him?” The fellow held the lamp closer to Attrebus, and his eyes widened. “I don’t think so, fellows,” he said, shaking his head. “Who would have thought it? Well, I guess he did, and by Malacath, it weren’t a waste of time at all.” “I warn you,” Attrebus began, chilled by the man’s casual oath. “If you don’t release me—” The man laughed. “That’s him all right. Don’t worry, prince-me-boy. I’ll not be keeping you. I’m sending you right along.” “To where?” “Someplace—nicer.” He looked over Attrebus’s shoulder. “Umbriel?” “Naw, not there. You’re going to the palace, boy-o.” “Then tell these things to let me go. I can walk there.” “I trust you could, but I’ve been told not to let you exert yourself.” “By whom?” “Patience, m’lad.” “My friend is hurt—” “Yes, well, that’s not up to me,” the man said. He went back into the cabin and came out followed by a sleepy-looking Khajiit and a Bosmer woman. One of them put a bag over his head. He tried to shout, but after a few breaths of something with a funny smell, his senses dimmed and were replaced by strange, vividly colored dreams. He woke up to the smell of cinnamon tea and a face with eyebrows like fuzzy caterpillars perched over calm blue eyes. It was a very familiar face. “Hierem!” he exclaimed. He looked around. They were in a sort of parlor, decorated in odd alchemical devices and Ayleid curiosities. Attrebus was in an armchair. He tried to stand up but found he couldn’t; his body seemed immensely heavy. “What is this?” he demanded. “Let’s be honest,” Hierem purred. “There’s no love lost between you and I. We’ve never much liked each other, that is to say.” “Release me, now,” Attrebus snapped. “When my father finds out—” “But your father isn’t going to find out,” Hierem said. “Not unless I choose to inform him.” “Do you plan to kill me, then?” “Eventually,” Hierem nodded, “when I’m certain I have no use for you—when this whole business is over.” He smiled. “Really thought you were going to play the hero again, didn’t you?” Attrebus gritted his teeth. “What about Sul?” “He’s better, for the moment. His wounds have been doctored, but I’ve kept him asleep. He’s far too dangerous otherwise, from what I can tell.” He settled back into his chair. “Odd weapon he was carrying.” Attrebus felt a little thrill of hope. Did Hierem not know what Umbra was? “Is it?” he asked. “Yes. Lielle, one of the ones who brought you here, drew it and went mad."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c25_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I had to kill her. Would you like to tell me why you have such a thing?” “It’s an heirloom of Sul’s,” Attrebus said. “He’s trying to find the grave of his father or something so he can bury it there.” “I see,” Hierem said. “It has nothing to do with Umbriel?” “No,” Attrebus said, desperate to deflect attention from the weapon. “But you do, don’t you? You’re in league with Vuhon.” “Vuhon?” Hierem chuckled. “He doesn’t call himself that anymore, but then again he isn’t exactly himself, is he? You met him, I believe. And escaped him, I gather, although not through any art of yours.” He lifted a small porcelain cup and sipped from it. “I thought you might eventually come here, so I convinced Umbriel—which is the name Vuhon does affect—to lend me some of his ground troops to sweep up anyone entering the city. No one is entering, you see—they’re either staying put or leaving, which makes people like you rather easy to spot.” “But why?” Attrebus demanded. “Well, because Umbriel wants you, very badly. Sul primarily, but you as well.” “So you’re going to give us to him.” “You know,” Hierem said, “I think you really ought to be called ‘Attrebus the Clever.’ That’s how you should go down in history. ‘Attrebus the Clever,’ the prince who thought he was a hero. My idea, do you know that? Talked your father into it. ‘The people need a young hero,’ I told him.” He laughed. “He may have thought I was right. He may have just been trying to placate me, but he went along with it. It worked, too. The people love you.” He took another sip, then directed his gaze back at Attrebus. “No, you idiot, I’m not giving you over to Umbriel—at least not right away. There weren’t any taskers in the bunch who found you, so he doesn’t know I have you. What I want to know is, why is he afraid of you? What do you have over him?” “Nothing,” Attrebus said. “He’s not afraid of us—he and Sul have a lot of bad blood between them. I think he just wants to torture Sul to death.” “No,” Hierem contradicted, “he’s afraid of something. He took his city up to Morrowind, in completely the wrong direction. Umbriel has an irrational side, but that made no sense at all—unless he was looking for something. And what did he find there? You two. Imagine my surprise—you were supposed to be dead. Then you turn up alive in Water’s Edge. But a few days later you’re in Morrowind.” He shook his head. “These are things we need to discuss.” “You can forget that,” Attrebus said. “We haven’t started yet, don’t worry,” Hierem replied. “That’s all still to come. I just wanted to welcome you home.” “Why are you doing this?” Attrebus asked. “Do you want my father’s throne? If Umbriel reaches the Imperial City, there won’t be anyone to rule over!"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c25_r1.htm.txt", "text": "They’ll all be dead.” “It’s not going to be like that, actually,” Hierem replied. “I’m going to save the city your father couldn’t. You’re going to die a traitor, a conspirator against the state—at least in the current version of my plan.” “And Vuhon—or Umbriel—will just go on his merry way? He can’t—his city needs souls to keep flying.” Something quickened a bit in Hierem’s eyes. “Yes, your published letters said as much. But how did you know that?” “I—” He stopped. They didn’t know about Annaïg. They couldn’t. “Sul told me.” “Ah. And how did he know?” “He worked with Vuhon before, in Morrowind. They used souls to keep a building aloft.” “The ingenium of the Ministry of Truth. I suppose that makes sense. Perhaps he’s worried Sul knows how to wreck the ingenium in Umbriel.” “You don’t trust him, then,” Attrebus said. “Whatever deal you two made, you’re worried he won’t honor his terms.” “There is that,” Hierem replied. “But on the other hand, I’m not so keen to honor mine either.” “How could my father have trusted such a despicable traitor?” Attrebus wondered aloud. “To his credit, Titus has never trusted me. He’s kept me around because he doesn’t have a choice.” Hierem smiled again. “Trust me; you are your father’s son only in name. Titus may be an ill-mannered, badly bred Colovian upstart, but he at least has brains in his head.” He lifted the cup again, looked in it, and set it down. “I don’t want to wear you out,” he said. “Umbriel—the city—is nearing arrival, and I have a lot to do, and preparations to make before our next conversation. Until then I’ve had quarters prepared for you. I hope you find them comfortable.”"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c26_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel FOUR “Mazgar!” a familiar voice shouted, and suddenly Goblin was there, leaping at her from the mass of refugees. If her instincts had kicked in, she would have probably killed the kid, but somehow they didn’t, and the girl was clinging to her like a leech. “Okay, okay,” she said. “I missed you, too. No need to get crazy about it.” “What happened? Where have you been?” “Brenn and I got cut off when we stormed out of Cheydinhal,” she said. “It took us a while to catch up with the rest of you.” “Well, I’m glad you’re alive,” Goblin said. “I thought maybe you weren’t.” She looked around. “Where’s Brenn?” “He’s taking a rest on the wagon, there,” she said. “How long have you been back with us?” “Two days,” Mazgar said. “And you didn’t come looking for me?” “Captain Arges put us in charge of this bunch,” she said. “I haven’t had a chance to do much else but shepherd them.” “Well, I’m glad we ended up on the same side of the split,” Goblin said. “Right,” Mazgar agreed. It was clear that they weren’t going to reach the Imperial City before Umbriel overtook them. Arges, the ranking officer, had decided their best bet was to split into two groups, one north and one south of the Blue Road, and hope the main army of wormies didn’t come after both of them. It had worked, at least so far; it seemed that Umbriel was trying to get to the Imperial City, and they just happened to be in the way. They were still harassed by groups like the one that had attacked Brennus and Mazgar, but no large groups had detached. Mazgar wondered why they didn’t just make a big circle and march back to Cheydinhal, and a lot of the refugees were starting to say the same thing, rather loudly. After all, the Knights of the Thorn hadn’t found an occupying force in the city. Behind Umbriel seemed to be the safest place to be. Arges, however, was focused on getting to the Imperial City, and without soldiers to protect them, most people weren’t willing to chance running into hunting parties. Not yet anyway. She had a feeling that wouldn’t last much longer. They were walking on, with Goblin chattering away, when a rider came alongside them. “Imperial troops up ahead,” he shouted. “Stand by for orders.” “There we go,” Mazgar said, rubbing Goblin’s head. “Things are looking up.” “Who’s in charge here?” the young commander shouted in a strong Colovian accent. “That’s me, sir,” Mazgar replied. “Name?” “Mazgar gra Yagash, Imperial scouts.” “Scouts? How did you end up here?” She explained, and when she was done he nodded. “I knew Falcus,” he said. “He was a good man.” “Yes, sir.” “I’m Commander Prossos, and I’m in charge of this wing of refugees now,” he said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c26_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Given your experience, I’m giving you a field promotion to captain, and you’ll act as my second in command.” “Thank you, sir.” “Our orders are to go north immediately. General Takar is going to meet the enemy a few miles west of here, and we don’t want the civilians in the dust-up. Frankly, I’m not sure why you all were still anywhere near that thing’s path.” “I just follow orders, sir.” He laughed. “I like that. You know Arges is an idiot, but you don’t want to say so. Well, if you think I’m being an idiot, you’ll speak up. In private, of course. And that’s an order.” “Yes, sir.” “Okay. Take a party and make sure that hill south of here is free of the enemy. If it is, send us a messenger and wait. We’ll be along.” “Yes, sir.” She’d heard of General Takar. He was from Hammerfell. He’d fought against the Empire, before Titus Mede won him over—supposedly through personal combat. It made a good story, but she doubted it somehow. Whatever the truth was, Takar was now one of Mede’s most trusted generals. The hill wasn’t occupied, so she sent a runner down with the news and settled in. Takar had about five thousand men with him, mostly mounted infantry and mages. She could see them formed up in a huge field, along with some eight large wagons that might be siege engines of some sort. “I wish I was down there,” she told Brennus. “I’m deadly sick of running.” “Well, at least we’ll get to watch,” Brennus said. Brennus was right. Less than an hour later the legion met its counterpart as the shadow of Umbriel moved toward them. For whatever reason, the wormies had constricted their range, marching more tightly beneath the flying mountain than they had in the countryside. Mazgar heard the distant shock as the front lines met a few seconds after it actually happened, and for a while that was the last time she watched the ground battle—because the air war had begun. Half of the legion suddenly left the ground, along with the wagons, and flew toward the city. “Oh, yeah!” Brennus whooped, so loudly it startled her almost as much as watching an army fly. When they got near Umbriel, she saw something coming to meet them. She had seen them before; they looked like birds, at least from a distance. They would drop down and then appear to dissolve, turning into trails of smoke. Brennus told her that they were the spirits that took over the bodies of the newly dead, and lost corporeal form when they passed through the rim of the bubble of Oblivion the city traveled in. But the Imperials were now apparently inside that bubble, and the bird-things were smashing into them in swarms. Lightning and flame seemed to fill the sky, and the soldiers with her cheered."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c26_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But their cheers dropped away when it became clear that most—if not all—of the bodies dropping wore Imperial colors. It was over in less than an hour; one of the wagons made it as far as the rim, but none of the others even got close, at least not that she saw. Below, the wail of horns went up. Takar was in retreat, and Umbriel moved on, undeterred. They continued to march the civilians out of harm’s way that night and the following day, with no sign of the wormies, not even raiding parties anymore. “Whoever is running things up there has tightened their focus on the Imperial City,” Prossos said to Mazgar. “Command thinks the refugees will be okay with a skeleton guard. A lot of the civilians have been slipping off back to Cheydinhal, and we’re letting them go. We can’t feed them forever anyway.” He stood a little taller. “I’m leaving you in charge, Captain. Take care of these people—use your own judgment.” “Where are you going, sir?” “To reinforce the city,” he said. “I’d like to go with you, sir.” “I’m doing you a favor,” he replied softly. “You’ve already seen a lot of action.” “No, sir, you aren’t. If you order me to do this, I will, but my place is fighting, not nursemaiding. My mother went down in battle—what would she think of me if I didn’t? Please, sir. There are others here who can get these sheep to pasture.” He studied her for a moment. “Very well,” he said, and sighed. Brennus cleared his throat and spoke up. “She’s under orders to watch out for me,” he said. She turned—she hadn’t known he was anywhere near. “Is this true?” Prossos asked. “Under Falcus, sure,” she admitted. “Each of the mages had a bodyguard assigned.” “That came from the Imperial war office, directly,” Brennus said. “It can’t be countermanded in the field.” “That mission is over, Brenn,” she said. Prossos shook his head. “He’s right. If what he says is true, you have to stay here with him.” “Not at all,” Brennus said. “All it means is that I have to come along, too.”"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel FIVE “It looks calm,” Intendant Marall said. “It does,” Colin agreed. Viewed from atop the walls, the vast waters of Lake Rumare were perfectly turquoise, the Heartlands beyond verdant with field and forest. Only at the farthest edge of sight was the vista blemished, and then because he knew that what appeared to be a distant storm cloud wasn’t. “How long before it arrives?” he asked Marall. “Two days,” the Intendant replied. “And then what?” “The Emperor can’t be convinced to evacuate, if that’s even possible now. General Takar made a preliminary strike—he took a legion. The Synod managed to spell almost three thousand of them airborne, but some sort of flying daedra killed them all in short order. Other magicks were tried—I’m told over a hundred—with no result. As if they knew in advance what we were going to do and were prepared for it. So now we know a lot about what doesn’t work.” “Not much time left to find out what does,” Colin said. “Do you have any ideas?” Colin hesitated, and Marall caught it. “You’ve been missing a lot,” the Intendant observed, “and distracted when you’re around. I told you when you began this job that your job wasn’t to think, but we both know the truth is more complicated than that. Sometimes I believe it’s my job to not notice when one of my inspectors takes his own head. I don’t know what you’ve been into, but if you know anything that will help us, tell me now. Or, if you think it best not to tell me—then you should act.” “Yes, sir,” Colin said. “I’ll think about that.” “Do so. And here is another thing that might interest you.” “What is that, sir?” “I’ve a report from a source that is sometimes reliable that Prince Attrebus was seen at the waterfront.” “Since it’s been overrun by the enemy?” “Yes. My source did not see this himself. The story is that Attrebus was abducted, taken away with a bag on his head.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “I know Vel took you off the Attrebus case. I just thought you might be interested.” “When did this supposedly happen, sir?” “In the past few days. My source wasn’t clear on it.” “Thank you, sir.” Attrebus paced, he tested the bars, the walls, the floor of the tiny cell. He tried to get Sul—unconscious in the cell across from him—to wake up. He wasn’t sure how long he had been doing this. Finally, exhausted, he sat on the floor and turned the situation over and over in his head. When he heard footsteps, he lay on the floor and pretended to sleep, but kept his eyes cracked open a bit. It was Hierem, who didn’t even look in his direction. He walked across the room and into the next. Through the open door, Attrebus saw him stop."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Then something flickered, like a spinning, full-length mirror, and he was gone. Where? Obviously, magic was involved. He’d heard stories about teleportation, but never met anyone who had actually done or seen it. Or he didn’t think he had. It might have been an illusion of some sort—but why would Hierem bother, if he was the only witness? “Umbriel,” he muttered. Of course. Obviously Hierem and Vuhon/Umbriel were in contact. He’d assumed it was through some device like Coo, but what if they were simply meeting face-to-face this whole time? He stood to get a better look; he could make out a red sigil on the floor. He kept watching, but exhaustion caught up with him. He was on the verge of sleep when a movement caught his eye. Then he saw it was only a rat, sniffing about on the red spot. It cocked its tiny head up, then crouched low to the ground, as if frightened of something above. Perhaps half an hour more passed, and Attrebus was again having trouble keeping his eyes open, when the light turned again, and Hierem stood there. But now the rat had vanished. It hadn’t scurried away or been stepped on—he had been watching. It was just gone, as Hierem had been earlier. He hoped the minister would just pass through, but he didn’t—he stopped at Sul’s cage and touched the bars, which glowed briefly. Then he stepped back and seemed to examine the unconscious man for a few moments. Sul stirred and then screamed. “Stop it!” Attrebus said. Hierem turned and lifted an eyebrow. “That’s not my doing,” Hierem said. “I’m just waking him up, now that I’ve had some time to secure things. I find it easier to question people in pairs, if you understand me. No, whatever that was about, it’s in his head. But don’t worry, I’ll find some other reasons for him to scream.” “Hierem,” Attrebus said, “listen to me. There’s still time to change your mind. Whatever bargain you made with Umbriel—” “If you’re going to keep moving that mouth of yours,” Hierem said, moving toward his cage, “it had best be to tell me something useful. I’ll make it easy on you—I’ll ask a specific question, and you tell me the answer. How’s that?” “I’m not telling you anything,” Attrebus said. “Really? Not even your name?” “What do you mean? I’m Attrebus Mede.” “Good,” Hierem said, making an odd gesture with his hand. Attrebus felt as if something had touched him lightly in the forehead, and then his knees gave way as the most absolute pleasure he’d ever felt rushed through his body. He wept in ecstasy and moaned involuntarily, overcome. Then it stopped, and he realized he was quivering on the floor, aching to feel again what he’d just felt. “That’s what you get for a right answer,” Hierem said. “Do you want another sample of it?” Yes! he thought, but he pressed his lips together and didn’t reply."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "But it happened again, this time longer. He tried to hold on to his anger and purpose, but it was useless, and he soon surrendered completely, hoping it would never end. But it did, of course, and he wanted to die. “Stop it,” he heard someone croak. “His mind can’t take much more of that. You’ll destroy him.” It was Sul. The Dunmer was on his feet, leaning against his bars. “We can discuss that, Sul,” Hierem said. “I remember you,” Sul said. “You were an ambassador to Morrowind.” “Indeed I was. You have a good memory—let’s put it to use. Why is Umbriel afraid of you?” “Because I’m going to kill him,” Sul replied. “Yes, but you tried that already,” Hierem said. “It didn’t work out very well for you. And yet despite that fact, Umbriel is worried by you. Why is that?” “You don’t know him as well as you think you do,” Sul said. “No, I don’t,” Hierem replied. “And of course, that concerns me. Everything is aligning—the moment I’ve waited for for many years is coming near. I don’t want any surprises, not from him.” “Life is full of surprises,” Sul said. Then he shrieked, and not at all in pleasure—it sounded as though scalding water was being poured on him, except Attrebus couldn’t imagine even that drawing such an agonized response from Sul. Hierem turned back to Attrebus. “That’s what happens when I don’t get an answer, or get one that doesn’t make sense,” he said. Attrebus slammed into the bars, reaching with both arms for the minister, but he was too far away. “Let’s keep it simple,” Hierem said. “It’s not just Sul he’s afraid of, is it?” Attrebus stood there, panting. Hierem had already guessed that, hadn’t he? That wouldn’t be telling him anything he didn’t know. And if he kept quiet, he would hurt Sul again. “No,” he murmured, and knew he had done the right thing, as delight once more filled every pore in his body. “Is it the sword, then? Does he fear the sword?” Attrebus laughed with joy, but then the sensation was gone, and Sul screamed. “Yes!” he shouted. Happiness returned, briefly, but then Hierem asked him something else, which he didn’t understand. He wanted—desperately—to have the feeling back, to please Hierem in any way he could, to just have it keep going … But he couldn’t focus enough to understand the minister’s words. All he could think about was the memory of the feeling, the devastating loss of it. He ground his face against the stone floor, weeping. It seemed that hours passed before he could form a thought, maybe days. For the first time in his life he honestly wished he could die. The world was a horrible, ugly place, and he wanted no part of it. “Attrebus,” Sul said. “Attrebus, listen to me.” He forced his eyes open but couldn’t find the energy to sit up. “What?” he muttered. “You’ll get over it."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It doesn’t feel like it, but you will.” “No. He’ll come back. He’ll get me to tell him the rest, and then he’ll kill me.” “He won’t,” Sul said. “He won’t come back because I told him.” “Ah, damn you!” Attrebus howled, climbing to his feet, yanking at the bars. “I’ll kill you! That was the only thing, the only way he might—” He broke off in a paroxysm of fury, slamming arms and elbows against the walls, punching them until his knuckles were bloody. “That was the only thing I had to look forward to!” he finally got out. “I know,” Sul nodded. “Why did you tell him?” “Because he would have kept asking you, and it would have destroyed you. As it is, you’re still able to get angry. That’s a good sign.” “But now Hierem—You told him about the sword? What it will do?” “Yes.” Attrebus sank, trembling, back to the floor. “Then why are we still alive?” “In case, I think,” Sul replied. “What do you mean?” “If things don’t go Hierem’s way, he said he would give us the sword and send us up to Umbriel.” Attrebus wiped his tears with the bloody back of his hand. “We might still have a chance?” “We might. He just teleported somewhere, and he didn’t take the sword with him. But you have to pull it together, do you hear? In case.” “I don’t think I can,” Attrebus said. “I know you can,” Sul replied. “I’m telling you that you can. So do it.” Colin returned, as he did each evening, to the room beneath the city. Letine had been gone for five days, and he was starting to believe she wasn’t coming back, so when he saw someone waiting there, his hand went to his knife. “It’s me,” she said. He didn’t know what to do. Should he rush over, hold her, kiss her? “Are you okay?” he asked instead. “I’m fine. It just took longer than I thought. The countryside was crawling with those things.” “Did you find anything out?” “Nice to see you, too,” she said. “I—I was worried about you,” he said. “I starting thinking—” “It’s okay,” she said. “Come here.” “I didn’t find out anything about the diagram,” she told him later. “I’m sorry.” “It’s probably nothing,” he said. “Just a stupid distraction.” “What now?” “I’m going back,” he said. “Back to Hierem’s quarters.” “Why?” “I think he may have Attrebus captive,” he said. “It’s a long shot, but if he does—” “That would certainly be enough for the Emperor to act on.” “I think I’m past needing to convince the Emperor of anything anymore,” he said. “Umbriel’s nearly here. I’ve got to do something.” “That’s good,” she said. “That’s great.” “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got a few things to get together. If I don’t come back—” “Then I’ll know why. This time, I’m going with you.” “Letine—” “If you’re going to do more than sneak around, you’ll need me, I promise you."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "No arguments.” He saw her resolve, and knew in that instant he wouldn’t have it any other way. “Okay,” he said. “Are you ready?” “I think I’ll get dressed first,” she demurred. Attrebus never heard a sound, but suddenly they were there, gazing down at him, a man and a woman in dark clothing. The woman was a pretty blonde, the man rather nondescript, with brown hair and green eyes. “Prince Attrebus?” the man whispered. Attrebus just stared at him, wondering what Hierem was up to now. Had the minister changed his mind? “Are you here to kill me?” he asked. “No,” the man answered. “Is Hierem here?” “He’s not,” Sul answered. “But he could return at any moment.” “Right,” the man said. “Listen—we work for the Emperor. We’ve come to get you out.” “There are more than locks here,” Sul informed them. “I can see that,” the man replied. “Just give me a few moments of quiet.” The man studied Attrebus’s cell. He closed his eyes, concentrating on something. Attrebus felt the hairs stand up on his neck. After a few moments the man seemed satisfied and touched the lock. It clicked, and the door swung open. “Who are you?” Attrebus asked. “I’m Colin Vineben,” the man replied. “If you’ll just come with me, highness—” “Sul. Get Sul out.” Colin studied Sul’s cell. “That will be harder,” he said. “That will require time.” “Take it, then,” Attrebus said. “If Hierem returns—” the woman began. “We think he’s on Umbriel,” Attrebus interrupted. “He steps on the sigil in the next room and vanishes. He returns in the same spot. If you wait in there you might be able to surprise him.” “That’s a good idea,” Colin said. “Letine?” “I’ve got it,” she replied, padding into the next room. “Hierem must have really been worried about you,” Colin remarked almost half an hour later, as the last of the wards finally succumbed. “Not worried enough, apparently,” Sul said. “How did you know we were here?” “I’ve been watching Hierem for a while,” Colin said. “There was rumor that the prince had been seen abducted, and I thought it was worth looking here.” “Now what?” Letine asked. “Now you get the prince back to his father,” Colin said. “I’ll stay here and deal with Hierem.” “He’ll kill you, Colin,” Letine asserted. “I’ll get him as soon as he appears.” “No,” Attrebus croaked. He’d been sitting despondently outside of his cell, but now he stood up. “Your highness—” But Attrebus was talking to the Dunmer. “We can get up there, Sul,” he said. “Up to Umbriel, just as Hierem did.” “He’s got some sort of object with him,” Sul replied. “I think it activates the portal. We’ll have to get it from him.” “No, we won’t,” Attrebus said. “I think if we stand in the middle of the sign, we’ll go up when he comes back. I saw a rat vanish once, when he appeared.” “Wait,” Colin said. “Listen to me."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "If we return you to your father, he can send a hundred men through the portal—soldiers, battlemages—there’s no point in you going, Prince.” “What if the portal only works for Hierem? What if he’s the only one who knows the magic word, or whatever? We can’t take that risk. Sul, we have to find the sword before Hierem returns.” “What sword? What’s this about?” Colin demanded, but Sul was already out the door. Attrebus started after him. “I’ll explain if we have time,” the prince said. “What if he doesn’t return?” Colin pressed, walking with him. “What if he just stays on Umbriel until this city falls?” “I don’t know,” Attrebus said. “But I think he’ll be back. You stay here in case it’s sooner rather than later.” “I think he’s right,” Letine said after they were gone. “I think Hierem will be here when Umbriel reaches the city.” “Why?” “Just a feeling in my gut,” she replied. “The prince is determined—let him do whatever it is he wants to do—we’ll wait here for Hierem.” “The prince is delusional,” Colin whispered. “You can’t make him go.” “Sure I can. His father will thank me.” He heard them returning. Sul was carrying something wrapped up in cloth. It was the size and shape of a sword. Sul and Attrebus moved to the sigil. Nothing happened when they stepped on it. “Can you open it, Sul?” Attrebus asked. The dark elf shook his head. “It’s not an Oblivion gate or trace. It’s beyond me.” “We’ll wait, then.” “Highness,” Colin said, hoping one more try would do the trick, “my charge is to get you to safety, not watch you jump into the midst of the enemy.” “I know what you probably think of me,” Attrebus said. “To be honest, right now most of me just wants to go back to my villa and lay down on my bed, if only to die there. But I can’t. I’ll never be the man the books talk about. But I started something, and I’m going to finish it. I won’t argue about this anymore, and as your prince I forbid you to bring it up again.” Colin drew a deep breath and nodded. “As you say, my prince.” Attrebus and Sul took positions on the sigil. The inspector—Vineben, the prince recalled—and the woman, Letine, stood behind it. Sul unwrapped Umbra and replaced his usual weapon with it. “What’s the plan?” Attrebus asked. Sul’s gaze seemed even more intense than usual as he turned it on Attrebus. “If we’re lucky, Hierem is meeting with Vuhon, and we’ll appear right in front of him. If that happens, I’ll stab him. If we’re right about all of this, the sword should reclaim Vile’s energies. That should allow me to kill Vuhon.” “And then what?” Sul cocked his head, as if studying some strange creature speaking an even stranger language."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c27_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Then he’ll be dead.” He said it quietly, like a note plucked softly on the tightest wire in the world. “But what about Umbriel? Without Vile’s power to run the ingenium, will it just fall out of the sky, or—” “Vile said he would take it from there,” Sul said shortly. “Remember?” “Right, but—” Then he understood. “You don’t care about anything but killing Vuhon.” “When did I ever say otherwise?” Sul snapped. “Well—never. But I just thought—” “Don’t try to think for me,” Sul said. “And don’t act surprised. I kill Vuhon—anything else is up to you. You know what’s going to happen when I draw Umbra—you remember Elhul. Best get away from me when that happens, find that girl or do whatever strikes your fancy.” “Then why do you want me along at all?” “Because if Vuhon isn’t there when we appear, we’ll have to find him—and you’re the one with the magic bird and the friends in high places. So I might still need you. And speaking of birds …” “Right,” Attrebus said, reaching into his bag."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c28_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel SIX He swam in black water, probing through the rotting leaves, lifting his eyes now and then above the surface to search the shallows and shore for movement. Larger things in the depths of the swamp couldn’t reach him here, amidst the twisting cypress roots; here the danger usually came from land. Something in the mud moved, and he snapped at it with webbed paws and lifted a feathery-gilled wriggler into view. He ate it happily and searched for more, but in a short time his belly was full and he felt like basking. He swam lazily back to the gathering hole. The old ones had already claimed the choicest perches, so he crawled onto a log already crowded with his siblings and wriggled down among them until he felt the rough bark against his belly. When his brothers and sisters gave up their sleepy, halfhearted complaints at his added company, he felt the sun on his skin and began to dream his life; swimming, basking, killing, avoiding death, the sun and moons, all mystery, all terrifying, all beautiful. Each day the same day, each year the same year. Until the root came, and the taste of sap. Some changes were slow, others came quickly, and he—they—flowed together, found the stream of time. His old body wasn’t forgotten, but it changed, became more like things the root remembered from otherwhere; his hind legs lengthened and his spine stood up. Small thoughts in his head put out branches, and those branched also, until what had before been warmth, light, shadow, movement, fear, contentment, anger, and lust became categories instead of simple facts. The world was the same, but it seemed more, bigger, stranger than ever. Death followed life and life death, but it all flowed through the root, each life different, each the same. Until that, too, ended, and the root was ripped away, and he was alone. The gathering place was empty except for him—no elders, no siblings. He swam in black water, forgetting everything. Losing his form, melting away. But in that dissolution, the illusion was also dissolved. He was many, and he was one. He sang, a plaintive tune, a remembrance, a prayer. All of his voices took it up, trembling it out through every branch and root, through heart and blood and bone. I want to go home, he sang. I want to go home. Glim woke gasping, spitting water from his mouth, remembering the ache closing in on his chest. He smelled his own terror, and remembered more—his heart stopping, the cold, nothingness. And Fhena. Then he understood that he wasn’t just thinking of her—she was looking down at him anxiously. “What?” he managed. “You’re talking!” she said. “Where am I?” “You’re safe,” Fhena said. “Just know you’re safe.” “I don’t understand,” he grunted. His skin felt tight, itchy, and he was shivering."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c28_r1.htm.txt", "text": "His mind was full of shifting images and half thoughts, as if he were back home, touching the root of the City Tree but stronger, stranger, freer. “What happened to me?” he said. “I’m not the same. The trees—” “You hear them now,” she said. “Like I do.” She touched him, and her face changed to an expression of purest wonder. “No,” she said, “not like me. Better—more—it’s like you’re one of them, Glim.” “I’m not,” he said. “I’m me. I’m me.” He fought back the thoughts invading his head. “What happened?” he demanded. “I thought I died. I was sure I died.” He felt at his side, then his face. “Where are my wounds?” There weren’t even any scars. “She did it to save you,” Fhena told him. “To keep you safe.” “Did what?” Glim asked, starting to feel hysterical. “I killed you,” another familiar voice said. “I killed you.” The face was Annaïg’s, but the words made no sense juxtaposed with it. “She did it to save you,” Fhena murmured, laying her hand on his shoulder. “Neither of you is making any sense,” he snarled. “Be calm, Glim,” Annaïg said in their private cant. “Just be still and let me explain.” Annaïg watched Glim’s face as he listened to her, as she tried to explain to him that he was still Glim, still the friend she had grown up with, that she had rescued him, not murdered him. But his face wasn’t exactly the same. It looked younger, which made sense, but there was also a little something different about the shape of it; the same for his coloring, which had more rust in it now. If she had seen this body a few months ago, she would have thought it one of Glim’s brothers, but she wouldn’t have mistaken it for him. But inside, he had to be the same. He had to. Sure, he seemed somehow more distracted than the old Glim, seemed to have a hard time focusing on what she was saying, but surely that was a side effect of the incubation process. To go from a worm to an adult with eighteen years’ worth of memories in a few days had to be a shock. But Glim didn’t come to that conclusion. “You’re saying I’m not me anymore,” he said, in as strange a tone as she had ever heard him use. “I’m a copy.” “No,” Annaïg said. “You have the same soul, Glim. The poison I made caught it before Umbriel could take it away.” Glim scratched at his flesh. “But this isn’t my body. It isn’t even a Saxhleel body. It’s grown from a proform. I’m not—” He jerked to his feet. “This is all I’ve ever been to you, an experimental subject!"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c28_r1.htm.txt", "text": "‘Drink this, Glim, you’ll turn invisible, this will let you fly, this will kill you and bring you back to life,’ but not quite right, never quite right!” Annaïg felt as if layers of cloth were wrapped around her, muffling everything, hiding what Glim ought to be able to see, trapping anything she could say that might help in dense warp and weft. “I’m sorry, Glim, it’s all I could think of,” was the best she could do, and she saw now that it wasn’t good enough, might never be good enough. “Listen,” she said, reaching to soothe his spines, “I know this is a lot right now. I know you may hate me. But I need to tell you a few things, about what I’m planning—” “No,” Glim said, jerking away from her touch. “I’ve had it with your plans, with doing things your way. I’m finished with it.” “Glim, listen,” she said, but he turned and stamped from the room. She went after him, but his wet footprints led to the balcony and ended there. She stood looking down at the spreading ripples far below, while Fhena came and stood by her. “Go back to the Fringe Gyre,” she told Fhena. “I’m sure he’ll find you there, if he doesn’t get killed again immediately. Maybe you can talk some sense into him.” Fhena nodded and padded silently away, leaving Annaïg staring out at the wonder and madness that was Umbriel. Her locket chimed. She held it up and stared at it for a moment, then flipped it open. Attrebus looked like he hadn’t slept in a month. “Hello,” he said. “How are you?” “As best as can be expected,” she replied. “Look,” he said, “I may not have long. Sul and I think we’ve found a way to get up there. I’m not sure exactly when it will happen or where we’ll be.” “What’s going on?” she asked. “Hierem, my father’s minister—he’s in league with Umbriel. We think he’s been traveling up there and back using a magical portal. We’re hoping when he comes down, we’ll go back up.” The threads about her seemed to tighten. “What can I do?” “We’re going to try to use the sword, as we discussed earlier,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure what will happen then, even if we manage it. But I thought you should know, so you can be ready if—if any chance for escape comes.” “What about you?” “When it’s all over, Sul may be able to take us into Oblivion again.” To her ear, it almost sounded like he didn’t care if he survived. “Attrebus,” she said, “I’m sorry if I seemed angry before—” “It’s okay. I think … I think maybe you had a right to be. I think we might have to talk about that someday.” “Right,” she said. “Someday.” “I’m going to put Coo up now—I need to be ready to fight whenever this happens. I just wanted you to know what was going on."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c28_r1.htm.txt", "text": "If I have a chance to contact you after we get there, I’ll try.” “Do that,” she said. The locket went dark. She took one last look at the vista beyond the balcony and then began striding purposefully toward her kitchen. Hours passed, and Attrebus began to fear that perhaps Vineben was right, and Hierem had no intention of returning to the Imperial City. The wait did provide the time for a fuller exchange of information, but beyond that it was sheer torture. His mind kept trying to return to the feelings Hierem had violated him with, and he feared if he let that happen he would be useless in any confrontation, and so pressed for more conversation when he could. “Arese?” “Yes, Prince Attrebus?” “You say you worked for my father.” She glanced at her companion, but he didn’t give any sort of reaction. She pulled her shoulders back. “I was at one time in his small circle, majesty.” “You have the brand?” She nodded and reached to show him, but he shook his head. “That’s okay. I believe you.” He took a deep breath. “So you knew, then? About me?” “I’m not quite sure what you mean, Prince—” “I’m sure you know exactly what I mean,” he said. She made a little grimace, and then acknowledged with a tilt of her head. “Can you tell me why?” he asked. “Your father—he’s a brilliant general, a cunning emperor. I’ve never known a man so strong. But when it came to you, he always had something of a weak spot.” “Weak spot? My father doesn’t have a sentimental bone in his body.” “I don’t mean that way,” she said. “I mean he had no idea what to do with you. When Hierem suggested you be groomed as a sort of boy hero, I think he was relieved to have some sort of direction. It was a way to keep an eye on you and keep you entertained at the same time.” “Yes, when I was ten, I might see that,” Attrebus said. “But when I was fifteen? Nineteen?” “Sometimes when something like that gets started, it takes on a life of its own. No one saw how far it was going to go, how locked into the role you would be. It’s been ten years since I could talk freely with the Emperor, but I’m sure he was hoping to draw you out of it gradually, marry you, settle you down, prepare you to rule.” Attrebus absorbed that, remembering Gulan saying something about marriage not long before … “I got them all killed,” he murmured. “And I should have known better. I should have seen it myself, but I didn’t want to. And for that, everyone who rode with me—” “Hierem did that, not you,” Vineben cut in. “He’s right,” Sul said tersely. “This is no time for this sort of thing.” His voice softened a little. “Maybe you should do what he suggests—go to your father."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c28_r1.htm.txt", "text": "If I can’t kill Vuhon by myself …” He trailed off. “Then me being there won’t help?” Attrebus finished. “What about all of that about needing Coo?” “I’ll find him,” Sul replied. “I’m not the warrior you are,” Attrebus admitted. “I’ve got no arcane arts. But if I hadn’t been with you in the cave, Elhul would have killed you.” “Maybe,” Sul admitted. “You need me.” Sul was taking a breath to say something else when Attrebus heard a thud loud enough to leave his ears ringing and his stomach threatening to rush up and out of his mouth. He swayed, trying not to lose his footing. It was dark, and someone was standing right in front of him. “Vuhon!” Sul snarled. The Dunmer’s eyes arched in surprise and his mouth opened, but before he had a chance to say anything, Sul had already stabbed him with Umbra; the blade went in deep. Vuhon vented an odd little gasp as Sul yanked the sword out and cut at his head, but the Dark Elf caught the blade with his hand, which burned with a steely blue light. Attrebus swung Flashing at the joint of Vuhon’s leg; the blade struck, but it felt as if he’d hit iron. Vuhon ignored him in favor of striking Sul with his other hand, sending the sorcerer staggering back. Attrebus was making another cut when Vuhon’s eye flicked to him, and suddenly he felt unbelievable cold spike through his body. He lost the timing of his attack, and Vuhon easily sidestepped the blow and caught him by the collar. Then a bellowing Sul smashed into Vuhon, stabbing him again, and they all went out into space. Animal terror passed through Attrebus as the world, the starry sky, and dark Umbriel spun nightmarishly around him. The fall seemed to go on much too long, but in reality he knew he’d only drawn one good breath for screaming before they struck a strangely yielding surface. Fire flashed and he was buffeted away as if by an enormous burning hand. He flailed to get up, but the surface he’d landed on shifted crazily. Then he understood where he was—on top of the glass forest. It was the best name he had for it; it was where Sul and he had arrived on their last visit here. Far below, a great web of flexible, glasslike cables anchored to various buildings along the rim formed a large web suspended over the valley and sump below. From the web, hundreds of smaller tubes grew skyward, branching, and those branches dividing until they at last became a virtual cloud of translucent twigs no bigger around than a little finger—and it was this upper layer they had fallen on. He managed to get to his knees and heard Sul screaming. He’d heard Sul cry out in his sleep, but this was different; it was hysterical, insane in temper. It reminded him of Elhul."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c28_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Sul struck at Vuhon again, but glass coils sprouted up below the lord of Umbriel and raised him above the reach of the weapon. The crystalline forest suddenly pulsed with blue-white light, and Vuhon’s eyes shone with the same radiance. Attrebus felt tendrils grip at his feet, pulling him down, and Sul as well. “You dare to bring that here? You think I’m afraid of that?” Vuhon roared so loudly that the sound shocked against Attrebus’s face. Sul’s only answer was an incoherent screech and a slash at the tubules supporting Vuhon. They shattered, much to Attrebus’s surprise. It appeared to surprise Vuhon, too, as those supporting him collapsed in shards. Attrebus felt a strange hum—it seemed, almost, to be in his teeth—and then most of the cables suddenly darkened. Only those that plucked Vuhon away from Sul’s next attack—and those that held Sul—still shone with unabated light. Vuhon shouted something, and a darkness smote Sul, sending him tumbling back and Umbra flying from his hands. More of the tubules went dark or shone with a sickly violet color. Attrebus, now completely free, struggled toward Vuhon, who seemed drained by his attack on Sul. He got within five unsteady strides before Vuhon seemed to notice him. Attrebus swung hard at his neck, nothing fancy. The sword struck, and this time bit a little. Not much, but it cut the artery. Vuhon slapped his hand over the sudden spurt of blood. Then a glowing cable caught Attrebus by the ankle and another wrapped around his neck. He slashed as best he could at it, but in an instant his sword arm was immobilized as well. The cables passed him away from Vuhon, then began drawing him slowly down into them. Sul was back up. Attrebus saw him glance at Umbra, which lay between him and Vuhon, then back at him. Even from ten yards away, Attrebus could see his companion shaking as if with palsy. “What have you done to me?” Vuhon exploded. “Tell me, or he dies immediately.” Sul took another step toward the sword. “I cut him, Sul,” Attrebus yelled. “He’s weaker. Something’s wrong with him—” The cable tightened on his neck and he couldn’t breathe. Sul took another step. More of the cables pulsed darkly, and Vuhon began backing away. Attrebus saw the fear on his face, because Vuhon knew what he himself knew—that nothing would stop Sul now. Then the cables pulled him down and he couldn’t see anything. All he had to concentrate on was how much he wanted to breathe, and how he couldn’t, would never again. He strained every fiber of his being against the coils that held him, but they still glowed brightly. Above, broken into rainbows by hundreds of strange prisms, he saw what must be Vuhon’s radiant perch. Kill him, Sul, he thought as his muscles began to finally loosen. But then everything around him seemed to shatter and Sul was there. They were falling again."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c28_r1.htm.txt", "text": "This time they hit water, but if it had killed him, he would never have known it wasn’t stone. When Mere-Glim reached the weak end of the bough, he stopped and stared down. He saw the moons both above and below, and for a moment he didn’t care to wonder why or how—it just made sense. Then he reluctantly sorted out that they were over water, a vast body of water. The sea? But no, ahead he saw a great tower in the moonlight, and the vast circle of a city, and he knew—from all of Annaïg’s ramblings—it could only be one place. “What is it?” Fhena asked from behind him. “The Imperial City,” he replied. “It’s huge.” “Yes,” he replied. But he was having a hard time concentrating on the city. Because the trees were loud now—as strong in his mind as the Hist had ever been, except they weren’t telling him what to do; they were singing, a deep and melancholy song. “Can you hear that?” he asked. “The trees?” “Yes,” she said. “Have they always sounded like this?” “Yes and no. Their song changed a few days ago.” “A few days ago? Before or after I died?” “After, I think.” “I dreamed this,” he said. “When I was—before waking, just now.” “You weren’t waking,” she said. “You were being born.” “Annaïg brought me back,” he murmured. “But the trees …” He examined his limbs again, which looked and did not look like those he remembered, and he realized his heart was beating more softly. “She loves you,” Fhena said. “She thought she was doing what was best for you.” Glim knelt and then lay against the bark, closing his eyes, feeling it all turning under him. “It’s okay,” he said. “I didn’t realize before. I shouldn’t have been angry.” Fhena sat down on her heels. “What is it, Glim?” “They shaped me,” he murmured. “Like the Hist. They shaped me to do something.” “What?” He started to tell her, but then felt it, like a sickness in his bones. “No,” he gasped. “Oh, Annaïg, no!” “What is it?” “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ve got to stop her.” “I’m coming with you, then.” “It’s dangerous,” he said. “It’s no place for you.” “I know where my place is,” she said quietly. “And you need to realize it.” Her gaze caught him and turned something inside of him. “Okay,” he said. “Follow me.”"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel SEVEN Hierem appeared and Colin struck from behind, cupping his left palm to the minister’s forehead and thrusting his knife toward the base of his skull. “No!” Hierem shouted. He sounded exactly like the man on the bridge, before Colin had stabbed him. Colin flinched. He dropped the knife and shifted his grip to a choke hold. “What are you doing?” Letine yelled, lifting her own dagger. “No, don’t kill him,” Colin said. “We still don’t know what he was up to. We need to—” “You don’t understand,” Letine said, stepping up to deliver the blow. It never landed. The blade hit something an inch from Hierem’s throat and exploded in a blinding flash of light. Letine shrieked and fell back. Colin tried to tighten his grip, but suddenly Hierem was as slippery as an oiled snake, slithering free of his grasp as if from a child. “You really don’t understand,” Hierem said. Colin dropped and got his knife, but as soon as he touched it, he again remembered the man he’d murdered, and all those corpses by the road, like broken dolls. He took a deep, shuddering breath, but he knew it was pointless. It didn’t matter what happened here today. It didn’t matter what happened anywhere, ever, because in the end there was nothing. He looked at the knife and felt a sob heave up from his chest. Then he slumped down to the floor. “I can’t imagine what you think you’re up to, Arese,” Hierem said, stepping toward the woman. Her eyes looked blind, unfocused. “Colin?” she shouted. “He’s not much use to you, I’m afraid,” Hierem said. “He’s a bit glum right now.” A sharp report rang from the walls in the room, and suddenly something appeared, something shaped a bit like a man but covered in black scales, with three scythelike fingers on each hand. It hopped, birdlike, toward Hierem, and Colin noticed it had sickles on its feet, too—one on each foot. Hierem jabbed his fist at it, and although he didn’t hit it, the thing went flying back into the wall. It bounced up and came back at the mage. “He’s done something to you, Colin,” Letine shouted. “Overcome it!” That was probably true, Colin thought, but it didn’t matter. There was no redemption. His hands were never going to be clean. The daedra attacked again, but this time Hierem failed to deflect it completely; it skittered by, and one of its foreclaws caught the minister across the chest. His robe ripped with an oddly metallic sound, and Colin saw he had on some sort of mail beneath. That had torn, as well, and the mage started to bleed. Snarling, Hierem turned, struck the daedra with his hand, and it collapsed. It wasn’t dead, but didn’t seem to be able to move, as if it suddenly weighed a few extra tons. “Colin!” Letine shouted as something like lightning jagged from her hand and struck Hierem."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It shivered about the minister and then seemed to reverse itself, knocking Letine to the floor. All Colin could hear now was Hierem’s harsh breathing. The minister examined his wound and shrugged. “So much for assassins,” he muttered. “I should ask why and who sent you, but it doesn’t matter, or won’t soon enough. What concerns me more is where the prince and his companion have got off too.” “Oblivion take you, and your plans,” Letine gasped, trying to rise. “Ah!” he sighed. “Arese! I am so disappointed in you—or should I say proud of you? You found out what I was up to, didn’t you? I thought someone had been in my things.” “It’s the tower,” she said, pushing herself away from him with her hands, trying to get her legs to work. “It’s the key. I didn’t get it until Colin remembered one of the symbols meant ‘echo.’ The White-Gold Tower is an echo of the ur-tower, the first object of our reality the gods created. It’s one of the axes of creation.” Hierem smiled. “Umbriel thinks it can emancipate him from Clavicus Vile, make him free of the prince forever. Possibly it would if I gave him the chance. But I see you know I’ve found another use for it.” He reached into a pocket and produced a cylinder about an inch in diameter and six inches long. He gave it a little shake and it telescoped out to about three feet. It seemed to be a dull reddish black with glowing, scarlet daedric script all over it. Some things matter, Colin told himself. They matter. Hierem pointed the tube at Letine. Colin felt the moment slow down, understanding that when it was over the woman he’d kissed, touched, made love to, was going to be dead. He got the knife, raised it to throw. Hierem must have seen, because he swung the weapon toward him. Colin’s knife went over the minister’s shoulder and spanged into the wall. “You’ve got more spirit than I imagined,” Hierem said. Colin tried to keep his face neutral, but he knew the sorcerer must have seen something in his eyes, because he started to turn as the daedra came on him from behind. Hierem screamed then, as the great curved claws butchered him, but he didn’t scream for long. Feeling a little lighter, Colin slowly came to his feet as the daedra savaged the minister’s body and then vanished. He walked toward Letine, who was coming unsteadily to her feet. He caught her by the shoulder and helped her stand. “Thanks,” she said. She was shaking. “What was he talking about?” Colin asked. “I thought you didn’t find out anything about the—” The knife slipping in under his ribs cut him off. Letine stepped back, leaving him to stare at the hilt protruding from his torso. “What?” he asked, dropping to his knees. Her eyes were wide, her mouth formed an O, and she looked stricken."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "She reached for the hilt of the knife, as if she thought she could somehow undo what she had done. “Colin …” she said. Then her expression grew harder. “I’m sorry, Colin,” she said. “Ten years. Ten years!” Fury strained her voice to the breaking point. “I’m owed something. Hierem owes me. And I’m going to collect.” She picked up the rod Hierem had dropped and went through his clothing. Colin didn’t see if she took anything. He kept looking at the knife in him. She paused at the doorway—he couldn’t tell if she was trying to decide whether to finish him off or wanted to tell him something. She did neither—she simply left. He realized he was having a hard time breathing. She had probably hit his lung. Annaïg watched as the poison began to flow from the tree-wine, knowing there was no going back at this point. Whether it worked or not, Umbriel was going to know, and probably sooner than later. Which meant it was time to leave the kitchens. She picked up her bag and threw it across her shoulders, hoping she hadn’t left anything she needed, but not willing to stop and think about it. She wondered if Attrebus and Sul were on Umbriel yet, but that, too, would wait until she was someplace else. She wished she knew where Glim had gone. She was almost to the pantry when she heard the commotion, and when she entered the corridor, she saw Glim in the pantry shaking workers off and trying to reach the corridor, where Yeum and six cooks were lined up, fully armed. “Xhuth,” she muttered. She fumbled in her bag until she found a glass vial and tossed it to shatter on the floor, just behind Yeum. The chef turned, but the yellow cloud had already engulfed her and the rest. As they collapsed, unconscious, Annaïg held her breath and jumped over them. “Glim,” she said, “what in the world are you doing?” “You have to stop it, Annaïg,” he said. He sounded urgent, but there wasn’t any anger in his voice. “Stop poisoning the trees.” “Glim—there is no stopping it. It’s done. I’m sorry, I know how you feel—” “You don’t know anything,” he said. “They just want to go home.” “This isn’t making any sense to me,” she said. “This is it, Glim. We’re out of time. All we can do now is try to escape.” “But—” “We have to get out of here now! If you have something to tell me, tell me while we’re leaving.” She got onto the lift that brought things to and from the Fringe Gyre and activated it, and they began to rise. “The trees,” Glim said. “I understand them now. They changed me so I could help them.” “Help them do what?” “Go home.” “And where is that?” she demanded. “I don’t know—somewhere else. Not Tamriel."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Isn’t that what we want?” “What I want is for all of this to die, Glim.” “I can feel it, too,” Fhena said. “Don’t you understand? If it kills the trees, it will kill all of us—including Glim.” The lift reached the top. “We’d better hide,” Annaïg said. “They’ll be after us soon.” “Aren’t you listening?” But Annaïg’s head was whirling. It was too much, wasn’t it? Could she really be expected to listen to all of this, put up with it? “Just—one thing at a time,” she said. Her locket was begging for attention. In the gray, unnatural mist, Mazgar bent to her oars, feeling the longboat glide through the water. She felt Brenn huddled close behind her, crowded there by the five other soldiers stuffed into the small craft. As unnatural as the concealing mist was the silence. The lack of chatter and even of breathing left her feeling unsettled. Even the water of the great lake bore their passage without so much as a single lap of oar in water. But that could work both ways. When the arrows started falling, she didn’t hear them either, or the screams of those they hit. Her first clue was when a man in the boat ahead of her clutched at a shaft in the side of his neck; only then did she notice the cloud of fletched death swooping down on them. Fortunately, Ram and Dextra were ahead of her, hefting their shields to catch most of the darts coming their way. But while all eyes were turned up, Mazgar felt something seize her oar. She jerked at it, and then the boat heaved up on one side. The wormies were in the water. Ahead, the mist was suddenly incandescent with bursts of orange and azure. So much for surprise, she thought. The boat started to flip, so she jumped clear into the water. To fight the panic being submerged always brought on, she concentrated instead on finding the bottom with her feet, as all around her the upper bodies of wormies appeared, water draining from the cavities in their faces and chests. She set her footing in the muddy bottom and boxed away the nearest before drawing her close-work dagger. Ram, Dextra, Martin, and a Redguard whose name she didn’t know formed a diamond formation around Brennus and started pushing toward shore. She went for their hands first; grab with her left, sever at the wrist with her knife, cut the side of the neck, move on. She was slower in the water, but so—thank Mauloch—were they. She saw Ram had one on his back and cut its arm off at the elbow, ruining its grip, but then another hail of arrows dropped into the water and Ram went down anyway, screaming soundlessly and gripping at a shaft in his sternum. Mazgar felt a pleasant shock, and then the wormies fell away from them, moving off to other targets."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "She was relieved—because that meant Brenn was alive—but turned to confirm it anyway. He nodded at her. By the time they reached the shore, the survivors of the first two waves of boats had formed a double line, one to face the enemy coming from the sea, the other looking landward. Sound came back—battle cries, screams of pain, terse orders passed up and down the lines. She found Prossos and he put her in the front line, which suited her fine. She drew Sister, which was more suited to this sort of work. And work it was going to be. She had started the day with five hundred soldiers. Their job was to cross Lake Rumare from the north, there to join with a massive push toward the northwest side of the city. That’s where the enemy was massed most deeply, and lately had begun actively trying to break through the gate that led to the Imperial prison. It was also where Umbriel would arrive, if it continued on the course it was presently following. Now she stood with something between two and three hundred comrades. They looked to be lined up against three times that. Still, they gained ground steadily. The land was pretty flat here, and the archers who had plagued them earlier either seemed to have been dealt with or more likely couldn’t make decent shots with ranks so close. As they pushed forward, their line formed a wedge, to prevent the wormies from outflanking them with their numbers and rolling them up. After that, they settled into a bloody pace. Someone off to her left starting bellowing “General Slaughter’s Comely Daughter” a little off-key, and a few heartbeats later the whole cohort was shouting the response, and it started to feel like a party. A blond man to her right dropped with a leaf-shaped spear pushed all the way through him. She felt a tap on her shoulder and nodded, dragging the wounded man back as an orc half again her size filled the gap. In the empty center of the phalanx, she yelled for a healer, but it was clear Blondie wasn’t going to make it. He knew it, too. “It’s okay,” he managed. “Just be quick.” She nodded and closed his eyes. Then she took off his head with a single blow, followed by both hands and feet. Sometimes they came back, even without heads. She took her ten-minute rest and had a long drink of water while watching the huge bulk of Umbriel draw ever nearer. Brennus fell in with her. “I know that’s hard,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to do it.” “Orders are orders,” she said. “Especially when they make sense.” “I know,” he said. “That doesn’t make it easy.” “How long before it gets to the walls, you think?” she asked, jabbing her tusks toward the flying city."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c29_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Hours,” he said, “unless the Emperor has some tricks to try still.” “I heard from that rat-face, Solein, that they made two more tries to invade by air.” “We’re not supposed to spread it around, but yes, both just as unsuccessful as that first one. But the wall might be a different matter; the Synod and the College of Whispers will give it all they’ve got, you can be sure of that. And they’ve had a long while to prepare defenses.” Mazgar handed him the skin. “I’ll let them worry about that,” she said. “I’ve got my own job to think about.” She clapped him on the shoulder and went back to take her place on the line."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel EIGHT “Attrebus.” He opened his eyes at the sound of the voice and found Sul’s crimson gaze only inches away. He felt stone beneath his back and was soaking wet. Behind Sul he saw a rough, faintly luminescent wall. “Where are we?” he asked. “We fell in the lake in the center of Umbriel,” Sul replied. “This is some sort of cave above the waterline.” Attrebus remembered then. “Did you do it? Did you kill him?” “No,” he said. “Do you think you can walk?” “What happened?” He pushed, shaking water from his ear. “You had him.” Sul didn’t answer, but instead stood and reached an arm down. Attrebus took it and let him half pull him to his feet. “You know more about this place than I do,” Sul said. “Where do you think we are?” Attrebus felt his face flush as he finally understood. “You came after me instead,” he said. “You saved my life.” “I failed,” Sul said. “After all this time—” He broke off. “You were right—something is wrong with him, and it’s no doing of ours. The sword didn’t hurt him much, if at all. It certainly didn’t reclaim anything of Vile’s.” “Annaïg’s poison, then,” Attrebus guessed. “That must be it.” “It seems likely, and that means Vuhon will be trying to stop her, to reverse whatever she’s done.” He turned, and Attrebus saw Umbra was sheathed again. “Wait,” he said. “How were you able to put it away?” “I almost wasn’t,” Sul admitted. “Next time—” “There’s no reason for a ‘next time,’ ” Attrebus argued. “If it doesn’t work, why take the risk?” “I have a feeling about it,” Sul said. “Leave it at that and talk to the girl—we’re wasting time.” Attrebus nodded, pulled Coo out, and flipped open the little door. A moment later Annaïg’s face appeared. “Attrebus,” she said. “Where are you?” “We fought Vuhon. The sword didn’t work, but something’s wrong with him.” “I may have distracted him,” she replied. “Your venom is working?” “It’s doing something. Where are you?” “We fell in the lake in the middle of this place, and now we’re in some sort of cavern just above the waterline.” “You’re in the skraw caves, then.” “If you say so.” “Stay where you are,” she said. “Keep Coo open.” She closed the locket and then turned to Glim. “The sword didn’t work,” she said. “Our only hope is my poison. When the trees start to die, we may get a chance to escape. Fhena can come with us.” “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Glim insisted. She closed her eyes, tired of his persistence. “I need you to go down to the skraw caves and bring Attrebus up here,” she said. Glim’s pupils dilated wide and his fighting musk filled the air. She inched back a little. “No,” he said. “They deserve a chance, too."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "You need to hurry.” “I said no,” the Argonian said, in a quiet but firm voice. “Not unless you save the trees.” “I’ve told you, that isn’t possible. Most of the poison is in now—” “If you know how to make the poison, you know how to make the antidote,” he said. She stared at him for a moment, then reached into her pocket and produced a long, stoppered tube. “This is the antidote,” she said. “This is for us, when we’re affected, if we are. It’s not nearly enough to counteract what I’ve pumped into the roots.” “They’re already fighting it,” he said. “If they taste that, they’ll know what to do—they can produce enough antitoxin to save themselves.” “And the lords, and Umbriel,” Annaïg said. “Then the Imperial City is destroyed, and we don’t escape.” “No,” Glim replied, his voice measured. “I’ll help the trees go home and take the city with them.” “You really believe you can do that?” Annaïg asked. “Yes.” She rubbed her forehead. “Go get Attrebus and Sul. Then I’ll give you this.” “I could take it from you,” Glim said very softly. “I’ll throw it, if you try.” “It may be too late by the time I find Attrebus. Give it to me now, and I promise I’ll do as you ask.” “Glim—” “Nn, it’s me.” “Right,” she said. “Weren’t you just threatening to use force on me?” “I’m sorry,” he said. “If you could feel them, like I do … Nn, our whole lives, it’s always been you, your desires, your needs. And despite my protestations, I’ve been happy to be at your side. But this time you have to stand with me. You have to trust me.” She closed her eyes, trying to remember what he was talking about, to a time when everything hadn’t been about suspicion and betrayal and heartsickness, but nothing came, nothing—until, finally, an image. The face of a five-year-old girl with long, curling black hair, and that of a young Saxhleel about the same age, reflecting up from water twenty feet below. She saw their feet, too, perched on the crumbling wall of an ancient, sunken structure. “Let’s jump,” the girl said. “That’s too far down,” the boy replied. “Ah, come on. Let’s do it together.” “Well … fine,” he grumbled. And they jumped. Annaïg opened her eyes, and Glim suddenly remembered her when she was a little girl, how full of everything her eyes seemed to have been in those days. She didn’t say anything. She just handed him the bottle. “Thanks,” he said. He turned to Fhena. “Take her to the hiding place. I’ll be back.” “I’ve heard that before,” Fhena said. Glim slipped the antidote into his belt-pouch and bounded down the trunk, feeling the sickness invade it deeper. He wondered how to do it—if he could simply empty the contents where the roots would find it, or use one of the nutrient injectors the fringe workers used."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "In their pain, the trees had become unfocused, distilled to need and demand, and it was all he could do to keep his mind singular enough to be Glim, and not just a part of the hurt and panic. But Annaïg trusted him, and he had to be worthy of that trust now. He would find the prince and his companion, and hopefully by then he would figure it out. The sump felt sick and oily, and he nearly retched when he pulled in his first breath. He surprised a school of bladefish, but they hardly reacted, and instead continued along, unsteadily, as if they had lost half of their senses. He found shattered crystal tubes in the shallows and followed them to their greatest concentration, and then began searching the caves. He discovered them in the third one he tried. The Dunmer saw him first, reaching for his sword before Glim was even out of the water. Then the Imperial turned. “Wait,” he said. “That’s an Argonian. Mere-Glim?” “Yes, Prince,” he replied, making a little bow. “Do you know these people?” the prince asked. Glim noticed a number of skraws on the other side of the cavern. Several of them were armed. As Glim approached, Wert pushed through. “I know them,” Glim replied. “Who are they, Glim?” Wert asked. He looked tired, more jaundiced than usual. “You can leave them alone. What’s wrong?” “I don’t know,” Wert replied. “Hiner and Skrahan dropped dead. The rest of us—it’s like everything is getting sick, all at once.” He coughed, and for a moment Glim thought he would fall. “What should we do?” Glim took several deep breaths, looking at the skraws. His skraws, and in an instant he felt not just the trees anymore, but all of it, everyone, and he knew what to do. He took out the antidote, removed the stopper, and drank it all. Annaïg paced back and forth in the wooden cavity, wishing she had something to do, something to cook with. One minute she’d been in control of everything, and suddenly she didn’t know what was happening anymore. “Glim can do what he says,” Fhena said. “I believe him.” “Of course you do,” Annaïg said. “And maybe he can. But maybe—have you thought of this?—maybe he’s gone crazy.” “No. I can feel it. The trees made him different, and now somehow they’ve changed, too. As if they got something from him as well. They have a purpose for him. Anyway—you gave him the antidote. You must believe.” “No,” she said. “That’s not why I gave it to him.” “I don’t understand. I—” Fhena was interrupted by an odd coughing sound. Annaïg saw the other woman’s eyes dart past her and turned. Umbriel stood there. “It had to be you,” he said. “As soon as I felt your venom, I knew your scent on it.” “Lord Umbriel …” “The trees are fighting hard,” Umbriel said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“They’ve shunted the poison through the ingenium, poisoning the rest of the city while they try to synthesize an antidote. It will cycle back around to them in time, but by then most of the damage will be done. I don’t know if you meant it to work that way, but it was brilliant; it’s attacking the head first—which means me. I had to absorb Rhel and three other lords just to keep going on in this body, to find the venom’s mother.” “So much for Rhel’s illusion of immortality.” “His illusion was that he was any less a part of me than everything here. It’s an illusion you share. The poison will kill you, too.” “If that’s what it takes to stop you, I’m willing,” she replied. “I see. And yet you have an antidote.” “I don’t,” Annaïg said. “I’m weak,” Umbriel said, his voice beginning to change. “I’m not deaf.” “I don’t have it. I gave it to someone else.” “Possibly,” Umbriel replied, moving toward her. “But you still have it, right there behind your eyes.” “Stay back,” Annaïg said. “Keep away from me.” “We’re almost there,” Umbriel snarled, revealing sharp, yellowed teeth. “All we have to do is reach the White-Gold Tower, and we’re free of him forever.” “I don’t care,” Annaïg said. He lunged at her, and she whipped out the invisible blade, slicing three of his fingers off. He barked a harsh sort of laugh and made a fist. He didn’t hit her, but something did, hurling her against the wall and knocking the wind out of her. He held up his hand, and the fingers grew back. His spine seemed to straighten; the lines of his face filled in. “What’s this?” he murmured. “Incredible. They did it.” He looked down at her, his lips curling up in a malicious grin. “It was a nice try,” he said. “Get away from her,” someone else said. At first the voice didn’t sound right to Annaïg—it was too full, somehow, too large. But then she recognized Attrebus striding toward Umbriel, sword in hand. Glim and an ancient-looking Dunmer came with him. “No,” she shouted as Umbriel’s words sorted themselves into sense and she understood. “Attrebus—the sump. The sword didn’t work because his soul isn’t in him—there wasn’t anything to reclaim. Glim! His soul is in the ingenium—” But then Umbriel’s eyes stabbed green fire at her, and every muscle in her body went rigid with pain. Sul snarled in agony, and something erupted into existence between them and Vuhon, something with huge bat wings and claws, but in the shape of a woman. Then Sul turned and ran back toward the way out, grabbing Mere-Glim by the arm. “Wait!” Attrebus said. “You heard her!” Sul shouted. Sul’s monster and Vuhon slammed together. Attrebus could see a dark elf woman dragging the fallen Annaïg away from the confrontation. He stood there, paralyzed. He’d come here to rescue her, hadn’t he?"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "She was so near … But if he died here, rescuing her, what of the Imperial City? His father? His people? He knew then, in that moment, that he was ready to die trying to save Annaïg—but didn’t have that luxury. So he turned and ran after Sul. He emerged from the trunk of the tree and saw the old man and Glim bounding down a branch. It took him a few seconds to catch up, but the three of them hadn’t gone another thirty steps before they saw figures boiling up the tree toward them. Some seemed human or elven—others were stranger. There were a lot of them. Glim hesitated only an instant before changing direction, climbing from branch to branch with dexterity that was difficult to match. “Don’t we want to go down?” Attrebus asked him as he clambered over one rough bough and reached for another. “Everything takes you down eventually,” the reptile replied. “This is just the long way.” Their exertions eventually brought them to another huge trunk, and as they scrambled up on it, despite everything, Attrebus was struck momentarily still by wonder. They were at the top of the fringe, with the whole mad forest sweeping down and away from them, a massive bent fan. And below that, the Imperial City from high above—as he had never seen it, and indeed he saw only part of it now, because Umbriel’s shadow must already be over the wall. Before them loomed the White-Gold Tower. Whatever Umbriel hoped to do, he was about to do it. “We’re out of time,” Attrebus said. He turned to the Argonian. “You said you could use the trees to take Umbriel out of Tamriel.” Mere-Glim nodded tersely. “Do it now.” “You’ll be trapped here,” the reptile-man said. “If that’s the way it is, then so be it,” Attrebus replied. Mere-Glim nodded, and after a slight pause, knelt and put his face against the bark. Glim could feel the poison dissipating; the trees could hear him again. He felt his self soften and flow around the edges as everything that was Umbriel opened itself to him. He heard the call of return, and with an easy bending of his mind gave it greater voice. Or tried to, but then a spear of pain seemed to drive through him, an absolute command that he acquiesce and fling himself, to break on the lower boughs before falling and vanishing from this world and every other. He rose and took the first step before pushing back against the command, and for an instant he thought he could beat it, push through. But it was ancient, and the trees bent to it from long habit. Annaïg had been right to doubt him. He’d been so sure, it hadn’t occurred to him that the Umbriel could countermand him. Now all he could do was escape with his life."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "For a moment it looked as if Mere-Glim would jump into the open air, then he stopped, the stippled lids uncovering his eyes. “I can’t,” he said. “We’re wasting time, then,” Sul said. The three of them sprinted up the bough to where its roots grappled with the stone of the rim, and after a short climb, stood on the edge, in a gap between two strange, delicate buildings of glass and wire. A long cable went from the base of one all the way across the valley; several small buildings hung suspended from it, like lanterns at a festival. From the first of those a second cable ran down to the water’s edge. “There,” Sul said, gesturing at the cable. “That’s the quickest way. It would take forever to climb down there.” “I’ll have to go with you,” Glim said. “You won’t make it to the bottom of the sump without me.” The cable was five feet in diameter, but the footing was still pretty tricky. They were a few yards short of the hanging building when Sul shouted and pointed. Vuhon and several other figures were flying toward them. Sul ran three long steps and jumped; Glim went after him with only an instant’s hesitation. Attrebus followed, wondering how many times he was going to have to fall into the damned thing. Glim smiled as he fell, remembering a long-ago day when Annaïg had dared him to jump with her into the ruins of an old villa. He hit the water feetfirst and let his body relax—become the air, the water, the very shock that tried to slap the soul from his skin. He plunged deep, pulling a train of bubbles behind him that trailed to the broken mirror of the surface above. As their descent slowed, he caught Attrebus and Sul by their wrists and kicked fiercely down, toward the little star he’d always been told to avoid. Now he felt it, the pulsing heart and mind of Umbriel, the core that was the true lord of souls. All other light diminished until at last they reached it. Attrebus felt the pressure against his lungs mount and knew they would never make it back to the surface. He watched the light grow as Mere-Glim pulled them down. When they reached it, he realized that Sul was unconscious, so he did the only thing he could—he drew Umbra from the sheath on the Dunmer’s back and stabbed it into the light. Even as he did so, he felt a rush of absolute rage. He became the blade, the edge, as Umbra drank him utterly in. He was steel and something more than steel, infinitely worse than steel. The thing waving it around and screaming was no longer Attrebus, and soon he wouldn’t be either. The light seemed to explode about them, but he didn’t care anymore. Everyone and everything was to blame."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c30_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The pleasure in Hierem’s cell, the lack of it after, the little pains of moving through any day, anywhere were too much to bear anymore. But he knew he couldn’t die yet—only when everything else was dead would he know any peace. The light cleared, and he was lying on the floor, shuddering. Umbra lay a few feet away, as did Sul and the Argonian. They had fallen into a vast nest of polished stone and shining crystal. The air was filled with delicate tones and fleeting incomprehensible whispers, as if motes of dust were excited to speech when light struck them. In the center of the great cavity a translucent pylon rose and met the gently rippling water above and kissed it with light pulsing up from a platform ten feet below, where a thousand glowing strands tied themselves into a coruscating sphere. Sul was sitting up groggily; Glim was staring up at the water suspended over their heads. And through the water, Vuhon came, lightning crackling from his eyes. Sul leapt up to meet him. Blue flame erupted from his open palms and engulfed Vuhon, clinging to him like burning oil. Vuhon staggered back a step, then made a peculiar shaking motion and the fire vanished, replaced by gray smoke. Glim leapt forward, claws raking at Vuhon’s chest. The Dunmer replied with a vicious backhand blow that sent the reptile hurling to the floor. Then he did something that stopped Sul mid-stride; Attrebus didn’t see anything but could feel a crackling on his skin, and the air smelled like hot iron. Sul strained to take another step, then collapsed. “So much for your pointless revenge,” Vuhon muttered. Attrebus looked toward where Umbra lay, trying to drive the terror from his mind, to do what he had to do. “Stop!” Vuhon shouted. Attrebus screamed in despair as he dove for the sword. He picked it up, and as he was drawn into it again, into anguish and horror that would never end, he aimed himself down, at the sphere. Vuhon came after him, quick as lightning. Almost quick enough. Then Umbra struck into the heart of Umbriel, and everything was changed."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c31_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel NINE When Attrebus plunged Umbra into the ingenium, Sul heard the Universe scream. The tortured cry rang from every surface, from the air itself, from Vuhon’s gaping mouth. A tongue of white blaze licked out from the ingenium and struck his old enemy, and his body twisted, deformed, grew blacker, hunched, feral. “Umbra,” Sul said. “Umbriel,” the creature snarled, slumping toward him. The flame had thinned, but remained, like a tether. “Why?” “This has nothing to do with you. It was about Vuhon.” “I can cleanse myself of him. I can make you powerful, more powerful than we were. We can still escape Vile.” “No,” Sul replied. “I’m done with this.” “You are not,” the thing snapped, leaping forward. Sul felt fingers as hard as steel close on his windpipe. He struck into Umbriel’s throat, but the creature only squeezed harder. But then Umbra vented one last howl, and the grip softened. The flame snaked back away from his body and into the ingenium as the body went limp. Sul pushed it off him, coughing, sucking air into his lungs. Below, Attrebus was starting to glow and was beginning to distort. Sul glanced at his enemy, which looked like Vuhon again. His chest was still rising and falling. Sul’s hand went to his knife, but he didn’t draw it. Instead he jumped down to join Attrebus. “It’s working,” Attrebus said. But it wasn’t his voice, and the eyes staring out at Sul were the strange eyes of Clavicus Vile. “Let him go,” Sul snapped. “You’re destroying him.” “He made the sacrifice,” Vile said. “You, I think, knew what the price would be.” “It wasn’t supposed to be him.” “Well, things don’t always work out as we plan,” the daedra said. “In coming here, I lifted the restraints around this place. A deal is a deal—you’re free to go.” Sul balled his fist and swung, but Attrebus—or the thing wearing him—was fast. It whipped Umbra out of the ingenium and stabbed him, just under the sternum. It knocked all the wind out of him, and his legs and arms went loose, so he just hung on the blade. Sul turned into himself then, searching for the fury that had driven him for forty years, remembering Ilzheven, the ruins of Morrowind, years of torture and hardship. He felt his heart stop, and opened his eyes, staring at his killer, at Attrebus. It was then that he found what he needed, and it wasn’t anger, or hatred. As if in a dream, he reached out and grabbed the hilt of Umbra and pulled himself up the blade, and with everything left in him he struck Attrebus in the jaw. Attrebus fell back, releasing the weapon. Sul saw his gaze return to puzzled normalcy. “It’s okay,” he told the boy. Then he took one step, fell against the glowing orb, and let go of everything. Light filled him, and coarse, mocking laughter—but then he was gone."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c31_r1.htm.txt", "text": "For Attrebus, it was like waking from one nightmare into another. Sul slumped against the sphere, and he and the sword seemed to melt together into a dark smoke with a heart of lightning. “Sul!” “You can’t help him now,” a weary voice said. He looked up and saw Vuhon gazing down at him. With a cry of fury, Attrebus clambered up the wall of cable and wire and stood over him. “I can kill you, though,” Attrebus said. He reached for Flashing. “You might,” Vuhon said. “And you might not. It would be a wasted effort. Vile will have me now no matter what. I can fight him—I had power before I met Umbra, and that he can’t take back—but I won’t last long. But maybe long enough.” “Long enough for what?” “For your friend there to save something of Umbriel,” Vuhon replied. “I don’t understand.” “Clavicus Vile will have the city now. Is that really what you want? He’ll probably just drain it and let it fall on the Imperial City, but knowing him, he may just play in your world for a while.” He nodded at Mere-Glim, who was standing up, wiping blood from his nose. “The Argonian is a part of this place now. He has the power to remove it from this plane.” “That’s what he said. He tried it and it didn’t work.” “Because I became aware of him and stopped him. After all, I have been master of this place for decades.” He looked at Mere-Glim. “Do you feel it now?” The Argonian nodded. “Go, then,” Vuhon said. “The membrane will allow you to pass from this side as well.” Then he turned to face the cloud, which was now twenty feet high and beginning to take on something like a human shape again. His face, so like Sul’s, was set in an expression of quiet determination. “He’s right,” Glim said. “But we have to hurry.” Annaïg felt Umbriel shudder beneath her, and then she was suddenly falling. It lasted only an instant, but it was a terrifying one. “What’s happening?” Fhena asked. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe they made it to the ingenium.” “You mean maybe they’ve destroyed it? What does that mean?” “Well, if the ingenium stops working, I imagine we’ll fall,” Annaïg said. “But then we’ll die.” Annaïg reached into her pocket and produced a small vial. “There is a chance,” she said to Fhena. “If you drink this, you should be able to fly. We might dissolve into smoke, but it’s worth a try.” “But what about Glim? And your other friends?” “We’ll wait as long as we can,” Annaïg said. “But what about everyone else?” Fhena demanded. “I don’t care about everyone else,” she replied. “Come on; let’s get above, so we can see what’s going on.” They climbed up to where they could see Tamriel spread before them. She could see a lake, but the Imperial City wasn’t visible, so it must be beneath them."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c31_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Umbriel shuddered again. They sat and waited, while Fhena wept. Umbriel was trembling constantly by the time Attrebus and Mere-Glim reached the hiding place. They found the women outside, clinging to branches. Fhena rushed to Glim, sobbing, as a deeper convulsion quaked the tree. Attrebus found himself staring at Annaïg, wondering what he was supposed to do. He felt as if he was watching everything through Coo now—the fight, Sul’s death, this meeting—all seen from a great distance. He didn’t seem to feel anything at all about any of it. But Annaïg strode purposefully across the shivering branch. “Drink this,” she said. “At least we’ll have a chance.” He took the vial numbly, glad he didn’t have to respond to anything more—emotional. When Annaïg reached Glim, he threw his arms around her and enveloped her in his familiar musk. Something burst in her then, and tears trickled on her cheeks as he stroked the back of her head. “I’m so sorry, Glim,” she said. “About all of it.” “It’s fine,” he said. “You know I love you.” “Still?” “Always.” He held her for a few more heartbeats and then pushed her gently back. “Vile lifted his striction. You’ll be able to leave this time.” Annaïg felt her heart pause. “You mean we,” she corrected. He shook his head. “I’m taking the trees home,” he said. “I’m going with them.” “You can’t,” she said. “What will I …” She broke off and put her forehead against his scaly chest. “What will I,” she repeated. “I. But this is about you, isn’t it?” “Finally, after all of these years, yes,” he replied. “I have people who need me. I have a place that wants me.” “I understand,” she said. “I don’t like it, but I understand.” “I’m glad,” he replied. “It makes it easier. Now, go. I have to do it now.” She wiped her eyes and glanced over at Fhena. “Take care of him,” she said. Then she drank the contents of her vial and turned to Attrebus. “Let’s go,” she said. “What do I do?” he asked. She lifted her arm toward him and spread her fingers. “Just hold my hand,” she said. Colin thought of Anvil, where he had been born, of the docks and the autumn evenings, when the sun painted the sky red and gold and the waves seemed to murmur in a melancholy but somehow contented way. He remembered the fingers of a five-year-old boy, fiddling with a little boat made of reeds. He’d put a lot of care into it, because he knew it had a long journey to make. He glanced down at the stream that wound through the willows toward the sea, but he knew the boat wasn’t ready yet, so he brushed the cracks with pine resin. He remembered his grandmother placing those same little hands on the altar of the great chapel of Dibella. “The gods are good,” she told him."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c31_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“They came from an infinite place, but for us they limited themselves and became this world. They are everything we see and touch, everything we feel. And of them all, Dibella is most kind.” And she smiled so beautifully that he wondered if it was really his grandmother at all. He woke on stairs, sticky with blood, laboring to breathe. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious; he hoped not long, because he didn’t have that much time left. Doggedly, he dragged himself to his feet, leaned against the wall, and put one foot in front of the other. He felt oddly stronger, as if the prayer to Dibella had actually been answered in some small way, although he’d never had that talent. But he knew soon enough he was either going to bleed to death or drown in his own blood. Letine must have known or guessed where the stairs were—they hadn’t been on his map. He doubted it was a coincidence that the steps began at a hidden door in Hierem’s chambers; the minister must have been thinking about this moment for a long time. Colin guessed the secret stairway was hidden just below the much broader, higher staircase that led up from the Emperor’s quarters to the summit of the White-Gold Tower. He moved slower now, but knew he couldn’t stop again. He heard her before he saw her, or in fact saw any light at all. She was talking to herself, but he couldn’t make out the words. Presently he encountered a flat surface, and after a little searching found the catch that opened it. He’d expected to be on the summit of the tower, but instead saw a large, low-ceilinged room. Signs and sigils were painted all over the floor, familiar to him from the diagram he’d seen in Hierem’s chambers. Fires of strange colors flickered on some, while arcane objects of various size were on others. Letine stood in the center of the room, what was probably the very axis of the tower. Beyond her, a long, broad window showed him a little sky but mostly a vast rocky surface that resembled a mountain—except it was moving, steadily growing in size. “Come here,” she was saying. “You mean to steal its power,” Colin said, on his knees on the floor. Letine spun to face him, surprise evident on her face. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “I knew I should have …” She started to walk toward him, but seemed to think better of it. “Should have finished me off,” he replied. She shrugged. “I’m usually more efficient. I think I must have let my emotions cloud my judgment this time.” “So you do love me,” Colin said with a rueful chuckle. She took him seriously. “I might have,” she said, “under other conditions. But I know you would have tried to stop me.” “Hierem tricked Umbriel, didn’t he?"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c31_r1.htm.txt", "text": "He planned to use all of this to siphon off the souls the city collects. And you used me to get it.” “I didn’t know exactly what he was up to,” she said. “Not until a few days ago. Hierem imagined it would make him a god. I don’t know about that. But I do know I’ll have enough power to never be afraid again, to take what I want from this life, this world.” She looked out the window. “It’s almost here, Colin. Once it happens, there is no need for you to die. I can fix your body.” “Maybe,” he said, crawling forward on his hands and knees. “But the things I need fixed, you can’t do a thing about.” “Don’t come any closer,” she warned. “If you’re not right in the middle, it won’t work, will it?” he asked. “What if this isn’t right here?” He reached to move a crystal sphere with silvery wire wound about it. Her eyes rolled back as she started to summon something. He yanked the knife from his chest; blood from his wound gouted onto the floor. He sat back on his heels, cocked his arm, and threw. Letine looked up at the ceiling and took a step back. He thought he’d missed, at first, but then she toppled back and he saw the hilt of the dagger standing from her eye. He sat there, watching her for a moment. The air crackled, and rainbow colors flickered about the construct she lay in. He heard what might have been voices, calling from far away. Outside, the rock face was so near he could almost touch it—then it seemed to turn sideways, before it vanished, leaving behind a boom like a thousand thunders at once. “Attrebus,” he murmured. “Good for you.” He managed to get to the window. It was solid, thick as stone, but transparent. He wondered idly if it was transparent from the other side as well, or if it appeared as stone. He looked out across the city and Lake Rumare, to the green valley beyond, and watched it as his eyes dimmed. He felt the breeze on his face, heard it sigh through the willows. He put his little boat in the stream and watched it carried away, and wondered where it would go, wishing he could be with it, share its adventures. He dipped his hands in the stream and took a breath that went on and on, filling him, at last, with peace. They met up with what was left of the Twelfth Legion a few hours from sundown and pushed the wormies into the wall. They cleared the gate and set up positions to defend it from another siege. Mazgar and Brennus found themselves on the western flank of the action, where little or no fighting was going on."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c31_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Umbriel was closer than Mazgar had ever seen it, blocking most of the sky, casting a shadow east that she couldn’t see the end of, the strange light of its soul-stealing filaments dominating her field of view. What would it feel like when she was beneath it? If she grabbed one of the things, would it pull her up? Had that been tried? She heard a commotion off to the west, and Brennus swore. She started to ask what the matter was but then saw. Wormies—thousands of them—were swarming from the west, pushing what remained of the cavalry before them. That wasn’t enough for the gods, apparently—more were pouring from the lake and from the east, as if every single one of them had been called to this one place on the wall. “Why?” she grunted as they hastily tightened ranks. “This is where Umbriel is crossing over,” Brennus said. “So? There’s no gate here to breach.” “Not yet,” Brennus said. Mazgar growled, raised Blondie’s shield, and locked it with her companions on the left and right. The wormies came at a dead-on run, in nothing resembling ranks. They reminded Mazgar of ants, converging on a bit of offal. The first shock slid them back two yards, leaving a pile of the enemy like a low wall before them. But that didn’t deter the foe in the slightest; they scrambled up over each other and tried to run over the line, using the soldiers’ heads and shoulders as steppingstones. They needed spearmen, but those were mostly at the gate, where the main assault had been until moments ago. Mazgar roared her battle cry and sent Sister chopping over her shield. Maggots and putrefaction spattered on her face; she could taste them on her tongue, and like a tide coming in, more and more of them rolled out of the water. “The wall,” she heard Brennus gasp. She had a second a moment later to spare a glance to see what he meant. Their left flank had collapsed, but instead of rolling up the line, the wormies were throwing themselves on the wall, building ladders with their bodies. Above, the sky was bright with eruptions and incandescences, making a strange semblance of daylight that revealed the rotting faces leering at her, making colored jewels of their filmed eyes. Another wave of wormies hit, and they were pushed back almost to the wall itself, and more of them were ignoring her completely now as they tried to join their comrades in their insane climb. The man on her right fell, and as four wormies poured into the gap, she felt a bright and terrible pain in her side. Howling, she swung her shield and decapitated one as she slung it off, then took Sister two-handed to slay other wormies. Above, Umbriel passed over the wall, undeterred. Brennus cried out and fell against her from behind."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_c31_r1.htm.txt", "text": "With a grunt she swept one arm back, found him, and retreated until his spine was against the wall. A semicircle of blue flame arced out around them, and she braced for the wormies to come through, but they didn’t. More likely they were just going around. It was over. Brennus lay against the stone, heaving ragged breaths. She saw his wound, and felt her heart go cold. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked. “I’ve seen worse,” she replied. “Right,” he coughed. “But I’ll bet this is good enough.” “Brenn—” “I know,” he said. “I know what you have to do.” “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be right behind you.” “It’s been an honor,” he said. “I may have said some things …” “You were right,” she said. The look of surprise on his face almost made her laugh. “About what?” “Children. I would have liked to have done that.” “I hope you know it wasn’t a proposition,” he replied weakly. “Yeah,” she said. The fire was starting to die. “I’ve gotta do it now.” He nodded. She raised Sister, fixed her gaze on Brenn’s throat. Then the sky seemed to crack, and her ears popped before a wind from above slapped her to her knees. Ears ringing, she fought back to her feet. Something had changed. She looked out over the ebbing flames and didn’t see any motion. Wormies were everywhere, piled against the wall as if blown there. But not a damn one of them was even so much as twitching. She lowered her sword. “What do you think happened?” she asked Brennus. He didn’t answer, and when she realized he wasn’t ever going to, she slid down next to him and wept, unashamed, until the sun came up."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_cop_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. A Del Rey Trade Paperback Original Copyright © 2011 by ZeniMax Media Inc. ZeniMax, Bethesda, Bethesda Softworks, Bethesda Game Studios, The Elder Scrolls, Oblivion, and Morrowind are trademarks or registered trademarks of ZeniMax Media Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc. eISBN: 978-0-345-53033-2 Cover illustration: Paul Youll © 2011 ZeniMax Media Inc. The Elder Scrolls, Bethesda Softworks, Oblivion, ZeniMax, and their respective logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of ZeniMax Media Inc. All rights reserved www.bethsoft.comwww.delreybooks.com v3.1"}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_epl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel EPILOGUE Attrebus tapped his fingers on the sill of a high, narrow window in time to the jubilant music drifting up from below. The streets were filled with color and life, the air with delicious scents of roasted meat, fried fish, and pastry. In the wake of the vacance of Umbriel, his father had thrown open the storehouses, flooding the city with food and wine. Across town the arena hosted spectacle after spectacle, and tonight everything would culminate in the Emperor’s appearance and the presentation of the heroes. “There you are, Attrebus,” a strong voice behind him said. “Hello, Father,” he said, turning. The elder Mede hadn’t yet changed into his formal costume, but wore a simple robe over shirt and breeches. He seemed distracted by something, a bit unsure of himself, and that, to Attrebus, was a very strange thing. “I apologize for not seeing you alone earlier,” his father said. “You’re the Emperor, father,” Attrebus said. “I know you have many burdens.” “That’s true. But … I am a father, also. I forget that sometimes.” Attrebus nodded, uncertain how to answer. His father looked away, then took four quick strides and, to his astonishment, took him in his arms and wrapped him in a bear hug. “I thought you were dead,” he said. “I was sure of it. And my entire fault, for encouraging—allowing—the situation to develop as it did. I never meant you any harm, son. Quite the contrary.” “I know that, Father,” Attrebus assured him. “And look at you now,” the Emperor said, stepping back. “A man. A hero.” “I’m not a hero,” Attrebus said. “Whatever all of this has taught me, it’s that I’m not that. Sul was a hero, and Annaïg, and Mere-Glim, and the countless soldiers who died outside of these walls. I was frightened, I made mistakes, at times I wasn’t even sure what I was doing or why I was doing it.” “And yet you did it anyway,” his father said. “What in the world do you think a hero is if not someone who does just that?” “I’m not the man in the songs.” Titus Mede rolled his eyes. “Of course you aren’t. Neither am I. We’re both better than those guys.” “You were the real thing,” Attrebus said. “In a way, perhaps. But you saved the Imperial City, perhaps all of Tamriel.” “You really believe me, then? About what happened?” “You were never the dishonest one, Attrebus,” his father said. “The lies never came from you. It has always been in your character to tell the truth. And in this case, the story is really too fantastical to have been made up. Besides, there were witnesses to the flight of you and the girl from the city. Never fear, tonight you will be given your due. The people will know their prince was their salvation.” “But I thought—” “I’ve had time to think,” the Emperor said. “I’ve changed my mind."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_epl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The Synod and the College of Whispers may wish to claim credit for this victory, but I will not let them, not at your expense. Our people will know the truth.” “They shouldn’t,” Attrebus said. His father gave him a curious look. “What do you mean?” he asked. “I’ve never been very interested in politics, Father, but I’ve been catching up these past few days. With Hierem dead, you have a dangerous situation on your hands. You need the support of the council, and to have that you must have the support of the Synod and the College of Whispers. Besides which, those two groups have been at each other’s throats for years—here, they are claiming to have worked together. Perhaps it can be a start to their reconciliation.” “Are you saying I should give them credit?” “Yes,” Attrebus said. “Gods know I’ve gotten the credit for so many things I shouldn’t have—I can stand to relinquish what little I may be due here, if it’s what’s best for the Empire.” His father stared at him for a moment, and Attrebus swore he saw a bit of moisture film his eyes. “You really have returned a man,” the Emperor said. “More than that—a prince.” “Maybe not yet,” Attrebus said. “But it’s time I started trying to fill that role the way it should be—don’t you agree?” “Very much,” his father replied. Annaïg twitched the reins of her dappled gray mare and enjoyed the play of light and shadow in the forest around her. Attrebus rode a few feet away. It was strange to be with him, to see him, and to be silent; when they had known each other through Coo and the magic locket, every moment of contact had been filled with words. The silence went on a bit longer, but inevitably Attrebus broke it. “How are you feeling now?” he asked. “I hardly know,” she replied. “It’s all very strange, isn’t it? To be so afraid.” “Afraid?” he said, sounding puzzled. “I—well, I’m hurt. I grieve for Sul. But I don’t think I’m afraid.” “You are. You’re afraid of talking to me, as I am to you. Strange, isn’t it, after all that time we strove to keep each other’s company, to have a single word between us. And now …” She shrugged. He stroked the mane of his horse. “Things happened to me,” he said. “Things I don’t want to talk about. I thought at first I was broken in a way that could never heal, that the best thing I could do was die. That’s how I felt when we finally met. I didn’t have anything to say to you because I didn’t have anything to say to anyone. And I know you had experiences that—” “Yes,” she said, cutting him off. “And now …” he began, but did not finish. She felt a sort of heaviness in her heart. “Now what?” she said. “I’ve begun to see that one day I will feel human again."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_epl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "I may never be the same, but I will have something to offer—ah, to someone—if they could be patient with me.” “Someone?” He nodded. “You, of course,” he said softly. “I’ve never learned anyone the way I learned you. I’m not sure what I thought love was before. I’m not sure I can define what I think it is now. But I cannot imagine life without you. I want to know you better and better as the years go by. I just need—patience.” She felt a little smile trying to lift the corners of her mouth, and perhaps it did, a very little. “I’m not a patient girl by nature,” she said. “I tend to rush into things or fall off of them. But if you can be patient with me, I can be patient with you.” And so they fell silent again, and let the music of the forest entertain them. Far away, another man and woman listened to a deeper, stranger music and watched the luminescent films they had named wisperills do their slow, colorful aerial dances, as if welcoming them. The trees hummed and murmured, not as before, but with the strength of the millions that spread out and away in the strange land, whose great boughs supported the island when it could no longer fly and helped settle it deep in boggy ground. Fhena leaned back against Glim and exhaled deeply. “This is a nice place,” she said. “I like it.” “So do I,” he said. “What I’ve seen of it.” “What do you mean by that?” “Only that I don’t know where we are. At first I imagined that we would be returned to Clavicus Vile’s realm, but although I’ve never been there, I don’t think this can be that place.” “Of course not,” she said. “This is where the trees are from, not Umbriel.” “But where is it?” “Home,” she said softly. “Well,” he said. “Now.” “Always.” He smiled, and surrendered for a moment to contentment—after all, it surrounded him. Everyone wasn’t content, of course. Down below, with the lords gone, the chefs and others who considered themselves elevated were doing their best to kill each other. But the skraws and fringe workers were free, and many of them had already left the city to find their livings in the lush world around them. “What do you think that is?” he asked, pointing to a sort of spire near the horizon. “I don’t know,” Fhena said. “A rock? An old building? What about it?” “Tomorrow I think I’ll walk over and find out,” he said. “Fine,” she replied. “But tomorrow.” And she nestled deeper in his arms, and they watched the wisperills dance."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel PROLOGUE Attrebus never saw the thing that cut open his belly and sent his guts spilling out into his arms. It happened in the dark, and the only things he remembered other than the agony was the stink of his bowels and something like rotting ginger—and Sul dragging him along, cursing in a language Attrebus didn’t understand. Now the pain—for so long the only thing real to him—was fading as his body finally understood it was done. It was possible he was dead already—he wasn’t sure what death was supposed to be like. He hadn’t paid that much attention to such things when he should have. He started, as from a dream of falling, and for a moment he thought he was falling, because all of his weight had vanished. With an effort he opened his eyes, but there wasn’t much to see; the air was full of ash, a gray cloud that extended in every direction. He saw his companion Sul a few yards from him but steadily drifting off. Presently the dust would make him a shadow, and then nothing at all. It was hard to breathe; the gray powder cloyed in his nostrils and mouth. After a few more breaths he realized that soon enough his lungs would fill up with the stuff and that would be that. It was so hard to care. He was weak, tired, and even if he lived, the things he still had to do seemed impossible. No one could blame him if he quit, could they? Not now. No one would even know. And so he drifted, the ash caking his blood-soaked gambeson and hands, enclosing him like a shroud, preparing him almost gently for the moment his heart finally stopped. In the darkness behind his eyes little sparks appeared and died, each dimmer than the last, until only one remained, fading. In it he saw the face of a young woman, tiny as with distance, and from somewhere heard a vast chorale of despair and terror that seemed to fill the universe. He saw his father on a burning throne, his face blank, as if he didn’t realize what was happening to him. The wavering colors expanded, pushing the murk away, and the woman appeared again as his father faded. He knew her features, her curling black hair, but he couldn’t remember her name. He noticed she was holding something up for him to see; a little doll that looked like him, but couldn’t be him, because it was stronger, smarter, better than he was, made in the image of a man incapable of giving in or giving up. She kissed the doll lightly on the head and then looked at him expectantly. And so, beginning to weep, he cracked his dust-caked lips and summoned the air that remained in his lungs. “Sul,” he croaked. The other man was hardly visible, a darker patch in the ash."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Sul!” This time he managed to shout it, and pain lanced through him again. “Sul!” Now it seemed to thunder in his ears, and everything spun. He thought he saw a sort of orange flash out in the gray, a sphere that appeared, expanded, passed through him, and then went on beyond his sight. But it might have been the agony, taking him away. Yet the light remained, the images continued. He saw the doll again, lying near this time, on a little gray bed. Its head was porcelain, and not unlike a hundred such likenesses of himself he’d seen over the years. The cloth of the torso was torn open, and the stuffing was coming out. As he watched, huge hands took up the doll and poked the stuffing back in, but there wasn’t enough to fill it, so one of the hands vanished and returned with a wad of gray and shoved that in, too, before sewing up the doll with a needle and thread. When all the stitches were made and pulled tight, a knife came down to cut it. He screamed, as air sucked into his lungs and a thousand pins seemed to sink into every inch of his flesh. He tried to vomit, but nothing came up, and he lay there sobbing, knowing nothing could ever be the same, that nothing would ever seem as bright or clean as it might have once. He cried like a baby, without coherent thought, without shame. A long time he did that, but in the end there remained something so hard and insoluble that it could never be made into tears and drained away. But he could feel the bitterness of it and make it anger, and in that he found at least a shadow of resolve, something he could nurse and make stronger in time. He opened his eyes. He lay inside a room like a gray box, with no discernable entrance or exit. Light seemed to filter through the walls themselves—he cast no shadow. The air had a stale, burnt taste, but he was no longer choking, and his chest rose and fell. He sat up and his hands went reflexively to his belly. He realized then that he was naked, and he saw that a thick white scar ran from his crotch up to the base of his sternum. “Divines,” he gasped. “I wouldn’t invoke them here,” a feminine voice warned. He swung his head around and saw her. She was as naked as he, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest. Her hair was rosy gold, her skin alabaster white, her eyes twin emeralds. She had the slender, pointed ears of an elf. “Do you know where we are?” he asked. “In Oblivion,” she said. “In the realm of Malacath.” “Malacath,” he murmured, touching his scar. It was still tender. “That is what he calls himself,” the woman said. “My name is Attrebus,” he said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“Whom do I have the honor of addressing?” “You may call me Silhansa,” she replied. “How long have you been here, Silhansa?” he asked. “Not much longer than you,” she said. “At least I think not. It’s hard to tell, with no sun or moon, only the endless gray.” “How did you end up here?” She shrugged. “I’m not sure.” He paused, to give her a chance to ask something of him if she wished, but when she showed no sign of doing so, he pressed on. “How do you know this is Malacath’s realm? Have you seen him?” “I heard a voice, and he said his name. That’s all I know. But I’m frightened.” She paused, and she looked as if she had forgotten something. “What about you? How did you get here?” “It’s a long story,” he said. “Please,” Silhansa said. “Your voice calms me. What brought you to this terrible place?” “I had a companion,” Attrebus said. “A Dark Elf—a Dunmer—named Sul. Have you seen him?” “Yours is the only face I have seen since coming here,” she said. “Tell me your story, please.” Attrebus sighed. “Where are you from?” he asked. “Balfiera,” she replied. He nodded. “So we’re both from Tamriel—that helps. I’m from Cyrodiil, myself.” He scratched his chin and found a beard. How much time had passed? “Okay,” he said. “I’ll try to explain. Not long ago, a thing entered our world from Oblivion, an island that floats through the air, with a city upon it. Wherever the island flies, all those beneath it die and rise up again, undead. My companion and I were pursuing this island.” “Why?” “To stop it, of course,” he said, understanding how arrogant he sounded, how stupid. “Stop it before it destroyed all of Tamriel.” “You’re a hero, then. A warrior.” “Not a very good one,” he said. “But we tried as best we could. Before I met him, my companion Sul was trapped in Oblivion for many years, and knows its ways. Umbriel—that’s the name of the island—was too far away for us to reach in time—” “In time for what?” “I’ll get to that in a moment,” Attrebus said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt, but this is a strange tale.” “No stranger than being imprisoned by a daedra prince.” “You have a point there,” she allowed. “To make it brief,” he said, “Sul took us on a shortcut through Oblivion to get ahead of Umbriel.” “Did you stop it, then?” “No,” he said. “We didn’t have a chance. The lord of Umbriel was too strong for us. He captured us and would have killed us, but Sul managed to escape into Oblivion, and brought me with him. But we were lost, far away from the paths Sul knew. We wandered through nightmare places. Just before coming here, we were in the realm of Prince Namira, or at least that’s what Sul thought. Something there did this.” He indicated the scar."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I’ve been wondering how anyone could survive such a wound,” Silhansa said. “Me, too,” Attrebus replied. “Sul must have gotten us out of Namira’s realm. I remember floating in gray ash, choking to death. Then I woke here.” He didn’t want to think about his dream, much less talk about it. “And so your quest is ended. I’m sorry.” “It’s not ended,” he insisted. “I’ll find Sul, and we’ll get out of here somehow.” “What makes you so determined?” “It’s my people at stake, my world. And there is—someone counting on me, waiting for me. She might be safe, but if she isn’t—” “Ah,” Silhansa said knowingly. “A woman. A lover.” “A woman, yes, but she isn’t my lover—she’s a friend, someone who depends on me.” “But you want her to be your lover.” “I … I haven’t thought about it, and it’s neither here nor there.” “And your friend Sul? He’s driven by love as well?” “Sul? He’s driven by vengeance. He hates Vuhon, the master of Umbriel. I think he hates him more than I can imagine hating anything, and I’ve been expanding my capabilities in that sort of thing lately.” He found himself touching his scar again. Silhansa noticed. “Do you think Malacath healed you?” she asked. “Maybe—if this is his realm I suppose it is possible—but I’ve no idea why. Malacath isn’t exactly known for his kindness.” “You know something about him?” Attrebus nodded. “A little. My nurse used to tell me a story about him. It was one of my favorites.” “Really? Could you tell it? I know little about the daedra.” “I don’t tell it as well as she did,” he admitted, “but I remember the tale.” He paused for a moment, remembering Helna’s singsong voice. He closed his eyes and pictured his bed, and her sitting there, hands folded. For just an instant he felt the shadow of the comfort he’d known then, the innocence that had protected him from the world. “In the bygone-by,” he began, “there was a hero named Trinimac, the greatest knight of the Ehlnofey, champion of the Dragon of Time. One fine day he betook himself to seek out Boethiah, the daedra prince, and chastise him for his misdeeds. “But Boethiah knew Trinimac was coming, and he put on the appearance of an old woman and stood beside the trail. “ ‘Good day, old woman,’ Trinimac said when he came along. ‘I’m in search of Prince Boethiah, to chastise him. Can you tell me where I might find the scoundrel?’ “ ‘I know not,’ the old woman told him, ‘but down the road is my younger brother, and he might know. I’ll gladly tell you where he is, if you will but scratch my back.’ “Trinimac agreed, but when he saw her back, it was covered in loathsome boils. Nevertheless, having said he would, he scratched the noisome sores. “ ‘Thank you,’ she said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "‘You’ll find my brother on the road to your left at the next crossroads.’ “Trinimac went on his way. Boethiah scurried ahead by a shortcut and put on the appearance of an old man. “ ‘Good day, old man,’ Trinimac said, on meeting him. ‘I saw your elder sister, and she said you might know the path to Prince Boethiah’s house.’ “ ‘I do not,’ the old man told him. ‘But my little sister knows. I’ll tell you where to find her if you will only wash my feet.’ “Trinimac agreed, but found the old man’s feet even more disgusting and smelly than the old woman’s back. Still, he had made a bargain. The old man told him where to find the younger sister, and again Trinimac went on—and again Boethiah went ahead, and put on the guise of a beautiful young woman. “Now, Trinimac was dreading the meeting with the younger sister, fearing he would have to wash or scratch something even worse than he already had, but when he saw the beautiful girl, he felt better. “ ‘I met your elder brother,’ he said, ‘and he told me you would know the way to the house of Prince Boethiah.’ “ ‘Indeed, I do,’ she declared. ‘And I will gladly tell you if you will but give me a kiss.’ “ ‘That I can do,’ Trinimac said, but as he leaned forward to kiss her, her mouth opened wide—so wide that his whole head went in, and Boethiah swallowed him in a single gulp. “Then Boethiah took on Trinimac’s form, and made him burp and fart and say foolish things, until finally he squeezed out a great pile of dung, and that was what was left of Trinimac. The dung got up and slunk away in shame, a proud knight no longer. He became Prince Malacath, and all of those who loved him changed as well and became the orcs.” The woman’s eyes had a peculiar look in them. “That was your favorite story?” she said. “When I was seven, yes.” She shook her head. “You people are always so literal-minded.” “What do you mean?” A thought occurred. “You’re Altmer, yes? A High Elf? How is it you’ve never heard of Trinimac?” “I have, of course, heard of Trinimac,” Silhansa said, placing her right hand on the floor, palm up. It seemed to melt and flow into the surface. “What are you—” But Silhansa—still crouching—began to grow, and quickly. And as she grew, she changed; the colors of her eyes and hair faded to gray, her face broadened, became piglike, and tusks emerged. All signs of womanhood vanished, and as she stood, he felt the floor lurch beneath him, realizing that she held him in her palm and was lifting him. The walls of the prison dissolved, and the thing that had called itself Silhansa was now a hundred feet tall."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "The hand holding him brought him up to the monstrous face, and the other hand came up, too, presenting Sul, as naked as he and just as captive. “Malacath,” Attrebus gasped. “So you call me,” Malacath said, his voice like beams of wood rending, his breath a foul wind. His eyes seemed empty, but when Attrebus looked into them, crooked things shimmered into his mind and ate his thoughts. Their surroundings had changed, too. Around them rose a garden of slender trees, and wound about the trunks were vines festooned with lilylike flowers. A multitude of spheres moved, deep in the colorless sky, as distant and pale as moons. He heard birds chirping, but it was a doleful sound, as if something with a vague memory of having been a bird was trying to reproduce sounds it no longer felt. “Prince,” Attrebus said, starting to shiver. “I did not mean to insult you. It was only a story I heard as a little boy. I don’t presume—” “Hush,” Malacath said, and Attrebus choked as his mouth filled once again with ash. “I’ve heard enough from you. You don’t interest me. But you, Sul … I remember you. You swore an oath by me once, against your own gods. You’ve slipped through my realm before, without visiting. I am offended.” “My apologies, Prince,” Sul said. “I was in a hurry.” “And yet this time you demand my attention. In my own house.” “Yes, Prince.” The massive lids of Malacath’s eyes lowered over his eldritch gaze. His nostrils widened. “It’s still there,” the prince’s voice ground out, almost below the level of hearing. “This place, this shadow of a garden, this echo of something that once was—you know such phantoms, Sul?” “Yes,” Sul husked. “You loved a woman, and for her you destroyed your city, your nation, and your people.” “I did not mean to,” Sul said. “I only meant to save her life. It was Vuhon—” “Do not diminish yourself. Do not seek to lessen the beauty of the deed.” Malacath opened his eyes and stared at them, and now Attrebus felt as if hot brass was being poured into his skull. “I have healed your broken body, and that of your companion,” he said. “What should I do with you now?” “Release us,” Sul said. “To do what?” “Destroy Umbriel.” “You tried. You failed.” “Because we did not have the sword,” Attrebus managed to gasp through the cloying dust. “What sword?” The air seemed to thicken, and all the hairs on Attrebus’s arms stood out like quills. “There is a sword named Umbra—” Attrebus began. “I know it,” Malacath said. “A tool of Prince Clavicus Vile, a stealer of souls.” “More than that,” Attrebus replied. “The sword was prison to a creature that also calls itself Umbra. This creature escaped the blade and stole much power from Clavicus Vile, and it is that power that motivates Umbriel, the city Sul and I seek to destroy."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "We believe that if we can find the sword, we can use it to reimprison this creature and defeat Umbriel.” Malacath just stared at him for a moment, and then the great head leaned toward one vast shoulder a bit. There was something oddly childlike about the motion. “I have heard that Vile is weak, and that he searches for something. I have no love for him. Or any of the others.” He glanced back at Sul, his vast brows caving into a frown. “How I laughed when you betrayed them, turned your homeland into no less an ash pit than my realm. The proud issue of the Velothi, humbled at last. By one of their own. And still there is the curse you made, unfulfilled.” “You can help him fulfill it,” Attrebus blurted. He was shaking uncontrollably, but he tried to keep his voice steady. “You knew who Sul was the minute you saw him,” he went on. “You remember his curse after all these years. You healed us and interviewed me. In disguise. To see what we’re up to. To assure yourself that the curse Sul made all those years ago is still walking with him. That he still craves vengeance.” Malacath’s head shifted again, and behind him vines collapsed and formed into a cloud of black moths that swarmed about them. “There are a few things I have a sort of love for,” the daedra said. “What Sul carries with him is one of those things. So yes, I will help you further. The sword, Umbra—do you know where it is?” Sul’s mouth set in reluctant lines. “How else will you go there if I do not send you?” “Somewhere in Solstheim, I believe,” Sul finally replied. “In the hands of someone who wears a signet ring with a draugr upon it.” Malacath nodded; to Attrebus it seemed a mountain was falling toward him. “I can take you to Solstheim,” the prince said. “Do not disappoint me.” Then both gigantic eyes focused on Attrebus. “And you—if I ever have use for you, you will know it.” “Yes, Prince,” Attrebus replied. The god grinned a mouthful of sharp teeth. Then he slapped his palms together. “It’s real,” Mazgar gra Yagash breathed, staring, fighting the urge to draw her sword. It wasn’t often you saw a mountain fly. She doffed her helmet for a better look. As it passed beyond the tallest birches, she saw how it hung in the sky—an inverted mountain, with the peak stabbing toward the land below. Next, her gaze picked out the strange spires and glistening structures atop the thing, structures that could only have been made by some sort of hands. A forest clung to the upper rim as well, its boughs and branches dropping out and away from it. “Why would you doubt it?” Brennus asked, his hands working fast with pen and paper, sketching the thing. “It’s what we came to see.” “Because it’s ridiculous,” she said."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“I’ve never heard an orc use that word,” he murmured. “I guess I thought you people believed in everything.” “I don’t believe your nose would stand up to my fist,” she replied. “Fair enough,” he said. “I don’t believe that either. But since I outrank you, I also don’t think you’ll hit me.” He pushed rusty bangs from his face and looked off at the thing. “Anyway—ridiculous or not, there it is. Aren’t you supposed to be doing something?” “Guarding you,” she replied. “I feel so safe.” She rolled her eyes. He was technically her superior, which galled, because he wasn’t a soldier—or even a battlemage. Like most of the wizards in the expedition, his expertise was in learning things from a distance. His rank had been awarded by the Emperor, days before they’d left the Imperial City. But he was probably right—as hard as it was not to stare at the thing, it was their immediate surroundings she ought to be taking in. They were on a high, bare ridge, about thirty feet from the tree line in any direction. The air was clear and visibility good. Up ahead of her, four of Brennus’s fellow sorcerers were doing their mysterious business: chanting, aiming odd devices at the upside-down flying mountain, conjuring invisible winged things she noticed only because they passed through smoke and were briefly outlined. Two others were surrounding their position with little candles that burnt with purple-black flames. They set those up every time they stopped; the candles were somehow supposed to keep all of this conjuring from being noticed by anyone—or anything. Mazgar put her hand on the ivory grip of Sister—her sword—squinted, and licked her tusks. “I make it about six miles away. What do you reckon?” “A little more than eight, according to Yaur’s ranging charm,” Brennus said. “Bigger than I thought.” “Yah.” He put the notebook down and unpacked something that looked like a spyglass but Mazgar figured wasn’t. He peered through it, mumbled gobbledygook, turned a dial on the device, and looked again. He scratched his red hair, and his sallow Nibenese features fell in a frown. “What’s the matter?” she asked him. “It’s not there,” he said. “What do you mean?” she said. “I’m looking right at it.” “Right,” he said. “Bit of a contradiction, I know. And I’m sure it is there, somehow. But all my glass sees is a bubble of Oblivion.” “A bubble of Oblivion?” “Yah. You know, the nasty place where the daedra live? Beyond the world?” “I know what Oblivion is,” she gruffed. “My grandfather closed one of the gates Dagon opened between here and there, back when.” “Well, this is like a gate, but wrapped around itself. Pretty odd.” “Does that tell us how to fight it?” He shrugged. “I can’t think how it would,” he said. “Anyway, the plan is to not fight it. We’re just here to find out what we can and report back to the Emperor."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "It’s still moving north into Morrowind. It may never threaten the Empire at all.” Mazgar looked at the island again. “How can that not be a threat?” she muttered. She felt the coarse hairs on the back of her neck standing and her heart quicken. Brennus was looking at her in apprehension, and she realized she’d been growling in the pit of her throat. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It sees us,” she said. “I doubt that,” he replied. “No,” she snapped. “I can feel it, feel its eyes …” “Is this supposed to be some sort of orcish sixth sense? The kind you get from not bathing?” “I’m not joking, Brennus, something isn’t right. I feel—” But then the wind shifted, and she got the smell. “Dead things,” she snarled, clearing Sister from her sheath. Then she raised her voice. “Alarum!” she howled. She grabbed Brennus by the arm and hustled him toward the other sorcerers, where her fellow warriors were hastily trying to form a phalanx. She wasn’t quite there when they came out of the trees. “So that’s true, too,” she said. “Divines,” Brennus breathed. They looked as dead as they smelled. Many had been Argonians, obvious by their rotting snouts, decayed tails, sharp teeth set in worm-festered gums. Others looked to have been men or mer, and a few were just—things. They moved twitchily, as if uncertain how to use their limbs, but they came at a fast march. And they were marching, organized, falling into ranks as the landscape permitted. They were unevenly armed—some had swords, maces, or spears, but more than half had crude clubs or no weapons at all—but there were a lot of them, many times more than their thirty. What surprised Mazgar most were their eyes. She had heard the rumors that an army of corpses walked beneath the flying city. She had imagined them as dumb, cattle-eyed beasts. What she saw as they drew near was something different, a glitter of malicious intelligence, a dark joy in the harm they promised. “They’re coming up from the south, too,” someone shouted. That was bad news. They’d left the horses and most of the supplies down there, not to mention their remaining six soldiers to guard them. “Form up,” Captain Falcus hollered. “We’ve got fighting to do.” “I thought they were supposed to be under the island,” Mazgar said. “These are a long way from it.” “Well,” Brennus replied, “there’s the value of scouting, eh? Now we know something we didn’t before. They can send their troops out. Way out.” “We can’t let them trap us up here,” Falcus said. “We’re going to have to pick a direction and cut through.” “South takes us home, Captain,” Merthun the Wall shouted. “South it is,” the captain said. “Re-form, now.” Mazgar moved to the back of the formation, along with Jarrow, Merthun, and Coals. She pulled her shield off her back and got ready, watching the rotting things approach."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_prl_r1.htm.txt", "text": "“And you thought this wasn’t going to be any fun,” Brennus said, at her back. Falcus shouted, and the phalanx started moving behind her. Mazgar and her line walked backward, slowly. The dead sped up, and when they were six yards away, they charged. She howled, and Sister swung at something that had once been a two-legged lizard. The sword smashed into its head and it split open, spilling maggots and putrescence all around her. The body came on, and so she slashed at it, still retreating. Just up the line she heard Jarrow curse and gurgle. “Jarrow’s down,” Merthun shouted. “Close the gap.” They fell back, yard by yard, leaving a wake of rotting, twitching parts. She saw Jarrow’s body, facedown, receding. Then she saw him start to rise, surrounded by the things. “Jarrow’s still alive!” she bellowed. “He’s not,” Merthun shouted back, his huge hammer rising and falling into the line of the enemy. “But—” she began. Then she saw Jarrow’s wound and the dark gleam in his eye, and knew it wasn’t him anymore. “Well, that’s no good,” Brennus opined. “There’s the south line,” Falcus shouted. “Double time, soldiers. Rearguard, keep them off. We break through or die.” “I’m not dying here,” Mazgar snarled, and let Sister do her work."}
{"ID": "Lord of souls _ an Elder scrolls novel -- Keyes, Greg -- Elder Scrolls, Book 2, 2011 -- Del Rey_Ballantine Books -- 9780345508027 -- 2999018512a7b9b6f4491b212cb1a696 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Keye_9780345530332_epub_toc_r1.htm.txt", "text": "Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Part I Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Part II Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Part III Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Epilogue Dedication Acknowledgments Other Books by This Author About the Author"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter1.txt", "text": "Chapter One 0430 HOURS, AUGUST 17, 2517 (MILITARY CALENDAR) SLIPSTREAM SPACE—UNKNOWN COORDINATES NEAR ERIDANUS STAR SYSTEM Lieutenant Junior Grade Jacob Keyes awoke. Dull red light filled his blurry vision and he choked on the slime in his lungs and throat. “Sit up, Lieutenant Keyes,” a disembodied male voice said. “Sit. Take a deep breath and cough, sir. You need to clear the bronchial surfactant.” Lieutenant Keyes pushed himself up, peeling his back off the formfitting gel bed. Wisps of fog overflowed from the cryogenic tube as he clumsily climbed out. He sat on a nearby bench, tried to inhale, and doubled over, coughing until a long string of clear fluid flowed from his open mouth. He sat up and drew his first full breath in two weeks. He tasted his lips and almost gagged. The cryo inhalant was specially designed to be regurgitated and swallowed, replacing nutrients lost in the deep sleep. No matter how they changed the formula, though, it always tasted like lime-flavored mucus. “Status, Toran? Are we under attack?” “Negative, sir,” the ship’s AI replied. “Status normal. We will enter normal space near the Eridanus System in forty-five minutes.” Lieutenant Keyes coughed again. “Good. Thank you, Toran.” “You’re welcome, Lieutenant.” Eridanus was on the border of the Outer Colonies. It was just far enough off the beaten path for pirates to be lurking… waiting to capture a diplomatic shuttle like the Han. This ship wouldn’t last long in a space action. They should have an escort. He didn’t understand why they had been sent alone—but Junior Lieutenants didn’t question orders. Especially when those orders came from FLEETCOM HQ on planet Reach. Wake-up protocols dictated that he inspect the rest of the crew to make sure no one had run into problems reviving. He looked around the sleep chamber: rows of stainless steel lockers and showers, a medical pod for emergency resuscitations, and forty cryogenic tubes—all empty except the one to his left. The other person on the Han was the civilian specialist, Dr. Halsey. Keyes had been ordered to protect her at all costs, pilot this ship, and generally stay the hell out of her way. They might as well have asked him to hold her hand. This wasn’t a military mission; it was baby-sitting. Someone at Fleet Command must have him on their blacklist. The cover of Dr. Halsey’s tube hummed open. Mist rippled out as she sat up, coughing. Her pale skin made her look like a ghost in the fog. Matted locks of dark hair clung to her neck. She didn’t look much older than him, and she was lovely—not beautiful, but definitely a striking woman. For a civilian, anyway. Her blue eyes fixed upon the Lieutenant and she looked him over. “We must be near Eridanus,” she said. Lieutenant Keyes almost saluted reflectively, but checked the motion. “Yes, Doctor.” His face reddened and he looked away from her slender body. He had drilled in cryogenic recovery a dozen times at the Academy."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter1.txt", "text": "He’d seen his fellow officers naked before—men and women. But Dr. Halsey was a civilian. He didn’t know what protocols applied. Lieutenant Keyes got up and went to her. “Can I help you—” She swung her legs out of the tube and climbed out. “I’m fine, Lieutenant. Get cleaned up and dressed.” She brushed past him and strode to the showers. “Hurry. We have important work to do.” Lieutenant Keyes stood straighter. “Aye, aye, ma’am.” With that brief encounter, their roles and the rules of conduct crystallized. Civilian or not—like it or not—Lieutenant Keyes understood that Dr. Halsey was in charge. * * * The bridge of the Han had an abundance of space for a vessel of its size. That is, it had all the maneuvering room of a walk-in closet. A freshly showered, shaved, and uniformed Lieutenant Keyes pulled himself into the room and sealed the pressure door behind him. Every surface of the bridge was covered with monitors and screens. The wall on his left was a single large semicurved view screen, dark for the moment because there was nothing in the visible spectrum to see in Slipspace. Behind him was the Han’s spinning center section, containing the mess, the rec room, and the sleep chambers. There was no gravity on the bridge, however. The diplomatic shuttle had been designed for the comfort of its passengers, not the crew. It didn’t seem to bother Dr. Halsey. Strapped into the navigator’s couch, she wore a white jumpsuit that matched her pale skin, and had tied her dark hair into a simple, elegant knot. Her fingers danced across four keypads, tapping in commands. “Welcome, Lieutenant,” she said without looking up. “Please have a seat at the communication station and monitor the channels when we enter normal space. If there’s so much as a squeak on nonstandard frequencies, I want to know instantly.” He drifted to the communication station and strapped himself down. “Toran?” she asked. “Awaiting your orders, Dr. Halsey,” the ship AI replied. “Give me astrogation maps of the system.” “Online, Dr. Halsey.” “Are there any planets currently aligned with our entry trajectory and Eridanus Two? I want to pick up a gravitational boost so we can move in-system ASAP.” “Calculating now, Doctor Hal—” “And can we have some music? Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto Number Three, I think.” “Understood, Doctor—” “And start a preburn warm-up cycle for the fusion engines.” “Yes, Doc—” “And stop spinning the Han’s central carousel section. We may need the power.” “Working…” She eased back. The music started and she sighed. “Thank you, Toran.” “You’re welcome, Dr. Halsey. Entering normal space in five minutes, plus or minus three minutes.” Lieutenant Keyes shot the doctor an admiring glance. He was impressed—few people could put a shipboard AI through its paces so rigorously as to cause a detectable pause. She turned to face him. “Yes, Lieutenant? You have a question?” He composed himself and pulled his uniform jacket taut. “I was curious about our mission, ma’am."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter1.txt", "text": "I assume we are to reconnoiter something in this system, but why send a shuttle, rather than a prowler or a corvette? And why just the two of us?” She blinked and smiled. “A fairly accurate assumption and analysis, Lieutenant. This is a reconnaissance mission… of sorts. We are here to observe a child. The first of many, I hope.” “A child?” “A six-year-old male, to be precise.” She waved her hand. “It may help if you think of this purely as a UNSC-funded physiological study.” Every trace of a smile evaporated from her lips. “Which is precisely what you are to tell anyone who asks. Is that understood, Lieutenant?” “Yes, Doctor.” Keyes frowned, retrieved his grandfather’s pipe from his pocket, and turned it end over end. He couldn’t smoke the thing—igniting a combustible on the flight deck was against every major regulation on a UNSC space vehicle—but sometimes he just fiddled with it or chewed on the tip, which helped him think. He stuck it back into his pocket, and decided to push the issue and find out more. “With all due respect, Dr. Halsey, this sector of space is dangerous.” With a sudden deceleration, they entered normal space. The main view screen flickered and a million stars snapped into focus. The Han dove toward a cloud-swirled gas giant dead ahead. “Stand by for burn,” Dr. Halsey announced. “On my mark, Toran.” Lieutenant Keyes tightened his harness. “Three… two… one. Mark.” The ship rumbled and sped faster toward the gas giant. The pull of the harness increased around the Lieutenant’s chest, making breathing difficult. They accelerated for sixty-seven seconds… the storms of the gas giant grew larger on the view screen—then the Han arced up and away from its surface. Eridanus drifted into the center of the screen and filled the bridge with warm orange light. “Gravity boost complete,” Toran chimed. “ETA to Eridanus is forty-two minutes, three seconds.” “Well done,” Dr. Halsey said. She unlocked her harness and floated free, stretching. “I hate cryo sleep,” she said. “It leaves one so cramped.” “As I was saying before, Doctor, this system is dangerous—” She gracefully spun to face him, halting her momentum with a hand on the bulkhead. “Oh yes, I know how dangerous this system is. It has a colorful history: rebel insurrection in 2494, beaten down by the UNSC two years later at the cost of four destroyers.” She thought a moment, then added, “I don’t believe the Office of Naval Intelligence ever found their base in the asteroid field. And since there have been organized raids and scattered pirate activity nearby, one might conclude—as ONI clearly has—that the remnants of the original rebel faction are still active. Is that what you were worried about?” “Yes,” the Lieutenant replied. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, but he refused to be cowed by the doctor—by a civilian."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter1.txt", "text": "“I need hardly remind you that it’s my job to worry about our security.” She knew more than he did, much more, about the Eridanus System—and she obviously had contacts in the intelligence community. Keyes had never seen an ONI spook—to the best of his knowledge anyway. Mainline Navy personnel had elevated such agents to near-mythological status. Whatever else he thought of Dr. Halsey, he would assume from now on that she knew what she was doing. Dr. Halsey stretched once more and then strapped herself back onto the navigation couch. “Speaking of pirates,” she said with her back now to him, “weren’t you supposed to be monitoring communication channels for illegal signals? Just in case someone takes undue interest in a lone, unescorted, diplomatic shuttle?” Lieutenant Keyes cursed himself for his momentary lapse and snapped to. He scanned all frequencies and had Toran cross-check their authentication codes. “All signals verified,” he reported. “No pirate transmissions detected.” “Continue to monitor them, please.” An awkward thirty minutes passed. Dr. Halsey was content to read reports on the navigational screens, and kept her back to him. Lieutenant Keyes finally cleared his throat. “May I speak candidly, Doctor?” “You don’t need my permission,” she said. “By all means, speak candidly, Lieutenant. You’ve been doing a fine job so far.” Under normal circumstances, among normal officers, that last remark would have been insubordination—or worse, a rebuke. But he let it pass. Normal military protocol seemed to have been jettisoned on this flight. “You said we were here to observe a child.” He shook his head dubiously. “If this is a cover for real military intelligence work, then, to tell the truth, there are better-qualified officers for this mission. I graduated from UNSC OCS only seven weeks ago. My orders had me rotated to the Magellan. Those orders were rescinded, ma’am.” She turned and scrutinized him with icy blue eyes. “Go on, Lieutenant.” He reached for his pipe, but then checked the motion. She would probably think it a silly habit. “If this is an intel op,” he said, “then… then I don’t understand why I’m here at all.” She leaned forward. “Then, Lieutenant, I shall be equally candid.” Something deep inside Lieutenant Keyes told him he would regret hearing whatever Dr. Halsey had to say. He ignored the feeling. He wanted to know the truth. “Go ahead, Doctor.” Her slight smile returned. “You are here because Vice Admiral Stanforth, head of Section Three of UNSC Military Intelligence Division, refused to lend me this shuttle without at least one UNSC officer aboard—even though he knows damn well that I can pilot this bucket by myself. So I picked one UNSC officer. You.” She tapped her lower lip thoughtfully and added, “You see, I’ve read your file, Lieutenant. All of it.” “I don’t know—” “You do know what I’m talking about.” She rolled her eyes. “You don’t lie well. Don’t insult me by trying again.” Lieutenant Keyes swallowed. “Then why me?"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter1.txt", "text": "Especially if you’ve seen my record?” “I chose you precisely because of your record—because of the incident in your second year at OCS. Fourteen ensigns killed. You were wounded and spent two months in rehabilitation. Plasma burns are particularly painful, I understand.” He rubbed his hands together. “Yes.” “The Lieutenant responsible was your CO on that training mission. You refused to testify against him despite overwhelming evidence and the testimony of his fellow officers… and friends.” “Yes.” “They told the board of review the secret the Lieutenant had entrusted to you all—that he was going to test his new theory to make Slipspace jumps more accurate. He was wrong, and you all paid for his eagerness and poor mathematics.” Lieutenant Keyes studied his hands and had the feeling of falling inward. Dr. Halsey’s voice sounded distant. “Yes.” “Despite continuing pressure, you never testified. They threatened to demote you, charge you with insubordination and refusing a direct order—even discharge you from the Navy. “Your fellow officer candidates testified, though. The review board had all the evidence they needed to court-martial your CO. They put you on report and dropped all further disciplinary actions.” He said nothing. His head hung low. “That is why you are here, Lieutenant—because you have an ability that is exceedingly rare in the military. You can keep a secret.” She drew in a long breath and added, “You may have to keep many secrets after this mission is over.” He glanced up. There was a strange look in her eyes. Pity? That caught him off guard and he looked away again. But he felt better than he had since OCS. Someone trusted him again. “I think,” she said, “that you would rather be on the Magellan. Fighting and dying on the frontier.” “No, I—” He caught the lie as he said it, stopped, then corrected himself. “Yes. The UNSC needs every man and woman patrolling the Outer Colonies. Between the raiders and insurrections, it’s a wonder it all hasn’t fallen apart.” “Indeed, Lieutenant, ever since we left Earth’s gravity well, we’ve been fighting one another for every cubic centimeter of vacuum—from Mars to the Jovian Moons to the Hydra System Massacres and on to the hundred brushfire wars in the Outer Colonies. It has always been on the brink of falling apart. That’s why we’re here.” “To observe one child,” he said. “What difference could a child make?” One of her eyebrows arched. “This child could be more useful to the UNSC than a fleet of destroyers, a thousand Junior Grade Lieutenants—or even me. In the end, the child may be the only thing that makes any difference.” “Approaching Eridanus Two,” Toran informed them. “Plot an atmospheric vector for the Luxor spaceport,” Dr. Halsey ordered. “Lieutenant Keyes, make ready to land.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter10.txt", "text": "Chapter Ten 1210 HOURS, SEPTEMBER 14, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / ERIDANUS SYSTEM, ERIDANUS II SPACE DOCK, CIVILIAN CARGO SHIP, LADEN (REGISTRY NUMBER F-0980W) “Spartan-117: in position. Next check-in at 0400.” John clicked off the microphone, encrypted the message, and fed it into his COM relay. He triggered a secure burst transmission to the Athens, the ONI prowler ship on station a few AUs distant. He and his teammates climbed onto the upper girders. In silence, the team rigged a web of support nets so they could rest in relative comfort. Below them lay a hundred thousand liters of black water, and surrounding them, two centimeters of stainless steel. Sam rigged the fill sensor so the reservoir’s computer wouldn’t let any more water flow into the storage tank. The lights in their helmets cast a pattern of crossing and crisscrossing reflection lines. A perfect hiding spot—all according to plan, John thought, and allowed himself a small grin of triumph. The tech specs that ONI had procured on the Laden showed a number of hydroponic pods mounted around the ship’s carousel system, something not uncommon for this class. The massive water tanks used gravity feed to irrigate the ship’s space-grown crops. Perfect. They had easily slipped past the lone guard in the Laden’s main cargo bay and into the nearly deserted center section. The water tank would mask their thermal signatures, and block any motion sensors. The only risky element entered the picture if the center section stopped spinning… things could get very messy inside the tank, very fast. But John doubted that would happen. Kelly set up a tiny microwave relay outside the top hatch. She propped her data pad on her stomach and linked to the ship’s network. “I’m in,” she reported. “There’s no AI or serious encryption… accessing their system now.” She tapped the pad a few more times and activated the intrusion software—the best that ONI could provide. A moment later the pad pulsed to indicate success. “They’ve got a NAV trajectory to the asteroid belt. ETA is ten hours.” “Good work,” John said. “Team: we’ll sleep in shifts.” Sam, Fred, and Linda snapped off their flashlights. The tank reverberated as the Laden’s engines flared to life. The water tilted as they accelerated away from the orbital docking station. John remembered Eridanus II—vaguely recalled that it once was home. He wondered if his old school, his family, were still there— He squelched his curiosity. Speculation made for a fine mental exercise, but the mission came first. He had to stay alert—or failing that, grab some sleep so he would be alert when he needed to be. Chief Mendez must have told them a thousand times: “Rest can be as deadly a weapon as a pistol or grenade.” “I’ve got something,” Kelly whispered, and handed him her data pad. It displayed the cargo manifest for the Laden."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter10.txt", "text": "John scrolled down the list: water, flour, milk, frozen orange juice, welding rods, superconducting magnets for a fusion reactor… no mention of weapons. “I give up,” he said. “What am I looking for?” “I’ll give you a hint,” Kelly replied. “The Chief smokes them.” John flicked back through the list. There: Sweet William cigars. Next to them on the manifest was a crate of champagne, a Procyon vintage. There were fast-chilled New York steaks, and Swiss chocolates. These items were stored in a secure locker. They had the same routing codes. “Luxury items,” Kelly murmured. “I bet they’re headed straight for a special delivery to Colonel Watts or his officers.” “Good work,” John replied. “We’ll tag this stuff and follow it.” “Won’t be that easy,” Fred said from the darkness. He flicked on his flashlight and peered back at John. “There are a million ways this can go wrong. We’re going in without recon. I don’t like it.” “We only have one advantage on this mission,” John said. “The rebels have never been infiltrated—they’ll feel relatively safe and won’t be expecting us. But every extra second we stay… that’s another chance for us to be spotted. We’ll follow Kelly’s hunch.” “You questioning orders?” Sam asked Fred. “Scared?” There was a slight hint of challenge in his voice. Fred thought for a moment. “No,” he whispered. “But this is no training mission. Our targets won’t be firing stun rounds.” He sighed. “I just don’t want to fail.” “We’re not going to fail,” John told him. “We’ve accomplished every mission we’ve been on before.” That wasn’t entirely true: the augmentation mission had wiped out half of the Spartans. They weren’t invincible. But John wasn’t scared. A little nervous, maybe—but he was ready. “Rotate sleep cycles,” John said. “Wake me up in four hours.” He turned over and quickly nodded off to the sound of the sloshing water. He dreamed of gravball and a coin spinning in the air. John caught it and yelled, “Eagle!” as he won again. He always won. * * * Kelly nudged John’s shoulder and he was instantly awake, hand on his assault rifle. “We’re decelerating,” she whispered, and pointed her light into the water below. The liquid tilted at a twenty-degree inclination. “Lights off,” John ordered. They were plunged into total darkness. He popped the hatch and snaked the fiber-optic probe—attached to his helmet—through the crack. All clear. They climbed out, then rappelled down the back of the ten-meter-tall tank. They donned their grease-stained coveralls and removed their helmets. The black suits looked a little bulky beneath the work clothes, but the disguise would hold up to a cursory inspection. With their weapons and gear in duffel bags, they’d pass as crew… from a distance. They crept through a deserted corridor and into the cargo bay. They heard a million tiny metallic pings as gravity settled the ship. The Laden must be docking to a spinning station or a rotating asteroid."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter10.txt", "text": "The cargo bay was a huge room, stacked to its ceiling with barrels and crates. There were massive tanks of oil. Automated robot forklifts scurried between rows, checking for items that might have come loose in transit. There was a terrific clang as a docking clamp grabbed the ship. “Cigars are this way,” Kelly whispered. She consulted her data pad, then tucked it back into her pocket. They moved out, clinging to the shadows. They stopped every few meters, listened, and made sure their fields of fire were clear. Kelly held up her hand and made a fist. She pointed to the secure hatch on the starboard side of the hold. John signaled Fred and Kelly and motioned them to go forward. Fred used the lockbreaker on the door and it popped open. They entered and closed it behind them. John, Sam, and Linda waited. There was a sudden motion and the Spartans snapped their weapons to firing positions— A robot forklift passed down an adjacent aisle. The massive aft doors of the cargo hold parted with a hiss. Light spilled into the hold. A dozen dockworkers dressed in coveralls entered. John gripped his MA2B tighter. One man looked down the aisle where they crouched in the shadows. He stooped, paused— John raised his weapon slowly, his hands steady, and sighted on the man’s chest. “Always shoot for center mass,” Mendez had barked during weapons training. The man stood, stretched his back, and moved on, whistling quietly to himself. Fred and Kelly returned, and Kelly opened and closed her hand, palm out—she had placed the marker. John grabbed his helmet from his duffel bag and slipped it on. He pinged the navigation marker and saw the blue triangle flash once on his heads-up display. He returned Kelly’s thumbs-up and removed the helmet. John stowed his helmet and MA2B and motioned for the rest of the team to do the same. They casually walked out of the Laden’s aft cargo hold and onto the rebel base. The docking bay was hewn from solid rock. The ceiling stretched a kilometer high. Bright lights overhead effectively illuminated the place, looking like tiny suns in the sky. There were hundreds of ships docked within the cavern—tiny single craft, Mako-class corvettes, cargo freighters, and even a captured UNSC Pelican dropship. Each craft was held by massive cranes that traveled on railroad tracks. The tracks led toward a series of large airlock doors. That’s how the Laden must have gotten inside. There were people everywhere: workers and men in crisp white uniforms. John’s first instinct was to seek cover. Every one of them was a potential threat. He wished he had his gun in hand. He remained calm and strode among these strangers. He had to set the right example for his team. If his recent encounter with the ODSTs in the gym of the Atlas had been any indication, he knew his team wouldn’t interact well with the natives."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter10.txt", "text": "John made his way past dockworkers and robotic trams full of cargo and vendors selling roasted meat on sticks. He walked toward a set of double doors set in the far rock wall, marked: PUBLIC SHOWERS. He pushed through and didn’t look back. The place was almost empty. One man was singing in the shower, and there were two rebel officers undressing near the towel dispensers. John led his team to the most distant corner of the locker room and hunkered down on one of the benches. Linda sat with her back to them, on lookout duty. “So far so good,” John whispered. “This will be our fallback position if everything falls apart and we get separated.” Sam nodded. “Okay—we have a lead on how to find the Colonel. Anyone have any ideas how to get off this rock once we grab him? Back into the Laden’s water tank?” “Too slow,” Kelly said. “We’ve got to assume that when Colonel Watts goes missing, his people are going to look for him.” “There was a Pelican on the dock,” John said. “We’ll take it. Now let’s figure out how to operate the cranes and airlocks.” Sam hefted his pack of explosives. “I know just the way to politely knock on those airlock doors. Don’t worry.” Sam tapped his left foot. He only did that when he was eager to move. Fred’s hands were clenched into fists; he might be nervous, but he had it under control. Kelly yawned. And Linda sat absolutely still. They were ready. John got his helmet, donned it, and checked the NAV marker. “Bearing 320,” he said. “It’s on the move.” He picked up his gear. “And so are we.” They left the showers and strode through the dock, past massive drop doors and into a city. This part of the asteroid looked like a canyon carved into the rock; John could barely make out the ceiling far overhead. There were skyscrapers and apartment buildings, factories, and even a small hospital. John ducked into an alley, slipped on his helmet, and pinpointed the blue NAV marker. It overlay a cargo tram that silently rolled down the street. There were three armed guards riding in the back. The Spartans followed at a discreet distance. John checked his exit routes. Too many people, and too many unknowns. Were the people here armed? Would they all engage if fighting started? A few of the people gave him strange looks. “Spread out,” he whispered to his team. “We look like we’re on a parade ground.” Kelly stepped up her pace and pulled ahead. Sam fell behind. Fred and Linda drifted to the right and left. The cargo tram turned and made its way slowly through a crowded street. It stopped at a building. The structure was twelve stories tall, with balconies on every floor. John guessed these were barracks. There were two armed guards in white uniforms at the front entrance."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter10.txt", "text": "The three men in the tram got out and carried the crate inside. Kelly glanced at John. He nodded, giving her the go-ahead. She approached the two guards, smiling. John knew her smile wasn’t friendly. She was smiling because she was finally getting a chance to put her training to the test. Kelly waved to the guard and pulled open the door. He asked her to stop and show her identification. She stepped inside, grabbed his rifle, twisted, and dragged him inside with her. The other guard stepped back and leveled his rifle. John sprang at him from behind, grabbed his neck and snapped it, then dragged his limp body inside. The entry room had cinderblock walls and a steel door with a swipe-card lock. A security camera dangled limply over Kelly’s head. The guard she had dragged in lay at her feet. She was already running a cracking program on the lock, using her data pad. John retrieved his MA2B and covered her. Fred and Linda entered and slipped out of their coveralls, then donned their helmets. “NAV marker is moving,” Linda reported. “Mark 270, elevation ten meters, twenty… thirty-five and holding. I’d say that’s the top floor.” Sam entered, pulled the door shut behind him, and then jammed the lock. “All clear out there.” The inner door clicked. “Door’s open,” Kelly said. John, Kelly, and Sam slipped out of their coveralls as Fred and Linda covered them. John activated the motion and thermal displays in his helmet. The target sight glowed as he raised his MA2B. “Go,” John said. Kelly pushed open the door. Linda stepped in and to the right. John entered and took the left. Two guards were seated behind the lobby’s reception desk. Another man, without a uniform, stood in front of the desk, waiting to be helped; two more uniformed men stood by the elevator. Linda shot the three near the desk. John eliminated the targets by the elevator. Five rounds—five bodies hit the floor. Fred entered and policed the bodies, dragging them behind the counter. Kelly moved to the stairwell, opened the door, and gave the all-clear signal. The elevator pinged and its doors opened. They all wheeled, rifles leveled… but the car was empty. John exhaled, then motioned them to take the stairs; Kelly took point. Sam brought up the rear. They silently went up nine double flights of stairs. Kelly halted on an upper landing. She pointed to the interior of the building, then pointed up. John detected faint blurs of heat on the twelfth floor. They’d have to pick a better route, a way in that no one would expect. John opened the door. There was an empty hallway. No targets. He went to the elevator doors and pried them open. Then he turned on his black suit’s cooling elements to mask his thermal signature. The others did the same… and faded from his thermal imaging display. John and Sam climbed up the elevator cable."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter10.txt", "text": "John glanced down: a thirty-meter plunge into darkness. He might survive that fall. His bones wouldn’t break, but there would be internal damage. And it would certainly compromise their mission. He tightened his grip on the cable and didn’t look down again. When they had climbed up the last three floors, they braced themselves in the corners by the closed elevator door. Kelly and Fred snaked up the cable after them. They braced in the far corners to overlap their fields of fire. Linda came up last. She climbed as far as she could, hooked her foot on a cross brace, and hung upside down. John held up three fingers, two, then one, and then he and Sam silently pulled open the elevator doors. There were five guards standing in the room. They wore light body armor and helmets and carried older-model HMG-38 rifles. Two of them turned. Kelly, Fred, and Linda opened fire. The walnut paneling behind the guards became pockmarked with bullet holes and was spattered with blood. The team slid inside the room, moving quickly and quietly. Sam policed the guards’ weapons. There were two doors. One led to a balcony; the other featured a peephole. Kelly checked the balcony, then whispered over the channel in their helmets: “This overlooks the alley between buildings. No activity.” John checked the NAV marker. The blue triangles flashed a position directly behind the other door. Sam and Fred flanked the door. John couldn’t get any reading on motion or thermal. The walls were shielded. There were too many unknowns and not enough time. The situation wasn’t ideal. They knew there were at least three men inside—the ones who had carried the crate upstairs. And there might be more guards… and to complicate the situation, their target had to be taken alive. John kicked the door in. He took in the entire situation at a glance. He was standing on the threshold of a sumptuous apartment. There was a wet bar boasting shelves of amber-filled bottles. A large, round bed dominated the corner, decorated with shimmering silk sheets. Windows on all sides had sheer white curtains—John’s helmet automatically compensated for the glare. Red carpet covered the floor. The crate with the cigars and champagne sat in the center of the room. It was black and armored, sealed tight against the vacuum of space. There were three men standing behind the armored crate, and one man crouched behind them. Colonel Robert Watts—their “package.” John didn’t have a clear shot. If he missed, he could hit the Colonel. The three men, however, didn’t have that problem. They fired. John dove to his left. He caught three rounds in his side—knocking the breath from his body. One bullet penetrated his black suit. He felt it ping off his ribs and pain slashed through him like a red-hot razor. He ignored the wound and rolled to his feet. He had a clear line of fire."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter10.txt", "text": "He squeezed the trigger once—a three-round burst caught the center guard in the forehead. Sam and Fred wheeled around the door frame, Sam high, Fred low. Their silenced weapons coughed and the remaining pair of guards went down. Watts remained behind the crate. He brandished his pistol. “Stop!” he screamed. “My men are coming. You think I’m alone? You’re all dead. Drop your weapons.” John crawled to the wet bar and crouched there. He willed the pain inside his stomach to go away. He signaled Sam and Fred and held up two fingers, then pointed the fingers over his head. Sam and Fred fired a burst of rounds over Watts. He ducked. John vaulted over the bar and leaped onto his quarry. He grabbed the pistol and wrenched it out of his hand, breaking the man’s index finger and thumb. John snaked his arm around Watts’s neck and choked the struggling man into near-unconsciousness. Kelly and Linda entered. Kelly took out a syringe and injected Watts—enough polypseudomorphine to keep him sedated for the better part of a day. Fred fell back to cover the elevator. Sam entered and crouched by the windows, watching the street below for any signs of trouble. Kelly went to John and peeled back his black suit. Her gloves were slick with his blood. “The bullet is still inside,” she said, and bit her lower lip. “There’s a lot of internal bleeding. Hang on.” She dug a tiny bottle from her belt and inserted the nozzle into the bullet hole. “This might sting a little.” The self-sealing biofoam filled John’s abdominal cavity. It also stung like a hundred ants crawling through his innards. She pulled the bottle out and taped up the hole. “You’re good for a few hours,” she said, and then gave him a hand up. John felt shaky, but he’d make it. The foam would keep him from bleeding to death and stave off the shock… for a while, at least. “Incoming vehicles,” Sam announced. “Six men entering the building. Two taking up position outside… but just the front.” “Get our package inside that crate and seal it up,” John ordered. He left the room, got his duffel, and went to the balcony. He secured a rope and tossed it down twelve stories into the alley. He rappelled down, took a second to scan the alley for threats, then clicked his throat mike once—the all-clear signal. Kelly snapped a descent rig on the crate and pushed it off the balcony. It zipped down the line and thudded to a halt at the bottom. A moment later the rest of the team glided down the rope. They quickly donned their coveralls. Sam and Fred carried the crate as they entered the adjacent building. They exited on the street a half block down and walked as quickly as they could back to the docks. Dozens of uniformed men ran from the dock toward the city. No one challenged them. They reentered the now-deserted public showers."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Chapter10.txt", "text": "“Everyone check your seals,” John said. “Sam, you go ring the doorbell. Meet us on the dropship.” Sam nodded and sprinted out of the building, both packs of C-12 looped around his shoulder. John took out the panic button. He triggered the green-mode transmission and tossed it into an empty locker. If they didn’t make it out, at least the UNSC fleet would know where to find the rebel base. “Your suit is breached,” Kelly reminded John. “We better get to the ship now, before Sam sets off his fireworks.” Linda and Fred checked the seals on the crate then carried it out. Kelly took point and John brought up the rear. They boarded the Pelican dropship and John sized up her armaments—dented and charred armor, a pair of old, out-of-date 40mm chain guns. The rocket pods had been removed. Not much of a warhorse. There was a flash of lightning at the far end of the dock. The thunder roiled through the deck, and then through John’s stomach. While John watched, a gaping hole materialized in the airlock door amid a cloud of smoke and shattered metal. Black space loomed beyond. With an earsplitting roar, the atmosphere held in the docks abruptly transformed into a hurricane. People, crates, and debris were blasted out of the ragged tear. John pulled himself inside the dropship and prepared to seal the main hatch. He watched as emergency doors descended over the breached airlock. There was a second explosion, and the drop door paused, then fell and clattered to the deck, crushing a light transport vessel underneath. Behind them, large bay doors closed, sealing the docks off from the city. Dozens of workers still on the docks ran for their lives, but didn’t make it. Sam sprinted across the deck, perfectly safe inside his sealed black suit. He cycled through the Pelican’s emergency airlock. “Back door’s open,” he said with a grin. Kelly fired up the engines. The Pelican lifted, maneuvered through the dock, and then out through the blasted hole and into open space. She pushed the throttle to maximum burn. Behind them, the insurgent base looked like any other rock in the asteroid belt… but this rock was venting atmosphere and starting to rotate erratically. After five minutes at full power, Kelly eased the engines back. “We’ll hit the extraction point in two hours,” she said. “Check on our prisoner,” John said. Sam popped open the crate. “The seals held. Watts is still alive and has a steady pulse,” he said. “Good,” John grunted. He winced as the throbbing pain in his side increased. “Something bothering you?” Kelly asked. “How’s that biofoam holding up?” “It’s fine,” he said without even looking at the hole in his side. “I’ll make it.” He knew he should feel elated—but instead he just felt tired. Something didn’t sit right about the operation. He wondered about all the dead dockworkers and civilians back there. None of them were designated targets."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Chapter10.txt", "text": "And yet, weren’t they all rebels on that asteroid? On the other hand, it was like the Chief said—he had followed his orders, completed his mission, and gotten his people out alive. What more did he want? John stuffed his doubts deep in the back of his mind. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said, and squeezed Kelly’s shoulder. John smiled. “What could be wrong? We won.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter11.txt", "text": "Chapter Eleven 0600 HOURS, NOVEMBER 2, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH UNSC MILITARY COMPLEX, PLANET REACH John wondered who had died. The Spartans had been called to muster in their dress uniforms only once before: funeral detail. The Purple Heart awarded to him after his last mission glistened on his chest. He made sure it was polished to a high sheen. It stood out against the black wool of his dress jacket. Occasionally, John would look at it, and make sure it was still there. He sat in the third row of the amphitheater and faced the center platform. The other Spartans sat quietly on the concentric rings of risers. Spotlights flicked on the empty stage. He had been in Reach’s secure briefing chamber before. This is where Dr. Halsey had told them they were going to be soldiers. This is where his life had changed and he had been given a purpose. Chief Mendez entered the room and marched to the center platform. He, too, wore his black dress uniform as well. His chest was covered with Silver and Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, the Red Legion of Honor award, and a rainbow of campaign ribbons. He had recently shaved his head. The Spartans rose and stood at attention. Dr. Halsey entered. She looked older to John, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth more pronounced, streaks of gray in her dark hair. But her blue eyes were as sharp as ever. She wore gray slacks, a black shirt, and her glasses hung about her neck on a gold chain. “Vice Admiral on deck,” Mendez announced. They all snapped straighter. A man six years Dr. Halsey’s senior strode to the stage. His short silver hair looked like a steel helmet. His gait had a strange lope to it—what crewmen called “space walk”—from spending too much time in microgravity. He wore a simple, unadorned black dress UNSC uniform. No medals or campaign ribbons. The insignia on the forearm of his jacket, however, was unmistakable: the rank of a Vice Admiral. “At ease, Spartans,” he said. “I’m Vice Admiral Stanforth.” The Spartans took their seats in unison. Dust swirled onstage and collected into a robed figure. Its face was obscured within the shadows of its hood. John could discern no hands at the end of its sleeves. “And this is Beowulf,” Vice Admiral Stanforth said as he gestured to the ghostly creature. Stanforth’s voice was calm, but distaste was evident on his face. “He is our AI attaché with the Office of Naval Intelligence.” He turned away from the AI. “We have several important issues to cover this morning, so let’s get started.” The lights dimmed. An amber sun appeared in the center of the room, with three planets in close orbit. “This is Harvest,” he said. “Population of approximately three million."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter11.txt", "text": "Although on the periphery of UNSC-controlled space, this world is one of our more productive and peaceful colonies.” The holographic view zoomed in on the surface of the world and showed grasslands and forests and a thousand lakes swarming with schools of fish. “As of military calendar February 3, at 1423 hours, the Harvest orbital platform made long range radar contact with this object.” A blurry outline appeared over the stage. “Spectroscopic analysis proved inconclusive,” Vice Admiral Stanforth said. “The object is constructed of material unknown to us.” A molecular absorption graph appeared on a side screen, spikes and jagged lines indicating the relative proportions of elements. Beowulf raised a cloaked arm and the image darkened. The words CLASSIFIED—EYES ONLY appeared over the blackened data. Vice Admiral Stanforth shot a glare at the AI. “Contact with Harvest,” he continued, “was lost shortly thereafter. The Colonial Military Administration sent the scout ship Argo to investigate. That ship arrived in-system on April 20, but other than a brief transmission to confirm their exit Slipstream position, no further reports were made. “In response, Fleet Command assembled a battlegroup to investigate. The group consisted of the destroyer Heracles, commanded by Captain Veredi, as well as the frigates Arabia and Vostok. They entered the Epsilon Indi System on October seventh and discovered the following.” The holograph of the planet Harvest changed. The lush fields and rolling hills transformed, morphing into a cratered, barren desert. Thin gray sunlight reflected off a glassy crust. Heat wavered from the surface. Isolated regions glowed red. “This is what was left of the colony.” The Vice Admiral paused for a moment to stare at the image, and then continued. “We assume that all inhabitants are lost.” Three million lives lost. John couldn’t fathom the raw force it had taken to kill so many—for a moment he was torn between horror and envy. He glanced at the Purple Heart pinned to his chest and remembered his lost comrades. How did one simple bullet wound compare with so many wasted lives? He was suddenly no longer proud of the decoration. “And this is what the Heracles battlegroup found in orbit,” Vice Admiral Stanforth told them. The blurry outline that was still visible, hanging in the air, sharpened into crisp focus. It looked smooth and organic, and the hull possessed an odd, opalescent sheen—it looked more like the carapace of an exotic insect than the metal hull of a spacecraft. Recessed into the aft section were pods that pulsed with a purple-white glow. The prow of the craft was swollen like the head of a whale. John thought it possessed an odd, predatory beauty. “The unidentified vessel,” the Vice Admiral said, “launched an immediate attack against our forces.” Blue flashes strobed from the ship. Red motes of light then appeared along its hull. Bolts of energy coalesced into a fiery smear against the blackness of space. The deadly flashes of light impacted on the Arabia, splashed across its hull."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter11.txt", "text": "Its meter of armor plating instantly boiled away, and a plume of ignited atmosphere burst from the breach in the ship’s hull. “Those were pulse lasers,” Vice Admiral Stanforth explained, “and—if this record is to be believed—some kind of self-guided, superheated plasma weapon.” The Heracles and Vostok launched salvos of missiles toward the craft. The enemy’s lasers shot half before they reached their target. The balance of the missiles impacted, detonated into blossoms of fire… that quickly faded. The strange ship shimmered with a semitransparent silver coating, which then vanished. “They also seem to have some reflective energy shield.” Vice Admiral Stanforth took a deep breath and his features hardened into a mask of grim resolve. “The Vostok and Arabia were lost with all hands. The Heracles jumped out of the system, but due to the damage she sustained, it took several weeks for Captain Veredi to make it back to Reach. “These weapons and defensive systems are currently beyond our technology. Therefore… this craft is of nonhuman origin.” He paused, then added, “The product of a race with technology far in advance of our own.” A murmur buzzed through the chamber. “We have, of course, developed a number of first contact scenarios,” the Vice Admiral continued, “and Captain Veredi followed our established protocols. We had hoped that contact with a new race would be peaceful. Obviously, this was not the case—the alien vessel did not open fire until our task force attempted to initiate communications.” He paused, considering his words. “Fragments of the enemy’s transmissions were intercepted,” he continued. “A few words have been translated. We believe they call themselves ‘The Covenant.’ However, before opening fire, the alien ship broadcast the following message in the clear.” He gestured at Beowulf, who nodded. A moment later, a voice thundered from the amphitheater’s speakers. John stiffened in his seat when he heard it; the voice from the speakers sounded odd, artificial—strangely calm and formal, but laden with rage and menace. “Your destruction is the will of the Gods… and we are their instrument.” John was awestruck. He stood. “Yes, Spartan?” Stanforth said. “Sir, is this a translation?” “No,” the Vice Admiral replied. “They broadcast this to us in our language. We believe they used some kind of translation system to prepare the message… but it means they’ve been studying us for some time.” John took his seat. “As of November 1, the UNSC has been ordered to full alert,” Stanforth said. “Vice Admiral Preston Cole is mobilizing the largest fleet action in human history to retake the Epsilon Indi System and confront this new threat. Their transmission made one thing perfectly clear: they’re looking for a fight.” Only years of military discipline kept John rooted to his seat—otherwise he would have stood up and asked to volunteer on the spot. He would have given anything to go and fight. This was the threat he and the other Spartans had been training for all their lives—he was certain of it."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter11.txt", "text": "Not scattered rebels, pirates, or political dissidents. “Because of this UNSC-wide mobilization,” Vice Admiral Stanforth continued, “your training schedule will be accelerated to its final phase: Project MJOLNIR.” He stepped away from the podium and clasped his hands behind his back. “To that end, I’m afraid I have another unpleasant announcement.” He turned to the Chief. “Chief Petty Officer Mendez will be departing us to train the next group of Spartans. Chief?” John grabbed the edge of the riser. Chief Mendez had always been there for them, the only constant in the universe. Vice Admiral Stanforth might as well have told him that Reach was leaving the Epsilon Eridani System. The Chief stepped to the podium and clasped its edges. “Recruits,” he said, “soon your training will be complete, and you will graduate to the rank of Petty Officer Second Class in the UNSC. One of the first things you will learn is that change is part of a soldier’s life. You will make and lose friends. You will move. This is part of the job.” He looked to his audience. His dark eyes rested on each one of them. He nodded, seemingly satisfied with what he saw. “The Spartans are the finest group of soldiers I have ever encountered,” he said. “It has been a privilege to train you. Never forget what I’ve tried to teach you—duty, honor, and sacrifice for the greater good of humanity are the qualities that make you the best.” He was silent a moment, searching for more words. But finding none, he stood at attention and saluted. “Attention,” John barked. The Spartans rose as one and saluted the Chief. “Dismissed, Spartans,” Chief Mendez said. “And good luck.” He finished his salute. The Spartans snapped down their arms. They hesitated, and then reluctantly filed out of the amphitheater. John stayed behind. He had to talk to Chief Mendez. Dr. Halsey spoke briefly with the Chief and the Vice Admiral, then she and the Vice Admiral left together. Beowulf backed toward the far wall and faded away like a ghost. The Chief gathered his hat, spotted John, and walked to him. He nodded to the hologram of the scorched colony, Harvest, still rotating in the air. “One final lesson, Petty Officer,” he said. “What tactical options do you have when attacking a stronger opponent?” “Sir!” John said. “There are two options. Attack swiftly and with full force at their weakest point—take them out quickly before they have a chance to respond.” “Good,” he said. “And the other option?” “Fall back,” John replied. “Engage in guerrilla actions or get reinforcements.” The Chief sighed. “Those are the correct answers,” he said, “but it may not be enough to be correct this time. Sit, please.” John sat, and the Chief settled next to him on the riser. “There’s a third option.” The Chief turned his hat over in his hands. “An option that others may eventually consider.…” “Sir?” “Surrender,” the Chief whispered."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter11.txt", "text": "“That, however, is never an option for the likes of you and me. We don’t have the luxury of backing down.” He glanced up at Harvest—a glittering ball of glass. “And I doubt that an enemy like this will let us surrender.” “I think I understand, sir.” “Make sure you do. And make sure you don’t let anyone else give up.” He gazed into the shadows beyond the center platform. “Project MJOLNIR will make the Spartans into something… new. Something I could never forge them into. I can’t fully explain—that damned ONI spook is still here listening—just trust Dr. Halsey.” The Chief dug into his jacket pocket. “I was hoping to see you before they shipped me out. I have something for you.” He set a small metal disk on the riser between them. “When you first came here,” the Chief said, “you fought the trainers when they took this away from you—broke a few fingers as I recall.” His chiseled features cracked into a rare smile. John picked up the disk and examined it. It was an ancient silver coin. He flipped it between his fingers. “It has an eagle on one side,” Mendez said. “That bird is like you—fast and deadly.” John closed his fingers around the quarter. “Thank you, sir.” He wanted to say that he was strong and fast because the Chief had made him so. He wanted to tell him that he was ready to defend humanity against this new threat. He wanted to say that without the Chief, he would have no purpose, no integrity, and no duty to perform. But John didn’t have the words. He just sat there. Mendez stood. “It has been an honor to serve with you.” Instead of saluting, he held out his hand. John got to his feet. He took the Chief’s hand and they shook. It took a great deal of effort—every instinct screamed at him to salute. “Good-bye,” Chief Mendez said. He turned briskly on his heel and strode from the room. John never saw him again."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter12.txt", "text": "Chapter Twelve 1750 HOURS, NOVEMBER 27, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC FRIGATE COMMONWEALTH EN ROUTE TO THE UNSC DAMASCUS MATERIALS TESTING FACILITY, PLANET CHI CETI 4 The view screen in the bunkroom of the UNSC frigate Commonwealth clicked on as the ship entered normal space. Ice particles showered the external camera and gave the distant yellow sun, Chi Ceti, a ghostly ring. John watched and continued to ponder the word Mjolnir as they sped in-system. He had looked it up in the education database. Mjolnir was the hammer used by the Norse god of thunder. Project MJOLNIR had to be some kind of weapon. At least he hoped it was; they needed something to fight the Covenant. If it was a weapon, though, why was it here at the Damascus testing facility, on the very edge of UNSC-controlled space? He had only even heard of this system twenty-four hours ago. He turned and surveyed the squad. Although this bunkroom had one hundred beds, the Spartans still clustered together, playing cards, polishing boots, reading, exercising. Sam sparred with Kelly—although she had to slow herself down considerably to give him a chance. John was reminded that he didn’t like being on starships. The lack of control was disturbing. If he wasn’t stuck in “the freezer”—the starship’s cramped, unpleasant cryo chamber—he was left waiting and wondering what their next mission would be. During the last three weeks the Spartans had handled a variety of minor missions for Dr. Halsey. “Tying up loose ends,” she had called it. Putting down rebel factions on Jericho VII. Removing a black-market bazaar near the Roosevelt military base. Each mission had brought them closer to the Chi Ceti System. John had made sure every member of his squad had participated in these missions. They had performed flawlessly. There had been no losses. Chief Mendez would have been proud of them. “Spartan-117,” Dr. Halsey’s voice blared over the loud-speaker. “Report to the bridge immediately.” John snapped to attention and keyed the intercom. “Yes, ma’am!” He turned to Sam. “Get everyone ready, in case we’re needed. On the double.” “Affirmative,” Sam said. “You heard the Petty Officer. Dog those cards. Get into uniform, soldier!” John double-timed it to the elevator and punched the code for the bridge. The doors parted and he stepped onto the bridge. Every wall had a screen. Some showed stars and the distant red smear of a nebula. Other screens displayed the fusion reactor status and spectrums of microwave broadcasts in the system. A brass railing ringed the center of the bridge, and within sat four Junior Lieutenants at their stations: navigation, weapons, communications, and ship operations. John halted and saluted Captain Wallace, then nodded to Dr. Halsey. Captain Wallace stood with his right arm crooked behind his back. His left arm was missing from the elbow down. John remained saluting until the Captain returned the gesture. “Over here, please,” Dr. Halsey said."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter12.txt", "text": "“I want you to see this.” John walked across the rubberized deck and gave his full attention to the screen Dr. Halsey and Captain Wallace were scrutinizing. It displayed deconvoluted radar signals. It looked like tangled yarn to John. “There—” Dr. Halsey pointed to a blip on the screen. “It’s there again.” Captain Wallace stroked his dark beard, thinking, then said, “That puts our ghost at eighty million kilometers. Even if it were a ship, it would take a full hour to get within weapons range. And besides—” He waved at the screen. “—it’s gone again.” “May I suggest that we go to battle stations, Captain?” Dr. Halsey told him. “I don’t see the point,” he said condescendingly; the Captain was clearly less than pleased about having a civilian on his bridge. “We haven’t let this be widely known,” she said, “but when the aliens were first detected at Harvest, they appeared at extreme range… and then they were suddenly much closer.” “An intrasystem jump?” John asked. Dr. Halsey smiled at him. “Correctly surmised, Spartan.” “That’s not possible,” Captain Wallace remarked. “Slipstream space can’t be navigated that accurately.” “You mean we cannot navigate with that kind of accuracy,” she said. The Captain clenched and unclenched his jaw. He clicked the intercom. “General quarters: all hands to battle stations. Seal bulkheads. I repeat: all hands, battle stations. This is not a drill. Reactors to ninety percent. Come about to course one two five.” The bridge lights darkened to a red hue. The deck rumbled beneath John’s boots and the entire ship tilted as it changed heading. Pressure doors slammed shut and sealed John on the bridge. The Commonwealth stabilized on her new heading, and Dr. Halsey crossed her arms. She leaned over and whispered to John, “We’ll be using the Commonwealth’s dropship to go to the testing facility on Chi Ceti Four. We have to get to Project MJOLNIR.” She turned back and watched the radar screen. “Before they do. So get the others ready.” “Yes, ma’am.” John keyed the intercom. “Sam, muster the squad in Bay Alpha. I want that Pelican loaded and ready for drop in fifteen minutes.” “We’ll have it done in ten,” Sam replied. “Faster if those Longsword interceptor pilots get out of our way.” John would have given anything to be belowdecks with the others. He felt as if he were being left behind. The radar screen flashed with blobs of eerie green light… almost as if the space around the Commonwealth were boiling. The collision alarm sounded. “Brace for impact!” Captain Wallace said. He laced his arm around the brass railing. John grabbed an emergency handhold on the wall. Something appeared three thousand kilometers off the Commonwealth’s prow. It was a sleek oval with a single seam running along its lateral edge from stem to stern. Tiny lights winked on and off along its hull. A faint purple-tinged glow emitted from the tail. The ship was only a third the size of the Commonwealth."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter12.txt", "text": "“A Covenant ship,” Dr. Halsey said, and she involuntarily backed away from the view screens. Captain Wallace scowled. “COM officer: send a signal to Chi Ceti—see if they can send us some reinforcements.” “Aye, sir.” Blue flashes flickered along the hull of the alien ship—so bright that even filtered through the external camera, they still made John’s eyes water. The outer hull of the Commonwealth sizzled and popped. Three screens filled with static. “Pulse lasers!” the Lieutenant at the ops station screamed. “Communication dish destroyed. Armor in sections three and four at twenty-five percent. Hull breach in section three. Sealing now.” The Lieutenant swiveled in his seat, sweat beaded on his forehead. “Ship AI core memory overloaded,” he said. With the AI offline, the ship could still fire weapons and navigate through Slipstream space, but John knew it would take more time to make jump calculations. “Come to heading zero three zero, declination one eight zero,” Captain Wallace ordered. “Arm Archer missile pods A through F. And give me a firing solution.” “Aye aye,” the navigation and weapons officers said. “A through F pods armed.” They furiously tapped away on their keypads. Seconds ticked by. “Firing solution ready, sir.” “Fire.” “Pods A through F firing!” The Commonwealth had twenty-six pods, each loaded with thirty Archer high-explosive missiles. On screen, pods A through F opened, and launched—180 plumes of rocket exhaust that traced a path from the Commonwealth to the alien ship. The enemy changed course, rotated so that the top of the ship faced the incoming missiles. It then moved straight up at an alarming speed. The Archer missiles altered their trajectory to track the ship, but half their number streaked past the target, clean misses. The others impacted. Fire covered the skin of the alien ship. “Good work, Lieutenant,” Captain Wallace said, and he clapped the young officer on the shoulder. Dr. Halsey frowned and stared at the screen. “No,” she whispered. “Wait.” The fire flared, then dimmed. The skin of the alien ship rippled like heat wavering off a hot road in the summer. It fluttered with a metallic silver sheen, then brilliant white—and the fire faded, revealing the ship beneath. It was completely undamaged. “Energy shields,” Dr. Halsey muttered. She tapped her lower lip, thinking. “Even ships this small have energy shielding.” “Lieutenant,” the Captain barked at the NAV officer. “Cut main engines and fire maneuvering thrusters. Rotate and track so that we’re pointing at that thing.” “Aye aye, sir.” The distant rumbling of the Commonwealth’s main engines dimmed and stopped and she turned about. Her inertia kept the ship speeding toward the testing facility—now flying backward. “What are you doing, Captain?” Dr. Halsey asked. “Arm the MAC,” Captain Wallace told the weapons officer. “A heavy round.” John understood: turning your back to an enemy only gave them an advantage. The MAC—Magnetic Accelerator Cannon—was the Commonwealth’s main weapon. It fired a super-dense ferric tungsten shell."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter12.txt", "text": "The tremendous mass and velocity of the projectile obliterated most ships on impact. Unlike the Archer missiles, a MAC round was an unguided projectile; the firing solution had to be perfect in order to hit the target—not an easy thing to do when both ships were moving rapidly. “MAC capacitors charging,” the weapons officer announced. The Covenant ship turned its side toward the Commonwealth. “Yes,” the Captain murmured. “Give me a bigger target.” Pinpoints of blue light glowed and then flared along the alien hull. The tactical view screens on the nose of the Commonwealth went dead. John heard sizzling overhead—then the muffled thumps of explosive decompressions. “More pulse laser hits,” the ops officer reported. “Armor in sections three through seven down to four centimeters. Navigation dish destroyed. Hull breaches on decks two, five, and nine. We have a leak in the port fuel tanks.” The Lieutenant’s hand shakily danced over the controls. “Pumping fuel to starboard reverse tanks. Sealing sections.” John shifted on his feet. He had to move. Act. Standing here—unable to get to his squad, not doing anything—was counter to every fiber of his being. “MAC at one hundred percent,” the weapons officer shouted. “Ready to fire!” “Fire!” Captain Wallace ordered. The lights on the bridge dimmed and the Commonwealth shuddered. The MAC bolt launched through space—a red-hot metal slug moving at thirty thousand meters per second. The Covenant ship’s engines flared to life and the ship veered away— —Too late. The heavy round closed and slammed into the target’s prow. The Covenant ship reeled backward through space. Its energy shields shimmered and glowed lightning-bright… then flickered, dimmed, and went out. The bridge crew let out a victory cheer. Except Dr. Halsey. John watched the view screen as she adjusted the camera controls and zoomed in on the Covenant ship. The vessel’s erratic spinning slowed and it came to a stop. The ship’s nose was crumpled and atmosphere vented into vacuum. Tiny fires flickered inside. The ship slowly came about and started back toward them—gaining speed. “It should have been destroyed,” she whispered. Tiny red blobs appeared on the hull of the Covenant ship. They glowed and intensified and drifted together, collecting along the lateral line of the craft. Captain Wallace said, “Make ready another heavy round.” “Aye aye,” the weapons officer said. “Charge at thirty percent. Firing solution online, sir.” “No,” Dr. Halsey said. “Evasive maneuvers, Captain. Now!” “I won’t have my command second-guessed, ma’am.” The Captain turned to face her. “And with respect, Doctor, second-guessed by someone with no combat experience.” He stiffened and placed his hand behind his back. “I cannot have you removed from the bridge because the bulkheads are sealed… but another outburst like that, Doctor, and I will have you gagged.” John shot a quick glance to Dr. Halsey. Her face flushed—he couldn’t tell from shame or rage."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter12.txt", "text": "“MAC at fifty percent charge.” The red light continued to collect along the lateral line of the Covenant ship until it was a solid band. It brightened. “Eighty percent charge.” “They’re turning, sir,” the NAV officer announced. “She’s coming to starboard.” “Ninety-five percent charge—one hundred,” the weapons officer announced “Send them to Hades, Lieutenant. Fire.” The lights dimmed again. The Commonwealth shuddered and a bolt of thunder and fire tore through the blackness. The Covenant ship stood its ground. The bloodred light that had pooled on its lateral line burst forth—streaked toward the Commonwealth, passing the MAC round a mere kilometer away. The red light glowed and pulsed almost as if it were liquid; its edges roiled and fluttered. It elongated into a teardrop of ruby light five meters long. “Evasive maneuvers,” Captain Wallace cried. “Emergency thrusters to port!” The Commonwealth slowly moved out of the trajectory path of the Covenant’s energy weapon. The MAC round struck the Covenant vessel amidships. Its shield shimmered and bubbled… then disappeared. The MAC round punched through the craft and sent it spinning out of control. The inbound ball of light moved, too. It started tracking the Commonwealth. “Engines—full power astern,” the Captain ordered. The Commonwealth rumbled and slowed. The light should have sped past them; instead, it sharply arced and struck her port amidships. The air filled with a popping and sizzling. The Commonwealth listed to starboard, then rolled completely over and continued to tumble. “Stabilize,” the Captain cried. “Starboard thrusters.” “Fire reported in sections one through twenty,” the ops officer said, panic creeping into his voice. “Decks two through seven in section one… have melted, sir. They’re gone.” It grew noticeably hotter on the bridge. Sweat beaded on John’s back and trickled down his spine. He had never felt so helpless. Were his teammates belowdecks alive or dead? “All port armor destroyed. Decks two through five in sections three, four, and five are now out of contact, sir. It’s burning through us!” Captain Wallace stood without saying a word. He stared at their one remaining view screen. Dr. Halsey stepped forward. “Respectfully, Captain, I suggest that you alert the crew to get on respirator packs. Give them thirty seconds, then vent the atmosphere on all decks, except the bridge.” The COM officer looked to the Captain. “Do it,” the Captain said. “Sound the alert.” “Deck thirteen destroyed,” the ops officer announced. “Fire is getting close to the reactor. Hull structure starting to buckle.” “Vent atmosphere now,” Captain Wallance ordered. “Aye aye,” the ops officer replied. There was the sound of thumping through the hull… then nothing. “Fire is dying out,” the ops officer said. “Hull temperature cooling—stabilizing.” “What the hell did they hit us with?” Captain Wallace demanded. “Plasma,” Dr. Halsey replied. “But not any plasma we know… they can actually guide its trajectory through space, without any detectable mechanism. Amazing.” “Captain,” the navigator said."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter12.txt", "text": "“Alien ship is pursuing.” The Covenant vessel—a red-rimmed hole punched through its center—turned and started toward the Commonwealth. “How…?” Captain Wallace said unbelievingly. He quickly regained his wits. “Ready another MAC heavy round.” The weapons officer slowly said, “MAC system destroyed, Captain.” “We’re sitting ducks, then,” the Captain murmured. Dr. Halsey leaned against the brass railing. “Not quite. The Commonwealth carries three nuclear missiles, correct, Captain?” “A detonation this close would destroy us as well.” She frowned and cupped her hand to her chin, thinking. “Excuse me, sir,” John said. “The aliens’ tactics thus far have been unnecessarily vicious—like those of an animal. They didn’t have to take that second MAC round while they fired at us. But they wanted to position themselves to fire. In my opinion, sir, they would stop and engage anything that challenged them.” The Captain looked to Dr. Halsey. She shrugged and then nodded. “The Longsword interceptors?” Captain Wallace turned his back to them and covered his face with his one hand. He sighed, nodded, and clicked on the intercom. “Longsword Squadron Delta, this is the Captain. Get your ships into the black, boys, and engage the enemy ship. I need you to buy us some time.” “Roger that, sir. We’re ready to launch. On our way.” “Turn us around,” the Captain told the NAV officer. “Give me best speed on a vector toward Chi Ceti Four orbit.” “Coolant leaks in the reactor, sir,” the ops officer said. “We can push the engines to thirty percent. No more.” “Give me fifty percent,” he said. He turned to the weapons officer. “Arm one of our Shiva warheads. Set proximity fuse to one hundred meters.” “Yes, sir.” The Commonwealth spun about. John felt the change in his stomach and he tightened his grip on the railing. The spinning slowed, stopped, then the ship accelerated. “Reactor red-lining,” the ops officer reported. “Meltdown in twenty-five seconds.” Over the speakers, there was a crackle, a hiss of static, then: “Longsword interceptors engaging the enemy, sir.” On the remaining aft camera, there were flickers of light—the cold blue strobes of Covenant energy weapons, and the red-orange fireballs of the Longswords’ missiles. “Launch the missile,” the Captain said. “Meltdown in ten seconds.” “Missile away.” A plume of exhaust divided the darkness of space. “Five seconds to meltdown,” the ops officer said. “Four, three, two—” “Shunt drive plasma to space,” the Captain ordered. “Cut power to all systems.” The Covenant ship was silhouetted for a split second by pure white—then the view screen snapped off. The bridge lights went dead. John could see everything, though. The bridge officers, Dr. Halsey as she clutched onto the railing, and Captain Wallace as he stood and saluted the pilots he had just sent to die. The hull of the Commonwealth rumbled and pinged as the shock wave enveloped them. It grew louder, a subsonic roar that shook John to his bones. The noise seemed to go on forever in the darkness."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter12.txt", "text": "It faded… then it was completely silent. “Power us back up,” the Captain said. “Slowly. Give me ten percent from the reactors if we can manage.” The bridge lights came on, dimly, but they worked. “Report,” the Captain ordered. “All sensors offline,” the op officer said. “Resetting backup computer. Hang on. Scanning now. Lots of debris. It’s hot back there. All Longsword interceptors vaporized.” He looked up, the color drained from his face. “Covenant ship… intact, sir.” “No,” the Captain said, and made a fist. “It’s moving off, though,” the op officer said with a visible sigh of relief. “Very slowly.” “What does it take to destroy one of those things?” the Captain whispered. “We don’t know if our weapons can destroy them,” Dr. Halsey said. “But at least we know we can slow them down.” The Captain stood straighter. “Best speed to the Damascus testing facility. We will execute a flyby orbit, and then proceed to a point twenty million kilometers distant to make repairs.” “Captain?” Dr. Halsey said. “A flyby?” “I have orders to get you to the facility and retrieve whatever Section Three has stowed there, ma’am. As we fly by, a dropship will take you and your—” He glanced at John. “—crew planet side. If the Covenant ship returns, we will be the bait to lure them away.” “I understand, Captain.” “We’ll rendezvous in orbit no later than 1900 hours.” Dr. Halsey turned to John. “We need to hurry. We don’t have much time—and there is a great deal I need to show the Spartans.” “Yes, ma’am,” John said. He took a long look at the bridge, and hoped he never had to return."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter13.txt", "text": "Chapter Thirteen 1845 HOURS, NOVEMBER 27, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC DAMASCUS MATERIALS TESTING FACILITY, PLANET CHI CETI 4 How far down was the testing facility? John and the other Spartans had been confined to a freight elevator for fifteen minutes, and the entire time it had been rapidly descending into the depths of Chi Ceti 4. The last place John wanted to be was in another confined space. The doors finally slid open, and they emerged in what appeared to be a well-lit hangar. The far end had an obstacle course set up with walls, trenches, dummy targets, and barbed wire. Three technicians and at least a dozen AI figures were busy in the center of the room. John had seen AIs before—one at a time. Déjà had once told the Spartans that there were technical reasons why AIs couldn’t be in the same place at the same time, but here were many ghostly figures: a mermaid, a samurai warrior, and one made entirely of bright light with comets trailing in her wake. Dr. Halsey cleared her throat. The technicians turned—the AIs vanished. John had been so focused on the holograms that he hadn’t noticed the forty Plexiglas mannequins set up in rows. On each was a suit of armor. The armor reminded John of the exoskeletons he had seen during training, but much less bulky, more compact. He stepped closer to one and saw that the suit actually had many layers; the outer layer reflected the overhead lights with a faint green-gold iridescence. It covered the groin, outer thighs, knees, shins, chest, shoulders, and forearms. There was a helmet and an integrated power pack—much smaller than standard Marine “battery sacks.” Underneath were intermeshed layers of matte-black metal. “Project MJOLNIR,” Dr. Halsey said. She snapped her fingers and an exploded holographic schematic of the armor appeared next to her. “The armor’s shell is a multilayer alloy of remarkable strength. We recently added a refractive coating to disperse incoming energy weapon attacks—to counter our new enemies.” She pointed inside the schematic. “Each battlesuit also has a gel-filled layer to regulate temperature; this layer can reactively change in density. Against the skin of the operator, there is a moisture-absorbing cloth suit, and biomonitors that constantly adjust the suit’s temperature and fit. There’s also an onboard computer that interfaces with your standard-issue neural implant.” She gestured and the schematic collapsed so that it only displayed the outer layers. As the image changed, John glimpsed veinlike microcapillaries, a dense sandwich of optical crystal, a circulating pump, even what looked like a miniature fusion cell in the backpack. “Most importantly,” Dr. Halsey said, “the armor’s inner structure is composed of a new reactive metal liquid crystal. It is amorphous, yet fractally scales and amplifies force. In simplified terms, the armor doubles the wearer’s strength, and enhances the reaction speed of a normal human by a factor of five.” She waved her hand through the hologram. “There is one problem, however."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter13.txt", "text": "This system is so reactive that our previous tests with unaugmented volunteers ended in—” She searched for the right word. “—failure.” She nodded to one of the technicians. A flat video appeared in the air. It showed a Marine officer, a Lieutenant, being fitted with the MJOLNIR armor. “Power is on,” someone said from off screen. “Move your right arm, please.” The soldier’s arm blurred forward with incredible speed. The Marine’s stoic expression collapsed into shock, surprise, and pain as his arm shattered. He convulsed—shuddered and screamed. As he jerked in pain, John could hear the sounds of bones breaking. The man’s own agony-induced spasms were killing him. Halsey waved the video away. “Normal humans don’t have the reaction time or strength required to drive this system,” she explained. “You do. Your enhanced musculature and the metal and ceramic layers that have been bonded to your skeleton should be enough to allow you to harness the armor’s power. There has been… insufficient computer modeling, however. There will be some risk. You’ll have to move very slowly and deliberately until you get a feel for the armor and how it works. It cannot be powered down, nor can the response be scaled back. Do you understand?” “Yes, ma’am,” the Spartans answered. “Questions?” John raised his hand. “When do we get to try them, Doctor?” “Right now,” she said. “Volunteers?” Every Spartan raised a hand. Dr. Halsey allowed herself a tiny smile. She surveyed them, and finally, she turned to John. “You’ve always been lucky, John,” she said. “Let’s go.” He stepped forward. The technicians fitted him as the others watched and the pieces of the MJOLNIR system were assembled around his body. It was like a giant three-dimensional puzzle. “Please breathe normally,” Dr. Halsey told him, “but otherwise remain absolutely still.” John held himself as motionless as he could. The armor shifted and melded to the contours of his form. It was like a second skin… and much lighter than he had thought it would be. It heated, then cooled—then matched the temperature of his body. If he closed his eyes, he wouldn’t have known he was encased. They set the helmet over his head. Health monitors, motion sensors, suit status indicators pulsed into life. A targeting reticle flickered on the heads-up display. “Everyone move back,” Halsey ordered. The Spartans—from their expressions, they were concerned for him, but still intensely curious—cleared a ring with a radius of three meters around him. “Listen carefully to me, John,” Dr. Halsey said. “I just want you to think, and only think, about moving your arm up to chest level. Stay relaxed.” He willed his arm to move, and his hand and forearm sprang forward to chest level. The slightest motion translated his thought to motion at lightning speed. It had been so fast—if he hadn’t been attached to his arm, he might have missed that it had happened at all. The Spartans gasped. Sam applauded. Even lightning-fast Kelly seemed impressed."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter13.txt", "text": "Dr. Halsey slowly coached John through the basics of walking and gradually built up the speed and complexity of his motions. After fifteen minutes he could walk, run, and jump almost without thinking of the difference between suit motion and normal motion. “Petty Officer, run through the obstacle course,” Dr. Halsey said. “We will proceed to fit the other Spartans. We don’t have a great deal of time left.” John snapped a salute without thinking. His hand bounced off his helmet and a dull ache throbbed in his hand. His wrist would be bruised. If his bones hadn’t been reinforced, he knew they would have been pulverized. “Carefully, Petty Officer. Very carefully, please.” “Yes, ma’am!” John focused his mind on motion. He leaped over a three-meter-high wall. He punched at concrete targets—shattering them. He threw knives, sinking them up to their hafts into target dummies. He slid under barbed wire as bullets zinged over his head. He stood, and let the rounds deflect off the armor. To his amazement, he actually dodged one or two of the rounds. Soon the other Spartans joined him on the course. Everyone ran awkwardly through the obstacles, though they had no coordination. John expressed his worries to Dr. Halsey. “It will come to you soon enough. You’ve already received some subliminal training during your last cryo sleep—” Dr. Halsey told them. “—now all you need is time to get used to the suits.” More worrisome to John was the realization that they’d have to learn how to work together all over again. Their usual hand signals were too exaggerated now—a slight wave or tremble translated into full-force punches or uncontrolled vibrations. They would have to use the COM channels for the time being. As soon as he thought of this, his suit tagged and monitored the other MJOLNIR suits. Their standard-issue UNSC neural chip—implanted in every UNSC soldier at induction—identified friendly soldiers and displayed them on their helmet HUDs. But this was different—all he had to do was concentrate on them, and a secure COM channel opened. It was extremely efficient. And much to his relief, after drilling for thirty minutes, the Spartans had recovered all of their original group coordination, and more. On one level, John moved the suit and, in return, it moved him. On another level, however, communication with his squad was so easy and natural, he could move and direct them as if they were an extension of his body. Over the hangar’s speakers, the Spartans heard Dr. Halsey’s voice: “Spartans, so far so good. If anyone is experiencing difficulties with the suit or its controls, please report in.” “I think I’m in love,” Sam replied. “Oh—sorry, ma’am. I didn’t think that was an open channel.” “Flawless amplification of speed and power,” Kelly said. “It’s like I’ve been training in this suit for years.” “Do we get to keep them?” John asked. “You’re the only ones who can use them, Petty Officer. Who else could we give them to?"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter13.txt", "text": "We—” A technician handed her a headset. “One moment, please. Report, Captain.” Captain Wallace’s voice broke over the COM channels. “We have contact with the Covenant ship, ma’am. Extreme range. Their Slipspace engines must still be damaged. They are moving toward us via normal space.” “Your repair status?” she asked. “Long-range communications inoperable. Slipstream generators offline. MAC system destroyed. We have two fusion missiles and twenty Archer missile pods intact. Armor plating is at twenty percent.” There was a long hiss of static. “If you need more time… I can try and draw them away.” “No, Captain,” she replied, and carefully scrutinized John and the other armored Spartans. “We’re going to have to fight them… and this time we have to win.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter14.txt", "text": "Chapter Fourteen 2037 HOURS, NOVEMBER 27, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / IN ORBIT OVER CHI CETI 4 John piloted the Pelican through the exit burn of their orbital path, then sent the ship toward the last known position of the Commonwealth. The frigate had moved ten million kilometers in-system from their rendezvous point. Dr. Halsey sat in the copilot’s seat, fidgeting with her space suit. In the aft compartment were the Spartans, the three technicians from the Damascus facility, and a dozen spare MJOLNIR suits. Missing, however, were the AIs John had seen when they had first arrived. All Dr. Halsey had time to do was remove their memory processor cubes. It was a tremendous waste to leave such expensive equipment behind. Dr. Halsey examined the ship’s short-range detection gear, then said, “Captain Wallace may be trying to use Chi Ceti’s magnetic field to deflect the Covenant’s plasma weapon. Try and catch up, Petty Officer.” “Yes, ma’am.” John pushed the engines to 100 percent. “Covenant ship to port,” she said, “three million kilometers and closing on the Commonwealth.” John bumped up the magnification onscreen and spotted the ship. The alien vessel’s hull was bent at a thirty-degree angle from the impact of the MAC heavy round, but it still moved at almost twice the speed of the Commonwealth. “Doctor,” John asked, “does the MJOLNIR armor operate in vacuum?” “Of course,” she replied. “It was one of our first design considerations. The suit can recycle air for ninety minutes. It’s shielded against radiation and EMP as well.” He then spoke to Sam over his COM link. “What kind of missiles is this bird carrying?” “Wait one moment, sir,” Sam replied. His voice returned a moment later. “We have two rocket pods with sixteen HE Anvil-IIs each.” “I want you to assemble a team and go EVA. Remove those warheads from the wing pods.” “I’m on it,” Sam said. Halsey tried to push her glasses up higher on her nose—instead she bumped up against the faceplate of her suit’s helmet. “May I ask what you have in mind, Squad Leader?” John left his COM channel open so the Spartans would hear his reply. “Requesting permission to attack the Covenant ship, ma’am.” Her blue eyes widened. “Most certainly not,” she said. “If a warship like the Commonwealth couldn’t destroy it, a Pelican is certainly no match for them.” “Not the Pelican, no,” John agreed. “But I believe we Spartans are. If we get inside the enemy ship, we can destroy her.” Doctor Halsey considered, tapping her lower lip. “How will you get onboard?” “We go EVA and use thruster packs to intercept the Covenant ship as it passes en route to the Commonwealth.” She shook her head. “One slight error in your trajectory, and you could miss by kilometers,” Dr. Halsey remarked. A pause. “I don’t miss, ma’am,” John said. “They have reflective shields.” “True,” John replied. “But the ship is damaged."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter14.txt", "text": "They may have had to lower or reduce shielding in order to conserve power—and if we have to, we can use one of our own warheads to punch a small hole in the barrier.” He paused, then added, “There’s also a large hole in their hull. Their shield may not cover that space entirely.” Dr. Halsey whispered, “It’s a tremendous risk.” “With respect, ma’am, it’s a bigger risk to sit here and do nothing. After they finish with the Commonwealth… they’ll come for us and we’ll have to fight them anyway. Better to strike first.” She stared off into space, lost in thought. Finally, she sighed in resignation. “Very well. Go.” She transferred the pilot controls to her station. “And blow the hell out of them.” John climbed into the aft compartment. His Spartans stood at attention. He felt a rush of pride; they were ready to follow him as he leaped literally into the jaws of death. “I’ve got the warheads,” Sam said. It was hard to mistake Sam even with his reflective blast shield covering his face. He was the largest Spartan—even more imposing encased in the armor. “Everyone’s got one,” Sam continued as he handed John a metal shell. “Timers and detonators are already rigged. Stuck on a patch of adhesive polymer; they’ll cling to your suit.” “Spartans,” John said, “grab thruster packs and make ready to go EVA. Everyone else—” He motioned to the three technicians. “—get into the forward cabin. If we fail, they’ll be coming after the Pelican. Protect Dr. Halsey.” He moved aft. Kelly handed him a thruster pack and he slipped it on. “Covenant ship approaching,” Halsey called out. “I’m pumping out your atmosphere to avoid explosive decompression when I drop the back hatch.” “We’ll only get one shot at this,” John said to the other Spartans. “Plot an intercept trajectory and fire your thrusters at max burn. If the target changes course, you’ll have to make a best-guess correction on the fly. If you make it, we’ll regroup outside the hole in their hull. If you miss—we’ll pick you up after we’re done.” He hesitated, then added, “And if we don’t succeed, then power down your systems and wait for UNSC reinforcements to retrieve you. Live to fight another day. Don’t waste your lives.” There was a moment of silence. “If anyone has a better plan, speak up now.” Sam patted John on the back. “This is a great plan. It’ll be easier than Chief Mendez’s playground. A bunch of little kids could pull it off.” “Sure,” John said. “Everyone ready?” “Sir,” they said. “We’re ready, sir!” John flipped the safety off and then punched in the code to open the Pelican’s tail. The mechanism opened soundlessly in the vacuum. Outside was infinite blackness. He had a feeling of falling through space—but the vertigo quickly passed. He positioned himself on the edge of the ramp, both hands gripping a safety handle overhead."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter14.txt", "text": "The Covenant ship was a tiny dot in the center of his helmet’s view screen. He plotted a course and fired the thruster pack on maximum burn. Acceleration slammed him into the thruster harness. He knew the others would launch right after him, but he couldn’t turn to see them. It occurred to him then that the Covenant ship might identify the Spartans as incoming missiles—and their point-defense lasers were too damn accurate. John clicked on the COM channel. “Doctor, we could use a few decoys if Captain Wallace can spare them.” “Understood,” she said. The Covenant vessel grew rapidly in his display. A burst from its engines and it turned slightly. Traveling at one hundred million kilometers an hour, even a minor course correction meant that he could miss by tens of thousands of kilometers. John carefully corrected his vector. The pulse laser on the side of the Covenant ship glowed, built up energy, until it was dazzling neon blue, then discharged—but not at him. John saw explosions in his peripheral vision. The Commonwealth had fired a salvo of her Archer missiles. Around him in the dark were puffballs of red-orange detonations—utterly silent. John’s velocity now almost matched that of the ship. He eased toward the hull—twenty meters, ten, five… and then the Covenant ship started to pull away from him. It was traveling too fast. He tapped his altitude thrusters and pointed himself perpendicular to the hull. The Covenant hull accelerated under him… but he was dropping closer. He stretched out his arms. The hull raced past his fingertips a meter away. John’s fingers brushed against something—it felt semiliquid. He could see his hand skimming a near-invisible, glassy, shimmering surface: the energy shield. Damn. Their shields were still up. He glanced to either side. The huge hole in their hull was nowhere in sight. He slid over the hull, unable to grab hold of it. No. He refused to accept that he had made it this far, only to fail now. A pulse laser flashed a hundred meters away; his faceplate barely adjusted in time. The flash nearly blinded him. John blinked and then saw a silvery film rush back around the bulbous base of the laser turret. The shield dropped to let the laser fire? The laser started to build up charge again. He would have to act quickly. His timing had to be perfect. If he hit that turret before it fired, he’d bounce off. If he hit the turret as it fired… there wouldn’t be much left of him. The turret glowed, intensely bright. John set his thrust harness on a maximum burn toward the laser, noting the rapidly dwindling fuel charge. He closed his eyes, saw the blinding flash through his lids, felt the heat on his face, then opened his eyes—just in time to crash and bounce into the hull. The hull plates were smooth, but had grooves and odd, organic crenellations—perfect fingerholds."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter14.txt", "text": "The difference between his momentum and the ship’s nearly pulled his arms out of their sockets. He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip. He had made it. John pulled himself along the hull toward the hole the Commonwealth’s MAC round had punched in the ship. Only two other Spartans waited for him there. “What took you so long?” Sam’s voice crackled over the COM channel. The other Spartan lifted her helmet’s reflective blast shield. He saw Kelly’s face. “I think we’re it,” Kelly said. “I’m not getting any other responses over the COM channels.” That meant either the Covenant ship shielded their transmissions… or there were no Spartans left to communicate with. John pushed that last thought aside. The hole was ten meters across. Jagged metal teeth pointed inward. John looked over the edge and saw that the MAC heavy round had indeed passed all the way through. He saw tiers of exposed decks, severed conduits, and sheared metal beams—and through the other side, black space and stars. They climbed down. John immediately fell down on the first deck. They continued inward, scaling the metal walls until they were approximately in the middle of the ship. John paused and saw the stars wheel outside either end of the hole. The Covenant ship must be turning. They were engaging the Commonwealth. “We better hurry.” He stepped onto an exposed deck, and the gravity settled his stomach—giving him an up-and-down orientation. “Weapons check,” John told them. They examined their assault rifles. The guns had made the journey intact. John slipped in a clip of armor-piercing rounds, noting with pleasure that the suit immediately aligned the sight profile of the gun with his targeting system. He slung the weapon and checked the HE warhead attached to his hip. The timer and detonator looked undamaged. John faced a sealed set of sliding pressure doors. It was smooth and soft to his touch. It could have been made of metal or plastic… or could have been alive, for all he knew. He and Sam grabbed either side and pulled, strained, and then the mechanism gave and the doors released. There was a hiss of atmosphere, a dark hallway beyond. They entered in formation—covering each other’s blind spots. The ceiling was three meters high. It made John feel small. “You think they need all this space because they’re so large?” Kelly asked. “We’ll know soon,” he told her. They crouched, weapons at the ready, and moved slowly down the corridor, John and Kelly in front. They rounded a corner and stopped at another set of pressure doors. John grabbed the seam. “Hang on,” Kelly said. She knelt next to a pad with nine buttons. Each button was inscribed with runic alien script. “These characters are strange, but one of them has to open this.” She touched one and it lit, then she keyed another. Gas hissed into the corridor. “At least the pressure is equalized,” she said. John double-checked his sensors."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter14.txt", "text": "Nothing… though the alien metal inside the ship could be blocking the scans. “Try another,” Sam said. She did—and the doors slid apart. The room was inhabited. An alien creature stood a meter and half tall, a biped. Its knobby, scaled skin was a sickly, mottled yellow; purple and yellow fins ran along the crest of its skull and its forearms. Glittering, bulbous eyes protruded from skull-like hollows in the alien’s elongated head. The Master Chief had read the UNSC’s first contact scenarios—they called for cautious attempts at communication. He couldn’t imagine communicating with something like this… thing. It reminded him of the carrion birds on Reach—vicious and unclean. The creature stood there, frozen for a moment—staring at the human interlopers. Then it screeched and reached for something on its belt, its movements darting and birdlike. The Spartans shouldered their weapons and fired a trio of bursts with pinpoint accuracy. Armor-piercing rounds tore into the creature, shredding its chest and head. It crumpled into a heap without a sound, dead before it hit the deck. Thick blood oozed from the corpse. “That was easy,” Sam remarked. He nudged the creature with his boot. “They sure aren’t as tough as their ships.” “Let’s hope it stays that way,” John replied. “I’m getting a radiation reading this way,” Kelly said. She gestured deeper into the vessel. They continued down the corridor and took a side branch. Kelly dropped a NAV marker, and its double blue triangle pulsed once on their heads-up displays. They stopped at another set of pressure doors. Sam and John took up flanking positions to cover her. Kelly punched the same buttons she had punched before and the doors slid apart. Another of the creatures was there. It stood in a circular room with crystalline control panels and a large window. This time, however, the vulture-headed creature didn’t scream or look particularly surprised. This one looked angry. The creature held a clawlike device in its hand—leveled at John. John and Kelly fired. Bullets filled the air and pinged off a silver shimmering barrier in front of the creature. A bolt of blue heat blasted from the claw. The blast was similar to the plasma that had hit the Commonwealth… and boiled a third of it away. The bolt sizzled over their heads. Sam dove forward and knocked John out of the blast’s path; the energy burst caught Sam in the side. The reflective coating of his MJOLNIR armor flared. He fell clutching his side, but still managed to fire his weapon. John and Kelly rolled on their backs and sprayed gunfire at the creature. Bullets peppered the alien—each one bounced and ricocheted off the energy shield. John glanced at his ammo counter—half gone. “Keep firing,” he ordered. The alien kept up a stream of answering fire—energy blasts hammered into Sam, who fell to the deck, his weapon empty. John charged forward and slammed his foot into the alien’s shield and knocked it out of line."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter14.txt", "text": "He jammed the barrel of his rifle into the alien’s screeching mouth and squeezed the trigger. The armor-piercing rounds punctured the alien and spattered the back wall with blood and bits of bone. John rose and helped Sam up. “I’m okay,” Sam said, holding his side and grimacing. “Just a little singed.” The reflective coating on his armor was blackened. “You sure?” Sam waved him away. John paused over the remaining bits of the alien. He spotted a glint of metal, an armguard, and he picked it up. He tapped one of three buttons on the device, but nothing happened. He strapped in onto his forearm. Dr. Halsey might find it useful. They entered the room. The large window was a half-meter thick. It overlooked a large chamber that descended three decks. A cylinder ran the length of the chamber and red light pulsed along its length, like a liquid sloshing back and forth. Under the window, on their side, rested a smooth angled surface—perhaps a control panel? On its surface were tiny symbols: glowing green dots, bars, and squares. “That’s got to be the source of the radiation,” Kelly said, and pointed to the chamber beyond. “Their reactor… or maybe a weapons system.” Another alien marched near the cylinder. It spotted John. A silver shimmer appeared around it. It screeched and wobbled in alarm, then scrambled for cover. “Trouble,” John said. “I’ve got an idea.” Sam limped forward. “Hand me those warheads.” John did as he asked, so did Kelly. “We shoot out that window, set the timers on the warheads, and toss them down there. That should start the party.” “Let’s do it before they call in reinforcements,” John said. They turned and fired at the crystal. It crackled, splintered, then shattered. “Toss those warheads,” Sam said, “and let’s get out of here.” John set the timers. “Three minutes,” he said. “That’ll give us just enough time to get topside and get away.” He turned to Sam. “You’ll have to stay and hold them off. That’s an order.” “What are you talking about?” Kelly said. “Sam knows.” Sam nodded. “I think I can hold them off that long.” He looked at John and then Kelly. He turned and showed them the burn in the side of his suit. There was a hole the size of his fist, and beneath that, the skin was blackened and cracked. He smiled, but his teeth were gritted in pain. “That’s nothing,” Kelly said. “We’ll get you patched up in no time. Once we get back—” Her mouth slowly dropped open. “Exactly,” Sam whispered. “Getting back is going to be a problem for me.” “The hole.” John reached out to touch it. “We don’t have any way to seal it.” Kelly shook her head. “If I step off this boat, I’m dead from the decompression,” Sam said, and shrugged. “No,” Kelly growled. “No—everyone gets out alive. We don’t leave teammates behind.” “He has his orders,” John told Kelly."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter14.txt", "text": "“You’ve got to leave me,” Sam said softly to Kelly. “And don’t tell me you’ll give me your suit. It took those techs on Damascus fifteen minutes to fit us. I wouldn’t even know where to start to unzip this thing.” John looked to the deck. The Chief had told him he’d have to send men to their deaths. He didn’t tell him it would feel like this. “Don’t waste time talking,” Sam said. “Our new friends aren’t going to wait for us while we figure this out.” He started the timers. “There. It’s decided.” A three-minute countdown appeared in the corner of their heads-up displays. “Now—get going, you two.” John clasped Sam’s hand and squeezed it. Kelly hesitated, then saluted. John turned and grabbed her arm. “Come on, Spartan. Don’t look back.” The truth was, it was John who didn’t dare look back. If he had, he would have stayed with Sam. Better to die with a friend than leave him behind. But as much as he wanted to fight and die alongside his friend, he had to set an example for the rest of the Spartans—and live to fight another day. John and Kelly pushed the pressure doors shut behind them. “Good-bye,” he whispered. The countdown timer ticked the seconds off inexorably. 2:35… They ran down the corridor, popped the seal on the outer door—the atmosphere vented. 1:05… They climbed up through the twisted metal canyon that the MAC round had torn through the hull. 0:33… “There,” John said, and pointed to the base of a charged pulse laser. They crawled toward it, waited as the glow built to a lethal charge. 0:12… They crouched and held onto one another. The laser fired. The heat blistered John’s back. They pushed off with all their strength, multiplied through the MJOLNIR armor. 0:00. The shield parted and they cleared the ship, hurtling into the blackness. The Covenant ship shuddered. Flashes of red appeared inside the hole—then a gout of fire rose and ballooned, but curled downward as it hit and rebounded off their own shield. The plasma spread along the length of their vessel. The shield shimmered and rippled silver—holding the destructive force inside. Metal glowed and melted. The pulse laser turrets absorbed into the hull. The hull blistered, bubbled, and boiled. The shield finally gave—the ship exploded. Kelly clung to John. A thousand molten fragments hurled past them, cooling from white to orange to red and then disappearing into the dark of the night. Sam’s death had shown them that the Covenant were not invincible. They could be beaten. At a high cost, however. John finally understood what the Chief had meant—the difference between a life wasted and a life spent. John also knew that humanity had a fighting chance… and he was ready to go to war."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter15.txt", "text": "Chapter Fifteen 0000 HOURS, JULY 17, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC REMOTE SCANNING OUTPOST ARCHIMEDES, ON THE EDGE OF THE SIGMA OCTANUS SYSTEM Ensign William Lovell scratched his head, yawned, and sat down at his duty station. The wraparound view screen warmed to his presence. “Good morning, Ensign Lovell,” the computer said. “Morning, sexy,” he said. It had been months since the Ensign had seen a real woman—the cold female voice of the computer was the closest thing he was getting to a date. “Voiceprint match,” the computer confirmed. “Please enter password.” He typed: ThereOncewasAgirl. The Ensign had never taken his duty too seriously. Maybe that’s why he only made it through his second year at the Academy. And maybe that’s why he had been on Archimedes station for the last year, stuck with third shift. But that suited him fine. “Please reenter password.” He typed more carefully this time: ThereOnceWasAGirl. After first contact with the Covenant, he had almost been conscripted straight out of school; instead, he had actually volunteered. Admiral Cole had defeated the Covenant at Harvest in 2531. His victory was publicized on every vid and holo throughout the Inner and Outer Colonies and all the way to Earth. That’s why Lovell didn’t try to dodge the enlistment officers. He had thought he’d watch a few battles from the bridge of a destroyer, fire a few missiles, rack up the victories, and be promoted to Captain within a year. His excellent grades gave him instant admission to OCS on Luna. There was one small detail, however, the UNSC propaganda machine had left out of their broadcasts: Cole had won only because he outnumbered the Covenant three to one… and even then, he had lost two-thirds of his fleet. Ensign Lovell had served on the UNSC destroyer Gorgon for four years. He had been promoted to First Lieutenant, then busted down to Second Lieutenant and finally to Ensign for insubordination and gross incompetence. The only reason they hadn’t drummed him out of the service was that the UNSC needed every man and woman they could get their hands on. While on the Gorgon, he and the rest of Admiral Cole’s fleet had sped among the Outer Colonies chasing, and being chased by, the Covenant. After four years’ space duty, Lovell had seen a dozen worlds glassed… and billions murdered. He had simply broken under the strain. He closed his eyes and remembered. No, he hadn’t broken; he was just scared of dying like everyone else. “Please keep your eyes open,” the computer told him. “Processing retinal scan.” He had drifted from office work to low-priority assignments and finally landed here a year ago. By that time there were no more Outer Colonies. The Covenant had destroyed them all and were pressing inexorably inward, slowly taking the Inner Colonies. There had been a few isolated victories… but he knew it was only a matter of time before the aliens wiped the human race out of existence."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter15.txt", "text": "“Login complete,” the computer announced. Ensign Lovell’s identity record was displayed on the monitor. In his Academy picture, he looked ten years younger: neatly trimmed jet-black hair, toothy grin, and sparkling green eyes. Today his hair was unkempt and the spark was long gone from his eyes. “Please read General Order 098831A-1 before proceeding.” The Ensign had memorized this stupid thing. But the computer would track his eye motions—make sure he read it anyway. He opened the file and it popped on-screen: UNITED NATIONS SPACE COMMAND EMERGENCY PRIORITY ORDER 098831A-1 ENCRYPTION CODE: RED PUBLIC KEY: FILE/FIRST LIGHT/ FROM: UNSC/NAVCOM FLEET H. T. WARD TO: ALL UNSC PERSONNEL SUBJECT: GENERAL ORDER 098831A-1 (“THE COLE PROTOCOL”) CLASSIFICATION: RESTRICTED (BGX DIRECTIVE) THE COLE PROTOCOL TO SAFEGUARD THE INNER COLONIES AND EARTH, ALL UNSC VESSELS OR STATIONS MUST NOT BE CAPTURED WITH INTACT NAVIGATION DATABASES THAT MAY LEAD COVENANT FORCES TO HUMAN CIVILIAN POPULATION CENTERS. IF ANY COVENANT FORCES ARE DETECTED: 1. ACTIVATE SELECTIVE PURGE OF DATABASES ON ALL SHIP-BASED AND PLANETARY DATA NETWORKS. 2. INITIATE TRIPLE-SCREEN CHECK TO ENSURE ALL DATA HAS BEEN ERASED AND ALL BACKUPS NEUTRALIZED. 3. EXECUTE VIRAL DATA SCAVENGERS. (DOWNLOAD FROM UNSCTTP: //EPWW:COLEPROTOCOL/VIRTUALSCAV/FBR.091) 4. IF RETREATING FROM COVENANT FORCES, ALL SHIPS MUST ENTER SLIPSTREAM SPACE WITH RANDOMIZED VECTORS NOT DIRECTED TOWARD EARTH, THE INNER COLONIES, OR ANY OTHER HUMAN POPULATION CENTER. 5. IN CASE OF IMMINENT CAPTURE BY COVENANT FORCES, ALL UNSC SHIPS MUST SELF-DESTRUCT. VIOLATION OF THIS DIRECTIVE WILL BE CONSIDERED AN ACT OF TREASON, AND PURSUANT TO UNSC MILITARY LAW ARTICLES JAG 845-P AND JAG 7556-L, SUCH VIOLATIONS ARE PUNISHABLE BY LIFE IMPRISONMENT OR EXECUTION. /END FILE/ PRESS ENTER IF YOU UNDERSTAND THESE ORDERS. Ensign Lovell pressed ENTER. The UNSC wasn’t taking any chances. And after everything he had seen, he didn’t blame them. His scanning windows appeared on the view screen, full of spectroscopic tracers and radar—and lots of noise. Archimedes station cycled three probes into and out of Slipstream space. Each probe sent out radar pings and analyzed the spectrum from radio to X rays, then reentered normal space and broadcast the data back to the station. The problem with Slipstream space was that the laws of physics never worked the way they were supposed to. Exact positions, times, velocities, even masses were impossible to measure with any real accuracy. Ships never knew exactly where they were, or exactly where there were going. Every time the probes returned from their two-second journey, they could appear exactly where they had left… or three million kilometers distant. Sometimes they never returned at all. Drones had to be sent after the probes before the process could be repeated. Because of this slipperiness in the interdimensional space, UNSC ships traveling between star systems might arrive half a billion kilometers off course. The curious properties of Slipspace also made this assignment a joke. Ensign Lovell was supposed to watch for pirates or black-market runners trying to sneak by… and most importantly, for the Covenant."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter15.txt", "text": "This station had never logged so much as a Covenant probe silhouette—and that was the reason he had specifically requested this dead-end assignment. It was safe. What he did see with regularity were trash dumps from UNSC vessels, clouds of primordial atomic hydrogen, even the occasional comet that had somehow plowed into the Slipstream. Lovell yawned, kicked his feet up onto the control console, and closed his eyes. He nearly fell out of his chair when the COM board contact alert pinged. “Oh no,” he whispered, fear and shame at his own cowardice forming a cold lump in his belly. Don’t let it be the Covenant. Don’t let it… not here. He quickly activated the controls and traced the contact signal back to the source—Alpha probe. The probe had detected an incoming mass, a slight arc to its trajectory pulled by the gravity of Sigma Octanus. It was large. A cloud of dust, perhaps? If it was, it would soon distort and scatter. Ensign Lovell sat up straighter in his chair. Beta probe cycled back. The mass was still there and as solid as before. It was the largest reading Ensign Lovell had ever seen: twenty thousand tons. That couldn’t be a Covenant ship—they didn’t get that big. And the silhouette was a bumpy spherical shape; it didn’t match any of the Covenant ships in the database. It had to be a rogue asteroid. He tapped his stylus on the desk. What if it wasn’t an asteroid? He’d have to purge the database and enable the self-destruct mechanism for the outpost. But what could the Covenant want way out here? Gamma probe reappeared. The mass readings were unchanged. Spectroscopic analysis was inconclusive, which was normal for probe reading at this distance. The mass was two hours out at its present velocity. Its projected trajectory was hyperbolic—a quick swing near the star, and then it would pass invisibly out of the system and be forever gone. He noted that its trajectory brought it close to Sigma Octanus IV… which, if the rock were in real space, would be cause for alarm. In Slipspace, however, it could pass “through” the planet, and no one would notice. Ensign Lovell relaxed and sent the retrieval drones after the three probes. By the time they got the probes back, though, the mass would be long gone. He stared at the last image on screen. Was it worth sending an immediate report to Sigma Octanus COM? They’d make him send his probes out without a proper recovery, and the probes would likely get lost after that. A supply ship would have to be sent out here to replace them. The station would have to be inspected and recertified—and he’d receive a thorough lecture on what did and did not constitute a valid emergency. No… there was no need to bother anyone over this."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter15.txt", "text": "The only ones who would be really interested were the high-forehead types at UNSC Astrophysics, and they could review the data at their leisure. He logged the anomaly and attached it to his hourly update. Ensign Lovell kicked up his boots and reclined, once again feeling perfectly safe in his little corner of the universe."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter16.txt", "text": "Chapter Sixteen 0300 HOURS, JULY 17, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC DESTROYER IROQUOIS ON ROUTINE PATROL IN THE SIGMA OCTANUS SYSTEM Commander Jacob Keyes stood on the bridge of the Iroquois. He leaned against the brass railing and surveyed the stars in the distance. He wished the circumstances of his current command were more auspicious, but experienced officers were in short supply these days. And he had his orders. He walked around the circular bridge examining the monitors and displays of engine status. He paused at the screens showing the stars fore and aft; he couldn’t quite get used to the view of deep space again. The stars were so vivid… and here, so different from the stars near Earth. The Iroquois had rolled out of space dock at Reach—one of the UNSC’s primary naval yards—just three months ago. They hadn’t even installed her AI yet; like good officers, the elaborate artificially intelligent computer systems were also in dangerously short supply. Still, Iroquois was fast, well armored, and armed to the teeth. He couldn’t ask for a finer vessel. Unlike the frigates that Commander Keyes had toured on before, the Meriwether Lewis and Midsummer Night, this ship was a destroyer. She was almost as heavy as both those vessels combined, but she was only seven meters longer. Some in the fleet thought the massive ships were unwieldy in combat—too slow and cumbersome. What those critics forgot was that a UNSC destroyer sported two MAC guns, twenty-six oversized Archer missile pods, and three nuclear warheads. Unlike other fleet ships, she carried no single-ship fighters—instead her extra mass came from the nearly two meters of titanium-A battleplate armor that covered her from stem to stern. The Iroquois could dish out and take a tremendous amount of punishment. Someone at the shipyard had appreciated the Iroquois for what she was, too—two long streaks of crimson war paint had been applied to her port and starboard flanks. Strictly nonregulation and it would have to go… but secretly, Commander Keyes liked the ornamentation. He sat in the Commander’s chair and watched his junior officers at their stations. “Incoming transmissions,” Lieutenant Dominique reported. “Status reports from Sigma Octanus Four and also the Archimedes Sensor Outpost.” “Pipe them through to my monitor,” Commander Keyes said. Dominique had been one of his students at the Academy—he had transferred to Luna from the Université del’ Astrophysique in Paris after his sister was killed in action. He was short, nimbly athletic, and he rarely cracked a smile—he was always business. Keyes appreciated that. Commander Keyes was less impressed, however, with the rest of his bridge officers. Lieutenant Hikowa manned the weapons console. Her long fingers and slender arms slowly checked the status of the ordnance with all the deliberation of a sleepwalker. Her dark hair was always falling into her eyes, too. Oddly, her record showed that she had survived several battles with the Covenant… so perhaps her lack of enthusiasm was merely battle fatigue."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter16.txt", "text": "Lieutenant Hall stood post at ops. She seemed competent enough. Her uniform was always freshly pressed, her blond hair trimmed exactly at the regulation sixteen centimeters. She had authored seven physics papers on Slipspace communications. The only problem was that she was always smiling, and trying to impress him… occasionally by showing up her fellow officers. Keyes disapproved of such displays of ambition. Manning navigation, however, was his most problematic officer: Lieutenant Jaggers. It might have been that navigation was the Commander’s strong suit, so anyone else in that position never seemed to be up to par. On the other hand, Lieutenant Jaggers was moody, and when Keyes had come aboard, the man’s small hazel eyes seemed glazed. He could have sworn he had caught the man on duty with liquor on his breath, too. He had ordered a blood test—the results were negative. “Orders, sir?” Jaggers asked. “Continue on this heading, Lieutenant. We’ll finish our patrol around Sigma Octanus and then accelerate and enter Slipspace.” “Aye, sir.” Commander Keyes eased into his seat and detached the tiny monitor from the armrest. He read the hourly report from the Archimedes Sensor Outpost. The log of the large mass was curious. It was too big to be even the largest Covenant carrier… yet something was oddly familiar about its shape. He retrieved his pipe from his jacket, lit it, inhaled a puff, and exhaled the fragrant smoke through his nose. Keyes would never even have thought about smoking on the other vessels he had served on, but here… well, command had its privileges. He pulled up his files transferred from the Academy—several theoretical papers that had recently caught his interest. One, he thought, might apply to the outpost’s unusual reading. That paper had initially sparked his interest because of its author. He had never forgotten his first assignment with Dr. Catherine Halsey… nor the names of any of the children they had observed. He opened the file and read: UNITED NATIONS SPACE COMMAND ASTROPHYSICS JOURNAL 034-23-01 DATE: MAY 09, 2540 (MILITARY CALENDAR) ENCRYPTION CODE: NONE PUBLIC KEY: NA AUTHOR(S): LIEUTENANT COMMANDER FHAJAD 034 (SERVICE NUMBER [CLASSIFIED]), UNSC OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE SUBJECT: DIMENSIONAL-MASS SPACE COMPRESSIONS IN SHAW-FUJIKAWA (A.K.A. “SLIPSTREAM”) SPACE CLASSIFICATION: NA /START FILE/ ABSTRACT: THE SPACE-BENDING PROPERTIES OF MASS IN NORMAL SPACE ARE WELL DESCRIBED BY EINSTEIN’S GENERAL RELATIVITY. SUCH DISTORTIONS HOWEVER, ARE COMPLICATED BY THE ANOMALOUS QUANTUM GRAVITATIONAL EFFECTS IN SHAW-FUJIKAWA (SF) SPACES. USING LOOP-STRING ANALYSIS, IT CAN BE SHOWN THAT A LARGE MASS BENDS SPACE IN SF SPACE MORE THAN GENERAL RELATIVITY PREDICTS BY AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE. THIS BENDING MAY EXPLAIN HOW SEVERAL SMALL OBJECTS CLUSTERED CLOSELY TOGETHER IN SF SPACE HAVE BEEN REPORTED ERRONEOUSLY AS A SINGLE LARGER MASS. PRESS ENTER TO CONTINUE. Commander Keyes switched back to the silhouette from the Archimedes report. The leading edge almost looked like the bulbous head of a whale. That realization chilled him to the core. He quickly opened the UNSC database of all known Covenant ships."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter16.txt", "text": "He scanned them until he found the three-dimensional representation of one of their medium-sized warships. He rotated it into three-quarters profile. He overlaid the image on the silhouette, scaled it back a little. It was a perfect match. “Lieutenant Dominique, get FLEETCOM ASAP. Priority Alpha.” The Lieutenant snapped straight in his chair. “Yes, sir!” The bridge officers looked at the Commander, then exchanged glances with one another. Commander Keyes brought up a map of the system on his data pad. The silhouette monitored by the outpost was on a direct course for Sigma Octanus IV. That confirmed his theory. “Bring us about to course zero four seven, Lieutenant Jaggers. Lieutenant Hall, push the reactors to one hundred ten percent.” “Aye, Commander,” Lieutenant Jaggers replied. “Reactor running hot, sir,” Hall reported. “Now exceeding recommended operational parameters.” “ETA?” Jaggers calculated, then looked up. “Forty-three minutes,” he replied. “Too slow,” Commander Keyes muttered. “Reactor to one hundred thirty percent, Lieutenant Hall.” She hesitated. “Sir?” “Do it!” “Yes, sir!” She moved as if someone had electrically shocked her. “FLEETCOM online, sir,” Lieutenant Dominique said. The weathered face of Vice Admiral Michael Stanforth appeared on the main view screen. Commander Keyes breathed a sigh of relief. Vice Admiral Stanforth had a reputation for being reasonable and intelligent. He’d understand the logic of the situation. “Commander Keyes,” the Vice Admiral said. “The old ‘School-master’ himself, huh? This is the priority channel, son. This better be an emergency.” Commander Keyes ignored the obvious condescension. He knew many at FLEETCOM thought he deserved to command nothing but a classroom—and some probably thought he didn’t deserve that. “The Sigma Octanus System is about to come under attack, sir.” Vice Admiral Stanforth cocked an eyebrow and leaned closer to the screen. “I’m requesting that all ships in-system rendezvous with the Iroquois at Sigma Octanus Four. And any ships in neighboring systems make best speed here.” “Show me what you’ve got, Keyes,” the Vice Admiral said. Commander Keyes displayed the silhouette from the sensor outpost first. “Covenant ships, sir. Their silhouettes are overlapped. Our probes resolve them as one mass because Slipspace is bent by gravity more easily than normal space.” The Vice Admiral listened to his analysis, frowning. “You’ve fought the Covenant, sir. You known how precisely they can maneuver their ships through the Slipstream. I’ve seen a dozen alien craft appear in normal space, in perfect formation, not a kilometer apart.” “Yeah,” the Vice Admiral muttered. “I’ve seen that, too. All right, Keyes, good work. You’ll get everything we can send.” “Thank you, sir.” “You just hang in there, son. Good luck. FLEETCOM out.” The view screen snapped off. “Sir?” Lieutenant Hall turned around. “How many Covenant ships?” “I’d estimate four medium-tonnage vessels,” he said. “The equivalent of our frigates.” “Four Covenant ships?” Lieutenant Jaggers muttered. “What can we do?” “Do?” Commander Keyes said. “Our duty.” “Begging the Commander’s pardon, but there are four Cov—” Jaggers began to protest. Keyes cut him off with a glare."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter16.txt", "text": "“Stow that, mister.” He paused, weighing his words. “Sigma Octanus Four has seventeen million citizens, Lieutenant. Are you suggesting that we just stand by and watch the Covenant glass the planet?” “No, sir.” His gaze dropped to the deck. “We will do the best we can,” Commander Keyes said. “In the meantime, remove all weapons system locks, order missile crews to readiness, warm up the MAC guns, and remove the safeties from one of our nukes.” “Yes, sir!” Lieutenant Hikowa said. An alarm sounded at ops. “Reactor hysteresis approaching failure levels,” Lieutenant Hall reported. “Superconducting magnets overloading. Coolant breakdown imminent.” “Vent primary coolant and pump in the reserve tanks,” Commander Keyes ordered. “That will buy us another five minutes.” “Yes, sir.” Commander Keyes fumbled with his pipe. He didn’t bother to light the thing this time around, just chewed on the end. Then he put it away. The nervous habit wasn’t setting the right example for his bridge officers. He didn’t have the luxury of showing his apprehension. The truth was, he was terrified. Four Covenant ships would be an even match for seven destroyers. The best he could hope for was to get their attention and outrun them—hopefully distract them until the fleet got here. Of course… those Covenant ships could outrun the Iroquois as well. “Lieutenant Jaggers,” he said, “initiate the Cole Protocol. Purge our navigation databases, and then generate an appropriate randomized exit vector from the Sigma Octanus System.” “Yes, sir.” He fumbled with his controls. He hung his head, steadied his hands, and slowly typed in the commands. “Lieutenant Hall: make preparations to override reactor safeties.” His junior officers all paused for a second. “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Hall whispered. “We’re receiving a transmission from the system’s edge,” Lieutenant Dominique announced. “Frigates Allegiance and Gettysburg are on an inbound vector at maximum speed. ETA… one hour.” “Good,” Commander Keyes said. That hour might as well be a month. This battle would be over in minutes. He could not fight the enemy—he was severely outgunned. He couldn’t outrun them, either. There had to be another option. Hadn’t he always told his students that when you were out of options, then you were using the wrong tactics? You had to bend the rules. Shift perspective—anything to find a way out of a hopeless situation. The black space near Sigma Octanus IV boiled and frothed with motes of green light. “Ships entering normal space,” Lieutenant Jaggers announced, panic tingeing his voice. Commander Keyes got to his feet. He had been wrong. There weren’t four Covenant frigates. A pair of enemy frigates emerged from Slipspace… escorting a destroyer and a carrier. His blood ran cold. He had seen battles in which a Covenant destroyer had made Swiss cheese of UNSC ships. Its plasma torpedoes could boil through the Iroquois’ two meters of titanium-A battleplate in seconds. Their weapons were light-years ahead of the UNSC’s. “Their weapons,” Commander Keyes muttered under his breath. Yes… he did have a third option."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter16.txt", "text": "“Continue at emergency speed,” he ordered, “and come about to heading zero three two.” Lieutenant Jaggers swiveled in his seat. “That will put us on collision course with their destroyer, sir.” “I know,” Commander Keyes replied. “In fact, I’m counting on doing just that.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter17.txt", "text": "Chapter Seventeen 0320 HOURS, JULY 17, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC IROQUOIS EN ROUTE TO SIGMA OCTANUS IV Commander Keyes stood with his hands behind his back and tried to look calm. Not an easy thing to do when his ship was on a collision course with a Covenant battlegroup. Inside, adrenaline raced through his blood and his pulse pounded. He had to at least appear in control for his crew. He was asking a lot from them… probably everything, in fact. His junior officers watched their status monitors; they occasionally glanced nervously at him, but their gazes always drifted back to the center view screen. The Covenant ships looked like toys in the distance. It was dangerous to think of them as harmless, however. One slip, one underestimation of their tremendous firepower, and the Iroquois would be destroyed. The alien carrier had three bulbous sections; its swollen center had thirteen launch bays. Commander Keyes had seen hundreds of fighters stream out of them before—fast, accurate, and deadly craft. Normally his ship’s AI would handle point defense… only this time, there was no AI installed on the Iroquois. The alien destroyer was a third again as massive as the Iroquois. She bristled with pulse laser turrets, insectlike antennae, and chitinous pods. The carrier and destroyer moved together… but not toward Iroquois. They slowly drifted in-system toward Sigma Octanus IV. Were they going to ignore him? Glass the planet without even bothering to swat him out of the way first? The Covenant frigates, however, lagged behind. They turned in unison and their sides faced the Iroquois—preparing for a broadside. Motes of red light appeared and swarmed toward the frigate’s lateral lines, building into a solid stripe of hellish illumination. “Detecting high levels of beta particle radiation,” Lieutenant Dominique said. “They’re getting ready to fire their plasma weapons, Commander.” “Course correction, sir?” Lieutenant Jaggers asked. His fingers tapped in a new heading bound out-system. “Stay on course.” It took all Commander Keyes’ concentration to say that matter-of-factly. Lieutenant Jaggers turned and started to speak—but Commander Keyes didn’t have time to address his concerns. “Lieutenant Hikowa,” Commander Keyes said. “Arm a Shiva missile. Remove all nuclear launch safety locks.” “Shiva armed. Aye, Commander.” Lieutenant Hikowa’s face was a mask of grim determination. “Set the fuse on radio transmission code sequence detonation only. Disable proximity fuse. Stand by for a launch pilot program.” “Sir?” Lieutenant Hikowa looked confused by his order, but then said, “Sir! Yes, sir. Making it happen.” The alien frigates in the center of the view screen no longer looked remotely like toys to Commander Keyes. They looked real and larger every second. The red glow along their sides had become solid bands… almost too bright to look directly at. Commander Keyes picked up his data pad and quickly tapped in calculations: velocity, mass, and heading. He wished they had an AI online to double-check his figures. This amounted to no more than an educated guess."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter17.txt", "text": "How long would it take the Iroquois to orbit Sigma Octanus IV? He got a number and cut it by 60 percent, knowing they’d either pick up speed… or be dead by the time it mattered. “Lieutenant Hikowa, set the Shiva’s course for mark one eight zero. Full burn for twelve seconds.” “Aye, sir,” she said, tapped in the parameters, and locked them into the system. “Missile ready, sir.” “Sir!” Lieutenant Jaggers swiveled around and stood. His lips were drawn into a tight thin line. “That course fires the missile directly away from our enemies.” “I am aware of that, Lieutenant Jaggers. Sit down and await further orders.” Lieutenant Jaggers sat. He rubbed his temple with a trembling hand. His other hand balled into a fist. Commander Keyes linked to the NAV system and set a countdown timer on his data pad. Twenty-nine seconds. “On my mark, Lieutenant Hikowa, launch that nuke… and not a moment before.” “Aye, sir.” Her slender hand hovered over the control panel. “MAC guns are still hot, Commander,” she reminded him. “Divert the energy keeping the capacitors at full charge and route them to the engines,” Commander Keyes ordered. Lieutenant Hall said, “Diverting now, sir.” She exchanged a glance with Lieutenant Hikowa. “Engines now operating at one hundred fifty percent of rated output. Red line in two minutes.” “Contact! Contact!” Lieutenant Dominique shouted. “Enemy plasma torpedoes away, sir!” Scarlet lightning erupted from the alien frigates—twin bolts of fire streaked through the darkness. They looked as if they could burn space itself. The torpedoes were on a direct course for the Iroquois. “Course correction, sir?” Lieutenant Jaggers’ voice broke with strain. His uniform was soaked with perspiration. “Negative,” Commander Keyes replied. “Continue on this heading. Arm all aft Archer missile pods. Rotate launch arcs one eight zero degrees.” “Aye, sir.” Lieutenant Hikowa wrinkled her brow, and then she slowly nodded and silently mouthed, “… yes.” Boiling red plasma filled half the forward view screen. It was beautiful to watch in an odd way—like a front-row seat at a forest fire. Keyes found himself strangely calm. This would either work or it would not. The odds were long, but he was confident that his actions were the only option to survive this encounter. Lieutenant Dominique turned. “Collision with plasma in nineteen seconds, sir.” Jaggers turned from his station. “Sir! This is suicide! Our armor can’t withstand—” Keyes cut him off. “Mister, man your station or I will have you removed from the bridge.” Jaggers looked pleadingly at Hikowa. “We’re going to die, Aki—” She refused to meet his gaze and turned back to her controls. “You heard the Commander,” she said quietly. “Man your post.” Jaggers sank into his seat. “Collision with plasma in seven seconds,” Lieutenant Hall said. She bit her lower lip. “Lieutenant Jaggers, transfer emergency thruster controls to my station.” “Yes… yes, sir.” The emergency thrusters were tanks of trihydride tetrrazine and hydrogen peroxide."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter17.txt", "text": "When they mixed, they did so with explosive force—literally blasting the Iroquois onto a new course. The ship had six such tanks strategically placed on hardened points on the hull. Commander Keyes consulted the countdown timer on his data pad. “Lieutenant Hikowa: fire the nuke.” “Shiva away, sir! On course—one eight zero, maximum burn.” Plasma filled the forescreen; the center of the red mass turned blue. Greens and yellows radiated outward, the light frequencies blue-shifting in spectra. “Distance three hundred thousand kilometers,” Lieutenant Dominique said. “Collision in two seconds.” Commander Keyes waited a heartbeat, then hit the emergency thrusters to port. A bang resonated through the ship’s hull—Commander Keyes flew sideways and impacted with the bulkhead. The view screen was full of fire and the bridge was suddenly hot. Commander Keyes stood. He counted the beats of his pounding heart. One, two, three— If they had been hit by the plasma, there wouldn’t be anything to count. They would be dead already. Only one view screen was working now, however. “Aft camera,” he said. The twin blots of fire streaked along their trajectories for a moment, then lazily arced, continuing their pursuit of the Iroquois. One pulled slightly ahead of its counterpart, so they appeared now like two blazing eyes. Commander Keyes marveled at the aliens’ ability to direct that plasma from such a great distance. “Good,” he murmured to himself. “Chase us all the way to hell, you bastards. “Track them,” he ordered Lieutenant Hall. “Aye, sir,” she said. Her perfectly groomed hair was tousled. “Plasma increasing velocity. Matching our speed… overtaking our velocity now. They will intercept in forty-three seconds.” “Forward camera,” Commander Keyes ordered. The view screen flashed: the image changed to show the two alien frigates turning to face the incoming Iroquois head-on. Blue lights flickered along their hulls—pulse lasers charging. Commander Keyes pulled back the camera angle and saw the alien carrier and the destroyer were still inbound toward Sigma Octanus IV. He read their position off his data pad and quickly performed the necessary calculations. “Course correction,” he told Lieutenant Jaggers. “Come about to heading zero zero four point two five. Declination zero zero zero point one eight.” “Aye, sir,” Jaggers said. “Zero zero four point two five. Declination zero zero zero point one eight.” The view screen turned and centered on the enormous Covenant destroyer. “Collision course!” Lieutenant Hall announced. “Impact with Covenant destroyer in eight seconds.” “Stand by for new course correction: declination minus zero zero zero point one zero.” “Aye, sir.” As Jaggers typed, he wiped the sweat from his eyes and double-checked his numbers. “Course online. Awaiting your order, sir.” “Collision with Covenant destroyer in five seconds,” Hall said. She clutched the edge of her seat. The destroyer grew in the view screen: laser turrets and launch bays, bulbous alien protrusions and flickering blue lights. “Hold this course,” Commander Keyes said. “Sound collision alarm. Switch to undercarriage camera now.” Klaxons blared."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter17.txt", "text": "The view screen snapped off and on and showed black space—then a flash of the faint purple-blue hull of a Covenant ship. The Iroquois screeched and shuddered as she grazed the prow of the Covenant destroyer. Silver shields flickered on-screen—then the screen filled with static. “Course correction now!” Commander Keyes shouted. “Aye, sir.” There was a brief burn from the thrusters and the Iroquois nudged down slightly. “Hull breach!” Lieutenant Hall said. “Sealing pressure doors.” “Aft camera,” Commander Keyes said. “Guns: fire aft Archer missile pods!” “Missiles away,” Lieutenant Hikowa replied. Keyes watched as the first of the plasma torpedoes that had been trailing the Iroquois impacted on the prow of the alien destroyer. The ship’s shields flared, flickered… and vanished. The second bolt hit a moment later. The hull of the alien ship blazed and then turned red-hot, melted, and boiled. Secondary explosions burst through the hull. The Archer missiles streaked toward the wounded Covenant ship, tiny trails of exhaust stretching from the Iroquois to the target. They slammed into the gaping wounds in the hull and detonated. Fire and debris burst from the destroyer. A smile spread across Keyes’ face as he watched the alien ship burn, list, and slowly plunge into Sigma Octanus IV’s gravity well. Without power, the Covenant vessel would burn up in the planet’s atmosphere. Commander Keyes flicked on the intercom. “Brace for emergency thruster maneuver.” He punched the thruster controls—explosive force detonated on the starboard side of the ship. The Iroquois nosed toward Sigma Octanus IV. “Course correction, Lieutenant Jaggers,” he said. “Bring us into a tight orbit.” “Aye, sir.” He furiously tapped in commands, diverting engine output through altitude thrusters. The hull of the Iroquois glowed red as it entered the atmosphere. A cloud of yellow ionization built up around the view screen. Commander Keyes gripped the railing tighter. The view screen cleared and he could see the stars. The Iroquois entered the dark side of the planet. Commander Keyes slumped forward and started breathing again. “Engine coolant failure, sir,” Lieutenant Hall said. “Shut the engines down,” he ordered. “Emergency vent.” “Aye, sir. Venting fusion reactor plasma.” The Iroquois was abruptly quiet. No rumble of her engines. And no one said anything until Lieutenant Hikowa stood and said, “Sir, that was the most brilliant maneuver I have ever seen.” Commander Keyes gave a short laugh. “You think so, Lieutenant?” If one of his students had proposed such a maneuver in his tactics class, he would have given them a C+. He would have told them their maneuver was full of bravado and daring… but extremely risky, placing the crew in the ship in unnecessary danger. “This isn’t over yet. Stay sharp,” he told them. “Lieutenant Hikowa, what is the charge status of the MAC guns?” “Capacitors at ninety-five percent, sir, and draining at a rate of three percent per minute.” “Ready MAC guns, one heavy round apiece."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter17.txt", "text": "Arm all forward Archer missile pods.” “Aye, sir.” The Iroquois broke free of the dark side of Sigma Octanus IV. “Fire chemical thrusters to break orbit, Lieutenant Hall.” “Firing, aye.” There was a brief rumble. The screen centered on the backsides of the two Covenant frigates they had passed on the way in. The alien ships started to come about; blue flashes flickered along their hulls as their laser turrets charged. Motes of red collected along their lateral lines. They were readying another salvo of plasma torpedoes. There was something there, however, that was too small to see on the view screen: the nuke. Keyes had launched that missile in the opposite direction—but its reverse thrust had not completely overcome their tremendous forward velocity. As the Iroquois had screamed over the prow of the destroyer, and as they orbited Sigma Octanus IV, the nuke had drifted closer to the frigates… who had fixed their attention solidly on the Iroquois. Commander Keyes tapped his data pad and sent the signal to detonate the bomb. There was a flash of white, a crackle of lightning, and the alien ships vanished as a cloud of destruction enveloped them. Waves of the EMP interacted with the magnetic field of Sigma Octanus IV—rippled with rainbow borealis. The cloud of vapor expanded and cooled, and faded to yellow, orange, red, then black dust that scattered into space. Both Covenant frigates, however, were still intact. Their shields, however, flickered once… then went dead. “Get me firing solutions for the MAC guns, Lieutenant Hikowa. On the double.” “Aye, sir. MAC gun capacitors at ninety-three percent. Firing solution online.” “Fire, Lieutenant Hikowa.” Two thumps resonated through the hull of the Iroquois. “Lock remaining Archer missile pods on targets and fire.” “Missiles away, Commander.” Twin thunderbolts and hundreds of missiles streaked toward the two helpless frigates. The MAC rounds tore through them—one ship was holed from nose to tail; the other ship was hit on her midline, right near the engines. Internal explosions chained up the length of the ship, bulging the second ship’s hull along her length. Archer missiles impacted seconds later, exploding through chunks of hull and armor, tearing the alien ships apart. The frigate that had taken the MAC round in her engines mushroomed, a fireworks bouquet of shrapnel and sparks. The other ship burned, her internal skeletal structure showing now; she turned toward the Iroquois but didn’t fire a weapon… just drifted out of control. Dead in space. “Position of the Covenant carrier, Lieutenant Hall?” Lieutenant Hall paused, then reported, “In polar orbit around Sigma Octanus Four. But she’s moving off at considerable speed. Headed out-system, course zero four five.” “Alert the Allegiance and Gettysburg of her position.” Commander Keyes sighed and slumped back into his chair. They had stopped the Covenant ships from glassing the planet—saved millions of lives. They had done the impossible: taken on four Covenant ships and won. Commander Keyes paused in his self-congratulation. Something was wrong."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter17.txt", "text": "He had never seen the Covenant run. In every battle he had seen or read about, they stayed to slaughter every last survivor… or if they were defeated, they always fought to the last ship. “Check the planet,” he told Lieutenant Hall. “Look for anything—dropped weapons, strange transmissions. There’s got to be something there.” “Aye, sir.” Keyes prayed she wouldn’t find anything. At this point he was out of tricks. He couldn’t turn the Iroquois around and return to Sigma Octanus IV even if he had wanted to. The Iroquois’ engines were down for a long time. They were speeding on an out-system vector at a considerable velocity. And even if they could stop—there was no way to recharge the MAC guns, and no remaining Archer missiles. They were practically dead in space. He pulled out his pipe and steadied his shaking hand. “Sir!” Lieutenant Hall cried. “Dropships, sir. The alien carrier deployed thirty—correction: thirty-four—dropships. I have silhouettes descending to the surface. They’re on course for Côte d’Azur. A major population center.” “An invasion,” Commander Keyes said. “Get FLEETCOM ASAP. Time to send in the Marines.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter18.txt", "text": "Chapter Eighteen 0600 HOURS, JULY 18, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC IROQUOIS, MILITARY STAGING AREA IN ORBIT AROUND SIGMA OCTANUS IV Commander Keyes had a sinking feeling that although he had won the battle, it would be the first of many to come in the Sigma Octanus System. He watched the four dozen other UNSC ships orbit the planet: frigates and destroyers, two carriers, and a massive repair and refitting station—more vessels than Admiral Cole had at his disposal during his four-year-long campaign to save Harvest. Vice Admiral Stanforth had pulled out all the stops. Although Commander Keyes was grateful for the quick and overwhelming response, he wondered why the Vice Admiral had dedicated so many ships to the area. Sigma Octanus wasn’t strategically positioned. It had no special resources. True, the UNSC had standing orders to protect civilian lives, but the fleet was spread dangerously thin. Commander Keyes knew there were more valuable systems that needed protection. He pushed these thoughts aside. He was sure Vice Admiral Stanforth had his reasons. Meanwhile the repair and resupply of the Iroquois was his top priority—he didn’t want to get caught half ready if the Covenant returned. Or rather, when they returned. It was a curious thing: the aliens dropping their ground forces and then retreating. That was not their usual mode of operation. Commander Keyes suspected this was just an opening move in a game he didn’t yet understand. A shadow crossed the fore camera of the Iroquois as the repair station Cradle maneuvered closer. Cradle was essentially a large square plate with engines. Large was an understatement; she was over a square kilometer. Three destroyers could be eclipsed by her shadow. The station running at full steam could refit six destroyers, three from her lower surface and three on her upper surface, within a matter of hours. Scaffolds deployed from her surfaces to facilitate repairs. Resupply tubes, hoses, and cargo trams fed into the Iroquois. It would take the full attention of Cradle thirty hours to repair the Iroquois, however. The aliens had not landed a single serious shot. Nonetheless, the Iroquois had almost been destroyed during the execution of what some in the fleet were already calling the “Keyes Loop.” Commander Keyes glanced at his data pad and the extensive list of repairs. Fifteen percent of the electronic systems had to be replaced—burned out from the EMP when the Shiva missile detonated. The Iroquois’ engines required a full overhaul. Both coolant systems had valves that had been fused from the tremendous heat. Five of the superconducting magnets had to be replaced as well. But most troublesome was the damage to the underside of the Iroquois. When they had told Commander Keyes what had happened, he went outside in a Longsword interceptor to personally inspect what he had done to his ship. The underside of the Iroquois had been scraped when they passed over the prow of the alien destroyer."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter18.txt", "text": "He knew there was some damage… but was not prepared for what he saw. UNSC destroyers had nearly two meters of titanium—a battleplate on their surfaces. Commander Keyes had abraded through all of it. He had breached every bottom deck of the Iroquois. The jagged serrated edges of the plate curled away from the wound. Men in EVA thruster packs were busy cutting off the damaged sections so new plates could be welded into place. The underside was mirror smooth and perfectly flat. But Keyes knew that the appearance of benign flatness was deceptive. Had the angle of the Iroquois been tilted a single degree down, the force of the two ships impacting would have shorn his ship in half. The red war stripes that had been painted on the Iroquois’ side looked like bloody slashes. The dockmaster had privately told Commander Keyes that his crew could buff the paint off—or even repaint the war stripes, if he wanted. Commander Keyes had politely refused the offer. He wanted them left exactly the way they were. He wanted to be reminded that while everyone had admired what he had done—it had been an act of desperation, not heroism. He wanted to be reminded of how close a brush he had had with death. Commander Keyes returned to the Iroquois and marched directly to his quarters. He sat at his antique oak desk and tapped the intercom. “Lieutenant Dominique, you have the bridge for the next cycle. I am not to be disturbed.” “Aye, Commander. Understood.” Commander Keyes loosened his collar and unbuttoned his uniform. He retrieved the seventy-year-old bottle of Scotch that his father had given him from the bottom drawer, and then poured four centimeters into a plastic cup. He had to attend to an even more unpleasant task: what to do about Lieutenant Jaggers. Jaggers had exhibited borderline cowardice, insubordination, and come within a hairbreadth of attempted mutiny during the engagement. Keyes could have had him court-martialed. Every reg in the books screamed at him to… but he didn’t have it in him to send the young man before a board of inquiry. He would instead merely transfer the Lieutenant to a place where he would still do the UNSC some good—perhaps a distant outpost. Was all the blame his? As Commander, it was his responsibility to maintain control, to prevent a crewman from even thinking that mutiny was a possibility. He sighed. Maybe he should have told his crew what he was attempting… but there had simply been no time. And certainly, no time for discussion as Jaggers would have wanted. No. The other bridge officers had concerns, but they had followed his orders, as their duty required. As much as Commander Keyes believed in giving people a second chance, this was where he drew the line. To make matters worse, transferring Jaggers would leave a hole in the bridge crew. Commander Keyes accessed the service records of Iroquois’ junior officers."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter18.txt", "text": "There were several who might qualify for navigation officer. He flipped through their files on his data pad, and then paused. The theoretical paper on mass-space compression was still open, as well as his hastily calculated course corrections. He smiled and archived those notes. He might one day give a lecture on this battle at the Academy. It would be useful to have the original source material. There was also the data from the Archimedes Sensor Outpost. That report had been thoroughly made: clean data graphs and a navigational course plotted for the object through Slipstream space—not an easy task even with an AI. The report even had tags to route it to the astrophysics section of the UNSC. Thoughtful. He looked up the service record of the officer who had filed the report: Ensign William Lovell. Keyes leaned closer. The boy’s Career Service Vitae was almost twice as long as his own. He had volunteered and been accepted at Luna Academy. He transferred in his second year, having already received a commission to Ensign for heroism in a training flight that had saved the entire crew. He took duty on the first outbound corvette headed into battle. Three Bronze Stars, a Silver Cluster, and two Purple Hearts, and he had catapulted to a full Lieutenant within three years. Then something went terribly wrong. Lovell’s decline in the UNSC had been as rapid as his ascent. Four reports of insubordination and he was busted to Second Lieutenant and transferred twice. An incident with a civilian woman—no details in the files, although Commander Keyes wondered if the girl listed in the report, Anna Gerov, was Vice Admiral Gerov’s daughter. He had been reassigned to the Archimedes Sensor Outpost, and had been there for the last year, an unheard of length of time in such a remote facility. Commander Keyes reviewed the logs when Lovell had been on duty. They were careful and intelligent. So the boy was still sharp… was he hiding? There was a gentle knock on his door. “Lieutenant Dominique, I said I was not to be disturbed.” “Sorry to intrude, son,” said a muffled voice. The pressure door’s wheel turned and Vice Admiral Stanforth stepped inside. “But I thought I’d just stop by since I was in the neighborhood.” Vice Admiral Stanforth was much smaller in person than he appeared on-screen. His back was stooped over with age, and his white hair was thinning at the crown. Still, he exuded a reassuring air of authority that Keyes instantly recognized. “Sir!” Commander Keyes stood at attention, knocking over his chair. “At ease, son.” The Vice Admiral looked around his quarters, and his gaze lingered a moment on the framed copy of Lagrange’s original manuscript in which he derived his equations of motion. “You can pour me a few fingers of the whiskey, if you can spare it.” “Yes, sir.” Keyes fumbled with another plastic cup and poured the Vice Admiral a drink. Stanforth took a sip, then sighed appreciatively."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter18.txt", "text": "“Very nice.” Keyes righted his chair and offered it to the Vice Admiral. He sat down and leaned forward. “I wanted to congratulate you personally on the miracle you performed here, Keyes.” “Sir, I don’t—” Stanforth held up a finger. “Don’t interrupt me, son. That was a helluva piece of astrogation you pulled off. People noticed. Not to mention the morale boost it’s given to the entire fleet.” He took another sip of the liquor and exhaled. “Now, that’s the reason we’re all here. We need a victory. It’s been too damn long—us getting whittled to pieces by those alien bastards. So this has got to be a win. No matter what it takes.” “I understand, sir,” Commander Keyes said. He knew morale had been sagging for years throughout the UNSC. No military, no matter how well trained, could stomach defeat after defeat without it affecting their determination in battles. “How is it going planetside?” “Right now don’t you worry about that.” Vice Admiral Stanforth eased back in his chair, balancing on two legs. “General Kits has his troops down there. They’ve got the surrounding cities evacuated, and they’ll be assaulting Côte d’Azur within the hour. They’ll paste those aliens faster than you can spit. You just watch.” “Of course, sir.” Commander Keyes looked away. “You got something else to say, boy? Spit it out.” “Well, sir… this isn’t the way the Covenant normally operates. Dropping an invasion force and leaving the system? They either slaughter everything or die trying. This is something altogether different.” Vice Admiral Stanforth waved a dismissive hand. “You leave trying to figure out what those aliens are thinking to the spooks in ONI, son. Just get the Iroquois patched up and fit for duty again. And you let me know if you need anything.” Stanforth knocked back the last of his whiskey and stood. “Got to marshal the fleet. Oh—” He paused. “One more thing.” He dug into his jacket pocket and retrieved a tiny cardboard box. He set it on the Commander’s desk. “Consider it official. The paperwork will catch up with us soon enough.” Commander Keyes opened the box. Inside were a pair of brass collar insignia: four bars and a single star. “Congratulations, Captain Keyes.” The Vice Admiral snapped a quick salute, then held out his hand. Keyes managed to grasp and shake the Vice Admiral’s hand. The insignia was real. He was stunned. He couldn’t say anything. “You’ve earned it.” The Vice Admiral started to turn. “Give me a shout if you need anything.” “Yes, sir.” Keyes stared at the brass star and stripes a moment longer, then finally tore his gaze away. “Vice Admiral… there is one thing. I need a replacement navigation officer.” Vice Admiral Stanforth’s relaxed posture stiffened. “I heard about that. Ugly business when a bridge officer loses their stomach. Well, you just say the candidate’s name and I’ll make sure you get him… as long as you’re not pulling him off my ship.” He smiled."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter18.txt", "text": "“Keep up the good work, Captain.” “Sir!” Captain Keyes saluted. The Vice Admiral stepped out and closed the door. Keyes practically fell into his chair. He had never dreamed they’d make him a Captain. He turned the brass insignia over in his palm and replayed his conversation with Vice Admiral Stanforth in his mind. He had said, “Captain Keyes.” Yes. This was real. The Vice Admiral had also brushed aside his concerns about the Covenant too quickly. Something didn’t quite add up. Keyes clicked on the intercom. “Lieutenant Dominique: track the Vice Admiral’s shuttle when he leaves. Let me know which ship he’s on.” “Sir? We had a Vice Admiral aboard? I wasn’t informed.” “No, Lieutenant, I suspect you weren’t. Just track the next outbound shuttle.” “Aye, sir.” Keyes looked back on his data pad and reread Ensign Lovell’s CSV. He couldn’t take back what had happened with Jaggers—there could be no second chance for him. But maybe he could somehow balance the books by giving Lovell another chance. He filled out the necessary paperwork for the transfer request. The forms were long and unnecessarily complex. He transmitted the files to UNSC PERSCOM and sent a copy directly to Vice Admiral Stanforth’s staff. “Sir?” Lieutenant Dominique’s voice broke over the intercom. “That shuttle docked with the Leviathan.” “Put it on-screen.” The screen over his desk snapped on to camera five, the aft-starboard view. Among the dozens of ships in orbit around Sigma Octanus IV, he easily spotted the Leviathan. She was one of the twenty UNSC cruisers left in the fleet. A cruiser was the most powerful warship ever built by human hands. And Keyes knew they were being slowly pulled out of forward areas and parked in reserve to guard the Inner Colonies. A piece of shadow moved under the great warship, black moving on black. It revealed itself for only an instant in the sunlight, then slithered back into the darkness. It was a prowler. Those stealth ships were used exclusively by Naval Intelligence. A cruiser and an ONI presence here? Now Keyes knew there was more going on here than a simple morale boost. He tried not to think about it. It was best not to go too far when questioning the intentions of one’s superior officer—especially when that officer was a Vice Admiral. And especially not when Naval Intelligence was literally lurking in the shadows. Keyes poured himself another three fingers of Scotch, set his head on his desk—just to rest his eyes for a moment. The last few hours had drained him. * * * “Sir.” Dominique’s voice over the intercom woke Captain Keyes. “Incoming fleet-wide transmission on Alpha priority channel.” Keyes sat up and ran his hand over his face. He glanced at the brass clock affixed over his bunk—he had slept for almost six hours. Vice Admiral Stanforth appeared on-screen. “Listen up, ladies and gentlemen: we’ve just detected a large number of Covenant ships massing on the edge of the system."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter18.txt", "text": "We estimate ten ships.” On-screen the silhouettes of the all-too-familiar Covenant frigates and a destroyer appeared as ghostly radar smears. “We’ll remain where we are,” the Vice Admiral continued. “There’s no need to charge in and have those ugly bastards take a shortcut through Slipspace and undercut us. Make your ships ready for battle. We’ve got probes gathering more data. I’ll update you when we know more. Stanforth out.” The screen went black. Keyes snapped on the intercom. “Lieutenant Hall, what is our repair and refit status?” “Sir,” she replied. “Engines are operational, but only with the backup coolant system. We can heat them to fifty percent. Archer and nuclear ordnance resupply is complete. MAC guns are also operational. Repairs to lower decks have just started.” “Inform the dockmaster to pull his crew out,” Captain Keyes said. “We’re leaving the Cradle. When we are clear, fire the reactors to fifty percent. Go to battle stations.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter19.txt", "text": "Chapter Nineteen 0600 HOURS, JULY 18, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / SIGMA OCTANUS IV, GRID THIRTEEN BY TWENTY-FOUR “Faster!” Corporal Harland shouted. “You want to die in the mud, Marine?” “Hell no, sir!” Private Fincher stomped on the accelerator and the Warthog’s tires spun in the streambed. They caught, and the vehicle fishtailed through the gravel, across the bank, and onto the sandy shore. Harland strapped himself into the rear of the Warthog, one hand clamped onto the vehicle’s massive 50mm chain-gun. Something moved in the brush behind them—Harland fired a sustained burst. The deafening sound from “Old Faithful” shook the teeth in his head. Ferns, trees, and vines exploded and splintered as the gunfire scythed through the foliage… then nothing was moving anymore. Fincher sent the Warthog bouncing along the shore, his head bobbing from side to side as he strained to see through the downpour. “We’re sitting ducks in here, Corporal,” Fincher yelled. “We have to get out of this hole and back onto the ridge, sir.” Corporal Harland looked for a way out of this river gorge. “Walker!” He shook Private Walker in the passenger seat, but Walker didn’t respond. He clutched their last Jackhammer rocket launcher with a death grip, his eyes staring blankly ahead. Walker hadn’t said a word since this mission went south. Harland hoped he would snap out of it. He already had one man down. The last thing he needed was for his heavy-weapons specialist to be a brain case. Private Cochran lay at the Corporal’s feet, cradling his gut with blood-smeared hands. He’d caught fire during the ambush. The aliens used some kind of projectile weapon that fired long, thin needles—which exploded seconds after impact. Cochran’s insides were meat. Walker and Fincher had filled him up with biofoam and taped him up—they even managed to stop the bleeding—but if the man didn’t get to a medic soon, he was a goner. They had all almost been goners. The squad had left Firebase Bravo two hours ago. Satellite images showed the way was all clear to their target area. Lieutenant McCasky had even said it was a “milk run.” They were supposed to set up motion sensors on grid thirteen by twenty-four—just see what was there and get back. “A simple snoop job,” the ell-tee had called it. What no one told McCasky was that the satellites weren’t penetrating the rain and jungle canopy of this swampball too well. If the Lieutenant had thought about it—like Corporal Harland was thinking about it now—he would have figured something was wrong with sending three squads on a “milk run.” The squad wasn’t green. Corporal Harland and the others had fought the Covenant before. They knew how to kill Grunts—when they massed by the hundreds, they knew to call in air support. They’d even taken down a few of the Covenant Jackals, the ones with energy shields. You had to flank those guys—take them out with snipers."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter19.txt", "text": "But none of that had prepared them for this mission. They had done all the right things, damn it. The Lieutenant had even gotten their Warthogs five klicks down the streambed before the terrain became too steep and slippery for the all-terrain armored vehicles. He had the men hump the rest of the way in on foot. They moved soft and silent, almost crawling all the way through the slime to the depression they were supposed to check out. When they had gotten to the place, it wasn’t just another mud-filled sinkhole. A waterfall splashed into a grotto pool. Arches had been carved into the wall, their edges extremely weathered. There were a few scattered paving stones around the pool… and covering those stones were tiny geometric carvings. That’s all Corporal Harland got a look at before the Lieutenant ordered him and his team to fall back. He wanted them to set up the motion sensors where they had a clear line of sight to the sky. That’s probably why they were still alive. The blast had knocked Harland and his team into the mud. They ran to where they had left the Lieutenant—found fused glassy mud, a crater, and a few burning corpses and bits of carbonized skeleton. They saw one other thing—an outline in the mist. It was biped, but much larger than any human Harland had ever seen. And oddly, it looked like it was wearing armor reminiscent of medieval plate mail; it even carried a large, strangely shaped metal shield. Harland saw the glow of a regenerating plasma weapon… and that’s all he needed to see to order a full speed retreat. Harland, Walker, Cochran, and Fincher fell back, running—blindly firing their assault rifles. Covenant Grunts had followed them, peppering the air with those needle guns, mowing down the jungle as the tiny razor shards exploded. Harland and the others stopped and hit the deck, splashing into the thick, red mud, as a Covenant Banshee passed them overhead. When they got back on their feet, Cochran took the round in the stomach. The Grunts had caught up to them. Cochran flinched, his side exploded, and then he crumpled to the ground. He fell into shock so fast he didn’t even have time to scream. Harland, Fincher, and Walker hunkered down and returned fire. They killed a dozen of the little bastards, but more kept coming, their barks and growls echoing through the jungle. “Cease fire,” the Corporal had ordered. He waited a second, then tossed a grenade when the Grunts got closer. Their ears still ringing, they ran, dragging Cochran with them, and not looking back. Somehow they had returned to the Warthog, and gotten the hell out of there… or, at least, that’s what they were trying to do. “Over there,” Fincher said, and pointed to a clearing in the trees. “That’s got to lead up to the ridge.” “Go,” Harland said."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter19.txt", "text": "The Warthog slid sideways then raced up the embankment, caught air, and landed on soft jungle loam. Fincher dodged a few trees and ran the Warthog up the slope. They emerged on the ridgeline. “Jesus, that was close,” Harland said. He ran a muddy hand through his hair, slicking it back. He tapped Fincher on the shoulder. Fincher jumped. “Private, pull over. Try to raise Firebase Bravo on the narrow band.” “Yes, sir,” Fincher answered in a wavering voice. He glanced at the near-catatonic Private Walker and shook his head. Harland checked on Cochran. Private Cochran’s eyes fluttered open, cracking the mud caked onto his face. “We back yet, Corporal?” “Almost,” Harland replied. Cochran’s pulse was steady, although his face had, in the last several minutes, drained of color. The wounded man looked like a corpse. Damn it, Harland thought, he’s going to bleed out. Harland placed a reassuring hand on Cochran’s shoulder. “Hang in there. We’ll patch you up as soon as we get to camp.” They had dropships at Bravo. Cochran had a chance, albeit a slim one, if they got him back to the combat surgeons at headquarters—or better yet, to the Navy docs on the orbiting ships. For a moment Harland was dazzled with visions of clean sheets, hot meals—and a meter of armor between him and the Covenant. “Nothing but static on the link, sir,” Fincher said, breaking through Harland’s reverie. “Maybe the radio got hit,” Harland muttered. “You know those explosive needles throw a bunch of microshrapnel. We probably got slivers of that stuff inside us, too.” Fincher examined his muscular forearms. “Great.” “Move out,” Harland said. The tires of the Warthog spun, gripped, and the vehicle moved rapidly along the ridge. The terrain looked familiar. Harland even spotted three sets of Warthog tracks—yes, this was the way the Lieutenant had brought them. Ten minutes and they’d be back on base. No more worries. He relaxed, took out a pack of cigarettes, and shook one out. He pulled off the safety strip and tapped the end to ignite it. Fincher revved the engine and shot up to the top of the ridge—crossed over, and skidded to halt. If not for the haze, they would have seen everything from this side of the valley—the lush carpet of jungle in the valley, the river meandering through it, and on the far set of hills, a clearing dotted with fixed gun emplacements, razor wire, and pre-fab structures: Firebase Bravo. Their platoon had partially dug into the hillside to minimize the camp’s footprint and provide a place where they could safely store their munitions and bunk down. A ring of sensors encircled the camp so nothing could sneak up on them. Radar and motion detectors linked to surface-to-air missile batteries. A road ran along the far ridge—three klicks down that was the coastal city, Côte d’Azur. The sun broke through the haze overhead, and Corporal Harland saw everything had changed. It wasn’t fog or haze."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter19.txt", "text": "Smoke rose in columns from the valley… and there was no more jungle. Everything had been burned to the ground. The entire valley was blackened into smoldering charcoal. Glowing red craters honeycombed the hillsides. He fumbled with his binoculars, brought them to his eyes… and froze. The hill where the camp had been was gone—it had been flattened. Only a mirror surface remained. The sides of the adjacent hills glistened with a cracked glass coating. The air was thick with tiny Covenant fliers in the distance. On the ground, Grunts and Jackals searched for survivors. A few Marines ran for cover… there were hundreds of wounded and dead on the ground, helpless, screaming—some of them trying to crawl away. “What have you got, sir?” Fincher asked. The cigarette fell from Harland’s mouth and caught on his shirt—but he didn’t take his eyes off the battlefield to brush it away. “There’s nothing left,” he whispered. A shape moved in the valley—much larger than the other Grunts and Jackals. Its outline was blurry. Harland tried to focus the binoculars on it but couldn’t. It was the same thing he had seen at grid thirteen by twenty-four. The Grunts gave it a wide berth. The thing lifted its arm—its whole arm looked like one big gun—and a bolt of plasma struck near the riverbank. Even from this distance, Harland heard the screams of the men who had been hiding there. “Jesus.” He dropped the binoculars. “We’re bugging out, right now!” he said. “Turn this beast around, Fincher.” “But—” “They’re gone,” Harland whispered. “They’re all dead.” Walker whimpered and rocked back and forth. “We’ll be dead, too, unless you move,” Harland said. “We already got lucky once today. Let’s not push it.” “Yeah.” Fincher reversed the Warthog. “Yeah, some luck.” He sped back down the hillside and hopped the Warthog off the embankment and back into the streambed. “Follow the river,” Harland told him. “It’ll take us all the way to HQ.” A shadow crossed their path. Harland twisted around and saw a pair of stubby-winged Covenant Banshees swooping down after them. “Move it!” he screamed at Fincher. Fincher floored the Warthog and plumes of water sprayed in their wake. They bounced over rocks and fishtailed across the stream. Bolts of plasma hit the water next to them—exploding into steam. Rock shards pinged off the armored side of the vehicle. “Walker!” Harland shouted. “Use those Jackhammers.” Walker huddled, doubled over in his seat. Harland fired the chain-gun. Tracers cut through the air. The fliers nimbly dodged them. The heavy machine gun was only accurate at reasonably short ranges—and not even that with Fincher bouncing the Warthog all over the place. “Walker!” he cried. “We are gonna die if you don’t get those missiles into the air!” He would have ordered Fincher to grab the launcher—but he’d have to stop to grab it… that, or try to drive with no hands. If the Warthog stopped, they’d be sitting ducks for those fliers."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter19.txt", "text": "Harland glanced at the riverbanks. They were too steep for the Warthog. They were stuck in the river with no cover. “Walker, do something!” Corporal Harland fired the chain-gun again until his arms went numb. It was no good; the Banshees were too far away, too quick. Another plasma bolt hit—directly in front of the Warthog. Heat washed over Harland. Blisters pinpricked his back. He screamed but kept shooting. If they hadn’t been in water, that plasma would have melted the tires… probably would have flash-fried them all. A burst of heat and a plume of smoke erupted next to Harland. For a split second he thought the Covenant gunners had found their mark—that he was dead. He screamed incoherently, his thumbs jamming down the chain-gun’s trigger buttons. The Banshee he was aiming at flashed, and then became a ball of flame and falling shrapnel. He turned, his breath hitching in his chest. They hadn’t been hit. Cochran knelt next to him. One arm clutched his stomach, and the other arm hefted the Jackhammer launcher on his shoulder. He smiled with bloodstained lips and pivoted to track the other flier. Harland ducked, and another missile whooshed directly over his head. Cochran laughed, coughing up blood and foam. Tears of mirth or pain—Harland couldn’t tell—streamed from his eyes. He collapsed backward, and let the smoldering launcher slip from his hand. The second Banshee exploded and spiraled into the jungle. “Two more klicks,” Fincher shouted. “Hang on.” He cranked the wheel and the Warthog swerved out of the streambed and bounced up the hillside, up and over, and they slid onto a paved road. Harland leaned over and felt Cochran’s neck for a pulse. It was there, weak; but he was still alive. Harland glanced at Walker. He hadn’t moved, his eyes squeezed shut. Harland’s first impulse was to shoot him right then and there—the goddamned, goldbricking, cowardly bastard almost cost them all their lives— No. Harland was half amazed he hadn’t frozen up, too. HQ was ahead. But Corporal Harland’s stomach sank as he saw smoke and flames blazing on the horizon. They passed the first armed checkpoint. The guardhouse and bunkers had been blasted away, and in the mud were thousands of Grunt tracks. Farther back, he saw a circle of sandbags around a house-size chunk of granite. Two Marines waved to them. As they approached in the Warthog, the Marines stood and saluted. Harland jumped off and returned their salute. One of the Marines had a patch over his eye and his head was bandaged. Soot streaked his face. “Jesus, sir,” he said. “It’s good to see you guys.” He approached the Warthog. “You’ve got a working radio in that thing?” “I—I’m not sure,” Corporal Harland said. “Who’s in charge here? What happened?” “Covenant hit us hard, sir. They had tanks, air support—thousands of those little Grunt guys. They glassed the main barracks. The Command Office."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter19.txt", "text": "Almost got the munitions bunker.” He looked away for a moment and his one eye glazed over. “We pulled it together and fought ‘em off, though. That was an hour ago. I think we killed everything. I’m not sure.” “Who’s in charge, Private? I have a critically wounded man. He needs evac, and I have to make my report.” The Private shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. The hospital was the first thing they hit. As far as who’s in command… I think you’re the ranking officer here.” “Great,” Harland muttered. “We’ve got five guys back there.” The Private jerked his head toward the columns of smoke and wavering heat in the distance. “They’re in fire-fighting suits to keep from burning up. They’re recovering weapons and ammo.” “Understood,” Harland said. “Fincher, try the radio again. See if you can link up to SATCOM. Call in for an evac.” “Roger that,” Fincher said. The wounded Private asked Harland, “Can we get help from Firebase Bravo, sir?” “No,” Harland said. “They got hit, too. There’s Covenant all over the place.” The Private slumped, bracing himself with his rifle. Fincher handed Harland the radio headset. “Sir, SATCOM is good. I’ve got the Leviathan on the horn.” “This is Corporal Harland,” he spoke into the microphone. “The Covenant has hit Firebase Bravo and Alpha HQ… and wiped them out. We’ve repelled the enemy from Alpha site, but our casualties have been nearly one hundred percent. We have wounded here. We need immediate evac. Say again: we need evac on the double.” “Roger, Corporal. Your situation is understood. Evac is not possible at this time. We’ve got problems of our own up here—” There was a burst of static. The voice came back online. “Help is on the way.” The channel went dead. Harland looked to Fincher. “Check the transceiver.” Fincher ran the diagnostic. “It’s working,” he said. “I’m getting a ping from SATCOM.” He licked his lips. “The trouble must be on their end.” Harland didn’t want to think of what kind of trouble the fleet could be having. He’d seen too many planets glassed from orbit. He didn’t want to die here—not like that. He turned to the men in the bunker. “They said help is on the way. So relax.” He looked into the sky and whispered, “They better send a whole regiment down here.” A handful of other Marines returned to the bunker. They had salvaged ammunition, extra rifles, a crate of frag grenades, and a few Jackhammer missiles. Fincher took the Warthog and a few men to see if he could transport the heavier weapons. They filled Cochran with more biofoam and bandaged him up. He slipped into a coma. They hunkered down inside the bunker and waited. They heard explosions at an extreme distance. Walker finally spoke. “So… now what, sir?” Harland didn’t turn toward the man. He covered Cochran with another blanket. “I don’t know. Can you fight?” “I think so.” He passed Walker a rifle. “Good."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter19.txt", "text": "Get up there and stand watch.” He got out a cigarette, lit it, took a puff, and then handed it to Walker. Walker took it, shakily stood, and went outside. “Sir!” he said. “Dropship inbound. One of ours!” Harland grabbed his signal flares. He ran outside and squinted at the horizon. High on the edge of the darkening sky was a dot, and the unmistakable roar of Pelican engines. He pulled the pin and tossed the smoker onto the ground. A moment later, thick clouds of green smoke roiled into the sky. The dropship turned rapidly and descended toward their location. Harland shielded his eyes. He searched for the rest of the dropships. There was only one. “One dropship?” Walker whispered. “That’s all they sent? Christ, that’s not backup—that’s a burial detail.” The Pelican eased toward the ground, spattering mud in a ten-meter radius, then touched down. The launch ramp fell open and a dozen figures marched out. For a moment Harland thought they were the same creatures he had seen earlier—armored and bigger than any human he’d ever laid eyes on. He froze—he couldn’t have raised his gun if he had wanted to. They were human, though. The one in the lead stood over two meters tall and looked like he weighed two hundred kilograms. His armor was a strange reflective green alloy, and underneath matte black. Their motions were so fluid and graceful—fast and precise, too. More like robots than flesh and blood. The one that first stepped off the ship strode toward him. Though his armor was devoid of insignia, Harland could see the insignia of a Master Chief Petty Officer in his helmet’s HUD. “Master Chief, sir!” Harland snapped to attention and saluted. “Corporal,” it said. “At ease. Get your men together and we’ll get to work.” “Sir?” Harland asked. “I’ve got a lot of wounded here. What work will we be doing, sir?” The Master Chief’s helmet cocked quizzically to one side. “We’ve come to take Sigma Octanus Four back from the Covenant, Corporal,” he said calmly. “To do that, we’re going to kill every last one of them.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter2.txt", "text": "Chapter Two 1130 HOURS, AUGUST 17, 2517 (MILITARY CALENDAR) ERIDANUS STAR SYSTEM, ERIDANUS II, ELYSIUM CITY The orange sun cast a fiery glow on the playground of Elysium City Primary Education Facility No. 119. Dr. Halsey and Lieutenant Keyes stood in the semishade of a canvas awning and watched children as they screamed and chased one another and climbed on steel lattices and skimmed gravballs across the repulsor courts. Lieutenant Keyes looked extremely uncomfortable in civilian clothes. He wore a loose gray suit, a white shirt, and no tie. Dr. Halsey found his sudden awkwardness charming. When he had complained the clothes were too loose and sloppy, she had almost laughed. He was pure military to the core. Even out of uniform, the Lieutenant stood rigid, as if he were at perpetual attention. “It’s nice here,” she said. “This colony doesn’t know how good they’ve got it. Rural lifestyle. No pollution. No crowding. Climate-controlled weather.” The Lieutenant grunted an acknowledgment as he tried to smooth the wrinkles out of his silk jacket. “Relax,” she said. “We’re supposed to be parents inspecting the school for our little girl.” She slipped her arm through his, and although she would have thought such a feat impossible, the Lieutenant stood even straighter. She sighed and pulled away from him, opened her purse, and retrieved a palm-sized pad. She adjusted the brim of her wide straw hat to shade the pad from the noon glare. With a tap of her finger, she accessed and scanned the file she had assembled of their subject. Number-117 had all the genetic markers she had flagged in her original study—he was as close to a perfect subject for her purposes as science could determine. But Dr. Halsey knew it would take more than theoretical perfection to make this project work. People were more than the sum of their genes. There were environmental factors, mutations, learned ethics, and a hundred other factors that could make this candidate unacceptable. The picture in the file showed a typical six-year-old male. He had tousled brown hair and a sly grin that revealed a gap between his front teeth. A few freckles were speckled across his cheeks. Good—she could match the patterns to confirm his identity. “Our subject.” As she angled the pad toward the Lieutenant so he could see the boy, Dr. Halsey noticed that the picture was four months old. Didn’t ONI realize how fast these children changed? Sloppy. She made a note to request updated pictures on a regular basis until phase three started. “Is that him?” the Lieutenant whispered. Dr. Halsey looked up. The Lieutenant nodded to a grassy hill at the end of the playground. The crest of that hill was bare dirt, scuffed clean of all vegetation. A dozen boys pushed and shoved one another—grabbed, tackled, rolled down the slope, and then got up, ran back, and started the process over. “King of the hill,” Dr. Halsey remarked. One boy stood on the crest."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter2.txt", "text": "He blocked, pushed, and strong-armed all the other children. Dr. Halsey pointed her data pad at him and recorded this incident for later study. She zoomed in on the subject to get a better look. This boy smiled and showed the same small gap between his front teeth. A split-second freeze frame and she matched his freckles to the picture on file. “That’s our boy.” He was taller than the other children by a full head, and—if his performance in the game was any indicator—stronger as well. Another boy grabbed him from behind in a headlock. Number-117 peeled the boy off, and—with a laugh—tossed him down the hillside like a toy. Dr. Halsey had expected a specimen of perfect physical proportions and stunning intellect. True, the subject was strong and fast, but he was also dirty and rude. Then again, unrealistic and subjective perceptions had to be confronted in these field studies. What did she really expect? He was a six-year-old boy—full of life and unchecked emotion and as predictable as the wind. Three boys ganged up on him. Two grabbed his legs and one threw his arms around his chest. They all tumbled down the hill. Number-117 kicked and punched and bit his attackers until they let go and ran away to a safe distance. He rose and tore back up the hill, bumping another boy and shouting that he was king. “He seems,” the Lieutenant started, “um, very animated.” “Yes,” Dr. Halsey said. “We may be able to use this one.” She glanced up and down the playground. The only adult was helping a girl get to her feet after falling down and scraping her elbow; she marched her towards the nurse’s office. “Stay here and watch me, Lieutenant,” she said, and passed him the data pad. “I’m going to have a closer look.” The Lieutenant started to say something, but Dr. Halsey walked away, then half jogged across the painted lines of hopscotch squares on the playground. A breeze caught her sundress and she had to clutch the hem with one hand, grabbing the brim of her straw hat with the other. She slowed to a trot and halted four meters from the base of the hill. The children stopped and turned. “You’re in trouble,” one boy said, and pushed Number-117. He shoved the boy back and then looked Dr. Halsey squarely in the eyes. The other children looked away; some wore embarrassed smirks, and a few slowly backed off. Her subject, however, stood there defiantly. He was either confident she wasn’t going to punish him—or he simply wasn’t afraid. She saw that he had a bruise on his cheek, the knees of his pants were torn, and his lip was cracked. Dr. Halsey took three steps closer. Several of the children took three involuntary steps backward. “Can I speak with you, please?” she asked, and continued to stare at her subject. He finally broke eye contact, shrugged, and then lumbered down the hill."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter2.txt", "text": "The other children giggled and made tsking sounds; one tossed a pebble at him. Number-117 ignored them. Dr. Halsey led him to the edge of the nearby sandpit and stopped. “What’s your name?” she asked. “I’m John,” he said. The boy held out his hand. Dr. Halsey didn’t expect physical contact. The subject’s father must have taught him the ritual, or the boy was highly imitative. She shook his hand and was surprised by the strength in his miniscule grip. “It’s very nice to meet you.” She knelt so she was at his level. “I wanted to ask you what you were doing.” “Winning,” he said. Dr. Halsey smiled. He was unafraid of her… and she doubted that he’d have any trouble pushing her off the hill, either. “You like games,” she said. “So do I.” He sighed. “Yeah, but they made me play chess last week. That got boring. It’s too easy to win.” He took a quick breath. “Or—can we play gravball? They don’t let me play gravball anymore, but maybe if you tell them it’s okay?” “I have a different game I want you to try,” she told him. “Look.” She reached into her purse and brought out a metal disk. She turned it over and it gleamed in the sun. “People used coins like this for currency a long time ago, when Earth was the only planet we lived on.” His eyes fixed on the object. He reached for it. Dr. Halsey moved it away, continuing to flip it between her thumb and index finger. “Each side is different. Do you see? One has the face of a man with long hair. The other side has a bird, called an eagle, and it’s holding—” “Arrows,” John said. “Yes. Good.” His eyesight must be exceptional to see such detail so far away. “We’ll use this coin in our game. If you win, you can keep it.” John tore his gaze from the coin and looked at her again, squinted, then said, “Okay. I always win, though. That’s why they won’t let me play gravball anymore.” “I’m sure you do.” “What’s the game?” “It’s very simple. I toss the coin like this.” She flicked her wrist, snapped her thumb, and the coin arced, spinning into the air, and landed in the sand. “Next time, though, before it lands, I want you to tell me if it will fall with the face of the man showing or with the eagle holding the arrows.” “I got it.” John tensed, bent his knees, and then his eyes seemed to lose their focus on her and the coin. Dr. Halsey picked up the quarter. “Ready?” John gave a slight nod. She tossed it, making sure there was plenty of spin. John’s eyes watched it with that strange distant gaze. He tracked it as it went up, and then down toward the ground—his hand snapped out and snatched the quarter out of the air. He held up his closed hand. “Eagle!” he shouted."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter2.txt", "text": "She tentatively reached for his hand and peeled open the tiny fist. The quarter lay in his palm: the eagle shining in the orange sun. Was it possible that he saw which side was up when he grabbed it… or more improbably, could have picked which side he wanted? She hoped the Lieutenant had recorded that. She should have told him to keep the data pad trained on her. John retracted his hand. “I get to keep it, right? That’s what you said.” “Yes, you can keep it, John.” She smiled at him—then stopped. She shouldn’t have used his name. That was a bad sign. She couldn’t afford the luxury of liking her test subjects. She mentally stepped away from her feelings. She had to maintain a professional distance. She had to… because in a few months Number-117 might not be alive. “Can we play again?” Dr. Halsey stood and took a step back. “That was the only one I had, I’m afraid. I have to leave now,” she told him. “Go back and play with your friends.” “Thanks.” He ran back, shouting to the other boys, “Look!” Dr. Halsey strode to the Lieutenant. The sun reflecting off the asphalt felt too hot, and she suddenly didn’t want to be outside. She wanted to be back in the ship, where it was cool and dark. She wanted to get off this planet. She stepped under the canvas awning and said to the Lieutenant, “Tell me you recorded that.” He handed her the data pad and looked puzzled. “Yes. What was it all about?” Dr. Halsey checked the recording and then sent a copy ahead to Toran on the Han for safekeeping. “We screen these subjects for certain genetic markers,” she said. “Strength, agility, even predispositions for aggression and intellect. But we couldn’t remote test for everything. We don’t test for luck.” “Luck?” Lieutenant Keyes asked. “You believe in luck, Doctor?” “Of course not,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But we have one hundred and fifty test subjects to consider, and facilities and funding for only half that number. It’s a simple mathematical elimination, Lieutenant. That child was one of the lucky ones—either that or he is extraordinarily fast. Either way, he’s in.” “I don’t understand,” Lieutenant Keyes said, and he started fiddling with the pipe he carried in his pocket. “I hope that continues, Lieutenant,” Dr. Halsey replied quietly. “For your sake, I hope you never understand what we’re doing.” She looked one last time at Number-117—at John. He was having so much fun, running and laughing. For a moment she envied the boy’s innocence; hers was long dead. Life or death, lucky or not, she was condemning this boy to a great deal of pain and suffering. But it had to be done."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter20.txt", "text": "Chapter Twenty 1800 HOURS, JULY 18, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / SIGMA OCTANUS IV, GRID NINETEEN BY THIRTY-SEVEN The Master Chief surveyed what was left of Camp Alpha. There were only fourteen Marine regulars left—balanced against the four hundred men and women who had been slaughtered here. He said to Kelly, “Post a guard on the dropship, and put three on patrol. Take the rest and secure the LZ.” “Yes, sir.” She turned to face the other Spartans, pointed, made three quick hand gestures, and they dispersed like ghosts. The Master Chief turned to the Corporal. “Are you in command here, Corporal?” The man looked around. “I guess so… yes, sir.” “As of 0900 Standard Military time, NavSpecWeap is assuming control of this operation. All Marine personnel now report through our chain of command. Understand, Corporal?” “Yes, sir.” “Now, Corporal, brief me on what happened here.” Corporal Harland hunkered down and sketched rough maps of the area as he quickly recounted the brutal series of surprise attacks. “Right here—grid thirteen by twenty-four. That’s where they hit us, sir. Something’s goin’ on there.” The Master Chief scanned the crude maps, compared them with the area surveys displayed in his HUD, then nodded, satisfied. “Get your wounded inside the Pelican, Corporal,” he said. “We’ll be dusting off soon. I want you to rotate by thirds on guard duty. The rest of your men should get some sleep. But make no mistake—if the Pelican gets fragged, we’ll be staying on Sigma Octanus Four.” The Corporal paled, then replied, “Understood, sir.” He stood slowly—the long day of combat and flight had taken its toll. The Marine saluted, then moved to assemble his team. Inside his sealed helmet, John frowned. These Marines were now under his command… and therefore part of his team. They lacked the Spartans’ firepower and training, so they had to be protected—not relied upon. He had to make sure they got out in one piece. Another snag in an already dicey mission. The Master Chief opened his COM link: “Team leaders, meet me at the LZ in three minutes.” Lights winked on his heads-up display—his Spartans acknowledging the order. He looked around at the destruction. Thin sunlight reflected dully from the thousands of spent shell casings strewn across the battlefield. Dozens of shattered Warthog chassis bled trails of smoke into the hazy sky. Scores of burned corpses lay in the mud. They’d have to get a burial detail down here later… before the Grunts got to the dead. The Master Chief would never question his orders, but he felt a momentary stab of bitterness. Whoever set these camps up without proper reconnaissance, whoever had blindly trusted the satellite transmissions in an enemy-held region, had been a fool. Worse, they had wasted the lives of good soldiers. Green Team’s leader jogged in from the south."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter20.txt", "text": "The Master Chief couldn’t see her features through her reflective faceplate, but he could tell without checking his HUD that it was Linda by the way she moved… that, and the SRS99C-S2 AM sniper rifle with Oracle scope she carried. She carefully looked around, verified that the area was secure, and slung her rifle. She snapped a crisp salute. “Reporting as ordered, Master Chief.” Red Team leader—Joshua—ran in from the east. He saluted. “Motion detectors, radar, and automated defenses up and running, sir.” “Good. Let’s go over this one more time.” The Master Chief overlaid a topographic map on their helmets’ displays. “Mission goal one: we need to gather intelligence on Covenant troop disposition and defenses at Côte d’Azur. Mission goal two: if there are no civilian survivors, we are authorized to remote detonate a HAVOK tactical nuclear mine and remove the enemy forces. In the meantime, we will minimize our contact with the enemy.” They nodded. The Master Chief highlighted the four streams that fed into the river delta near Côte d’Azur. “We avoid these routes. Banshees patrol them.” He circled where Firebase Bravo had been. “We’ll avoid this area as well—according to the Marine survivors, that area is hot. Grid thirteen by twenty-four also has activity. “Red Leader, take your squad in along the coast. Stay in the tree line. Green Leader, follow this ridgeline, but keep under cover, too. I’ll be taking this route.” The Master Chief traced a path through a particularly dense section of jungle. “It’s 1830 hours now. The city is thirteen kilometers from here—that should take us no more than forty minutes. We’ll probably be forced to slow down to avoid enemy patrols—but we all should be in place no later than 1930 hours.” He zoomed into a city map of Côte d’Azur. “Entry points to the city sewer system are—” He highlighted the display with NAV points. “—Here, here, and here. Red Team will recon the wharf areas. Green takes the residential section. I’ll take Blue Team downtown. Questions?” “Our communications underground will be limited,” Linda said. “How do we check in while keeping our heads down?” “According to the Colonial Administration Authority’s file on Côte d’Azur, the sewer systems here have steel pipes running along the top of the plastic conduits. Tap into those and use ground-return transceivers to check in. We’ll have our own private COM line.” “Roger,” she said. The Master Chief said, “As soon as we leave, the dropship dusts off and will move here.” He indicated a position far to the south of Alpha camp. “If the Pelican doesn’t make it… our fallback rendezvous point is here.” He indicated a point fifty kilometers south. “ONI’s welcoming committee has stashed our emergency SATCOM link and survival gear there.” No one mentioned that survival gear would be useless when the Covenant glassed the planet. “Stay sharp,” John said. “And come back in one piece. Dismissed.” They saluted briskly, then sprinted to their tasks. He switched to Blue Team’s frequency."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter20.txt", "text": "“Time to saddle up, Blue Team,” he called out. “RV back at the bunker for orders.” Three blue lights winked acknowledgement in his display. A moment later, the other three Spartans in his squad trotted into position. “Reporting as ordered,” Blue-Two announced. The Master Chief quickly filled them in on the mission. “Blue-Two.” He nodded to Kelly. “You’re carrying the nuke and medical gear.” “Affirmative. Who’ll have the detonator, sir?” “I will,” he replied. “Blue-Three.” He turned to Fred. “You have the explosives. James, you’ll take our extra COM equipment.” They double-checked their gear: modified MA5B assault rifles, adapted to mount silencers; ten extra clips of ammunition; frag grenades; combat knives; M6D pistols—small but powerful handguns that fired .450 Magnum loads, sufficient to crack through Grunt armor. In addition to the weapons, there was a single smoke canister—blue smoke to signal for pickup. John would carry that. “Let’s go,” he said. Blue Team moved out. They quickly entered the jungle, in a simple single-file line with Blue-Four in the lead; James had an instinct for walking point. The line was slightly staggered, with John and Kelly slightly to the left of James. Fred brought up the rear. They moved cautiously. Every hundred yards, James signaled the group to halt while he methodically surveyed the area for any sign of the enemy. The rest of Blue Team crouched, and disappeared into the thick jungle foliage. John checked his HUD; they were one-quarter of the way to the city. The team made good time despite the cautious pace. The MJOLNIR assault armor allowed them to push their way through the thick jungle like it was a stroll through the woods. As the team moved on, the thin mist that permeated the jungle gave way to a hard, pelting rain. The damp ground gradually turned to mud, forcing the team to slow. Blue-Four stopped dead and raised his fist—the signal to halt and freeze. John stopped in his tracks, his rifle raised and sweeping slowly back and forth, searching for any sign of enemy movement. Normally, the Spartans relied on their armor’s detection gear to locate enemy troops. But their motion sensors were useless—everything moved in the jungle. They had to rely on their eyes and ears and the instincts of their point man. “Point to Team Leader: enemy contact.” James’ calm voice crackled across the COM channel. “Enemy troops within one hundred meters of my position, ten degrees left.” With exaggerated slowness, Blue-Four indicated the danger area by pointing. “Affirmative,” John replied. “Blue Team: hold position.” Although the motion trackers were of no use here, thermal proved effective. Through the thick sheets of rain, the Master Chief spotted three cold spots: Grunts in their chilled environmental suits. “Blue Team: enemy contact confirmed.” He added the enemy position to his HUD. “Estimated enemy strength, Point?” “Lead, I make ten, say again, ten Covenant troops. Grunts, sir. They’re moving slowly. Double-file formation. They haven’t spotted us."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter20.txt", "text": "Orders?” John’s orders said to minimize contact with the enemy where possible—the Spartans were spread too thinly across the battle area to risk a prolonged engagement. But the Grunts were heading right for the Marine bunker… “Let’s take them out, Blue Team,” he said. * * * The team of Grunts slogged through the mud. The vaguely simian aliens wore shiny red-trimmed armor. Craggy, purpleblack hide was visible beneath the environmental suits. Breath masks provided supercooled methane—the aliens’ atmosphere. There were ten of them, moving in two columns and spaced roughly three meters apart. John noted with satisfaction that they seemed bored—only the point man and the pair on rear guard had their plasma rifles at the ready. The rest chattered at each other in a weird combination of high-pitched squeaks and guttural barks. Easy, relaxed targets. Perfect. He gave a series of slow hand signals to the rest of the team; they faded back until they were well away from the Grunts’ field of view. The Master Chief opened the squadwide COM channel. “They’re seventy meters from this depression—” He keyed a NAV point into the team’s topographic display. “They’re heading for the western hill and will probably follow the terrain to the top. We’ll fall back now, and take concealed positions along the eastern hill. “Blue-Four, you’re our scout—stay near the bottom and let us know when the rear guard passes you. Take them out first—they seem alert. “Blue-Two, you have overwatch at the top of the hill. “Blue-Three, back me up. Silenced weapons only—no explosives, unless things go bad.” He paused, then gave the order: “Move out.” The Spartans crept back along their path and spread out along the hill. John—in the center of the line—readied his assault rifle. The team was virtually invisible in the thick foliage, and covered by the barrelwide tree trunks of the local flora. One minute ticked by. Then two… three… Blue-Four’s acknowledgment signal blinked twice in John’s HUD. Enemy detected. He relaxed his grip on the weapon, waiting— —There. Twenty meters distant, the Grunt point man moved to the edge of the western hill, just downhill from John’s position. The alien paused, his plasma rifle sweeping the area—then moved slowly up the rise. A moment later, the rest of the formation came into view, ten meters behind the point man. Blue-Four’s indicator winked again. Now. The Master Chief opened fire, a short, three-round burst. The weapon’s muffled cough was inaudible over the sound of jungle rainfall. The trio of armor-piercing rounds slashed through the alien’s throat protection, rupturing the environment suit. The Grunt clutched at his neck, emitted a brief, high-pitched gurgle—then fell to the mud, dead. A moment later, the Grunt lines came to a clumsy halt, confused. John spotted two strobe flashes, and the pair of Covenant rear guards dropped to the ground. “Blue-Two to Lead: rear-guard eliminated.” “Hit them!” John barked. The four Spartans opened fire in short bursts."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter20.txt", "text": "In less than a second, four more of the Grunt patrol were down, dead from head shots. The remaining trio of Grunts unslung their plasma rifles, swinging them wildly back and forth, looking for targets and chattering loudly in their strange, barking language. John sighted on the alien closest to him and squeezed the trigger. The alien splashed into the mud, methane spraying from his shattered breath mask. Another pair of sustained bursts and the last of the Grunts were down. * * * Kelly policed the Grunts’ weapons and handed a plasma rifle to each of the team; the Spartans had standing orders to seize Covenant weapons and technology whenever possible. Blue Team fanned out and continued on their way. When they heard Banshees overhead, they hunkered down in the mud, and the fliers passed. Ten more kilometers of rough terrain and then the jungle stopped and fields of rice paddies stretched out before them all the way to Côte d’Azur. Crossing these would be more difficult than the jungle. They donned camouflage cloaks that masked their thermal signatures and crawled through the muck on their stomachs. The Master Chief saw three larger ships hovering over the city. If they were troop transports, they could carry thousands of Covenant soldiers. If they were warships, any direct ground assault against the city would be futile. Either way it was bad news. He made sure his vid and audio mission recorders got a good clear image of the vessels. When they emerged from the mud, they were near the beach on the edge of the city. The Master Chief checked his map readings and made his way to the sewage outlet. The two-meter diameter pipe was sealed with a steel grate. He and Fred easily bent the bars aside and entered. They sloshed through hip-deep muck. The Master Chief didn’t like the cramped quarters. Their mobility was restricted by the narrow pipes; worse, they were bunched up and therefore easier to kill with grenades or massed fire. Motion sensors picked up hundreds of targets. The constant downpour from storm drains above made the sensors useless. He followed his electronic map through the maze of pipes. Light filtered in from above—beams of illumination connected to the manhole-cover vent holes. Every so often something moved and blocked that light. The Spartans moved quickly and quietly through the sludge and halted when they reached their final waypoint—directly under the center of Côte d’Azur’s “downtown.” With a tiny jerk of his head, the Master Chief informed Blue Team to spread out and keep their eyes peeled. He snaked a fiber-optic probe up through the drain grate at street level and plugged it into his helmet. The yellow light from the sodium vapor lamps washed everything topside in an eerie glow. There were Grunts positioned on the street corners, and the shadow of a Banshee flier circling overhead."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter20.txt", "text": "The electric cars parked on the street had been overturned, and the waste receptacles had been knocked over or set on fire. Every street-level window was broken. The Master Chief saw no human civilians, alive or otherwise. Blue Team moved up and over a block. The Master Chief checked topside again. There was more activity here: a pack of black-armored Grunts meandered down the streets. Two vulture-headed Jackals sat on the corner, squabbling over a hunk of meat. Something else caught his attention, though. There were other aliens on the sidewalk—or rather, above the sidewalk. They were roughly man-size creatures—unlike any he had ever encountered. The creatures were vaguely sluglike, with pale, purple-pink skin. Unlike other Covenant forces, they were not bipeds. Instead they had several tentacular appendages sprouting from their thick trunks. They floated a half meter above the ground, as if the odd, pink bladders on their backs kept them aloft. One alien used a slender tentacle to open the hood of a car. It began to disassemble the car’s electric engine, moving with startling speed. Within twenty seconds all the parts had been neatly arranged in rows on the pavement. The creature paused, then reassembled the parts with blinding quickness, disassembled and rebuilt it several times into different arrangements. Finally, the creature simply reassembled the car and floated on its way. The Master Chief made sure his mission recorder had gotten that. This was a Covenant race never documented before. He rotated the fiber-optic cable to point down the opposite end of the street. There was more activity another block away. He retracted the probe and moved Blue Team a block farther south. He signaled the team to hold position, then climbed up a short series of metal handholds until he was just below a manhole cover. He cautiously sent the probe topside again, up through the manhole-cover vent. There was a Jackal’s hoof directly adjacent to the probe, blocking half of his field of vision. He turned the probe with excruciating slowness, and saw fifty more Jackals milling back and forth. They were concentrated around the building across the street. The building resembled pictures that Déjà had shown him years ago—it looked like an Athenian temple, with white marble steps and Ionic columns. At the top of the steps were a pair of stationary guns. More bad news. He pulled the probe back and consulted the map. The building was marked as the Côte d’Azur Museum of Natural History. The Covenant had serious firepower here—the stationary guns had commanding fields of fire, making a frontal assault suicidal. Why would they protect a human structure? he wondered. Was it their headquarters? The Master Chief signaled for Blue-Two. He pointed to the accessway that led under the building. He held up two fingers, pointed toward her eyes, and then down the passage, and then slowly balled his hand into a fist. Kelly proceeded very slowly down that passage to scout it out. The Master Chief checked the time."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter20.txt", "text": "Red and Green Teams were due to report. He had James attach the ground-return transceiver to the pipes overhead. “Green Team, come in.” “Roger: Green Team Leader here, sir,” Linda whispered over the channel. “We’ve scouted the residential section.” There was a pause. “No survivors… just like Draco Three. We’re too late.” He understood. They’d seen it before. The Covenant didn’t take prisoners. On Draco III, they had watched via satellite linkup as human survivors were herded together and ripped apart by ravenous Grunts and Jackals. By the time the Spartans had gotten there, there was no one left to rescue. But the victims had been avenged. “Green Team: stand by and prepare to fall back to the RV and secure the area,” he said. “Standing by,” Linda said. He switched to the Red Team COM channel: “Red Team, report.” Joshua’s voice crackled over the link: “Red Leader, sir. We’ve got something for ONI. We’ve spotted some new type of Covenant race. Little guys that float. They seem to be some sort of explorer or scientist type. They take things apart, then move on, like they’re looking for something. They do not, repeat not, appear hostile. Advise that you do not engage. They raise a pretty loud alarm, Blue Lead.” “You in trouble?” “Dodged trouble, sir,” he said. “But there is one snag.” “Snag.” The word was charged with meaning for the Spartans. Getting caught in an ambush or a minefield, a teammate wounded, or aerial bombardments—those were all things they had trained for. Snags were things they didn’t know how to handle. Complications that no one had planned for. “Go ahead,” the Master Chief whispered. “We have survivors. Twenty civilians hid in a cargo ship here. There are several wounded.” The Master Chief mulled this over. It wasn’t his choice to weigh the relative worth of a handful of civilian lives versus the possibility of taking out ten thousand Covenant troops with their nuke. His orders were specific on this point. They could not set up the nuke if there was civilian population at risk. “New mission objective, Red Team Leader,” the Master Chief said. “Get those civilians to the recovery point and evac them back to fleet.” He switched COM channels again, broadcasting to all the teams. “Green Team Leader, you still online?” A pause, then Linda spoke: “Roger.” “Move to the docks and coordinate with Red Team—they have survivors we need to evac. Green Team leader has strategic control of this mission.” “Understood,” she said. “We’re on our way.” “Affirmative, sir,” Joshua said. “We’ll get it done.” “Blue Team out.” The Master Chief disconnected. It was going to be rough for Green and Red Teams. Those civilians would slow them down—and if they had to protect them from Covenant patrols, they’d all get noticed. Blue-Two returned. She opened the COM link and reported in. “There’s access to the building—a ladder and a steel plate welded shut."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Chapter20.txt", "text": "We can burn through it.” The Master Chief opened up the team COM channel. “We’re going to assume that Red and Green Teams will remove the civilians from Côte d’Azur. We will proceed as planned.” He paused, then turned to Blue-Two. “Break out the nuke and arm it.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter21.txt", "text": "Chapter Twenty-One 2120 HOURS, JULY 18, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC IROQUOIS, MILITARY STAGING AREA IN ORBIT AROUND SIGMA OCTANUS IV “Ship’s status?” Captain Keyes said as he strode onto the bridge, buttoning his collar. He noticed that the repair station Cradle still obscured their port camera. “And why aren’t we clear of that station yet?” “Sir, all hands are at battle stations,” Lieutenant Dominique replied. “General quarters sounded. Tac data uploaded to your station.” A tactical overview of the Iroquois, neighboring vessels, and Cradle popped onto Keyes’ personal display screen. “As you can see,” Lieutenant Dominique continued, “we did clear the station, but they are moving on the same outbound vector we are. Vice Admiral Stanforth wants them with the fleet.” Captain Keyes took his place in his command chair—“the hot seat,” as it was more colloquially known—and reviewed the data. He nodded with satisfaction. “Looks like the Vice Admiral has something up his sleeve.” He turned to Lieutenant Hall. “Engine status, Lieutenant?” “Engines hot at fifty percent,” she reported. She straightened to her full height, nearly six feet, and looked Captain Keyes in the eye with something edging near defensiveness. “Sir, the engines took a real beating in our last engagement. The repairs we’ve made are… well, the best we could do without a complete refit.” “Understood, Lieutenant,” Keyes replied calmly. In truth, Keyes was concerned about the engines, too—but it would do no good to make Hall more uneasy than necessary. The last thing he needed now was to undermine her confidence. “Gunnery officer?” Captain Keyes turned to Lieutenant Hikowa. The petite woman bore more resemblance to a porcelain doll than to a combat officer, but Keyes knew her delicate appearance was only skin deep. She had ice water for blood and nerves of steel. “MAC guns charging,” Lieutenant Hikowa reported. “Sixty-five percent and climbing at two percent per minute.” Everything on the Iroquois had slowed down to a crawl. Engine, weapons—even the unwieldy Cradle kept pace with them. Captain Keyes sat up straighter. There was no time to spend on self-recriminations. He would have to do the best he could with what he had. There simply was no other alternative. The lift doors popped open and a young man stepped on deck. He was tall and thin. His dark hair—longer than regulations permitted—had been slicked back. He was disarmingly handsome; Keyes noticed the female bridge crew pause to look the newcomer over before returning to their tasks. “Ensign Lovell reporting for duty, Captain.” He snapped a sharp salute. “Welcome aboard, Ensign Lovell.” Captain Keyes returned his salute, surprised that the unkempt officer could demonstrate such crisp adherence to military protocol. “Man the navigation console, please.” The bridge officers scrutinized the Ensign. It was highly unusual for such a low-ranking officer to pilot a capital ship. “Sir?” Lovell wrinkled his forehead, confused. “Has there been some mistake, sir?” “You are Ensign William Lovell? Recently posted on the Archimedes Remote Sensor Outpost?” “Yes, sir."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter21.txt", "text": "They pulled me off that duty so quick that I—” “Then man your station, Ensign.” “Yes, sir!” Ensign Lovell sat at the navigation console, took a few seconds to acquaint himself with the controls—then reconfigured them more to his liking. A slight smile tugged at the corner of Keyes’ mouth. He knew that Lovell had more combat experience than any Lieutenant on the bridge, and was pleased that the Ensign adapted so quickly to unfamiliar surroundings. “Show me the fleet’s position and the relative location of the enemy, Ensign,” Keyes ordered. “Aye, sir,” Lovell replied. His hands danced across the controls. A moment later, a system map snapped into place on the main screen. Dozens of small triangular tactical markers showed Vice Admiral Stanforth’s fleet massing between Sigma Octanus IV and its moon. It was a sound opening position. Fighting in orbit around Sigma Octanus IV would have trapped them in the gravity well—like fighting with your back to a wall. Keyes studied the display—and frowned. The Vice Admiral had moved the fleet into a tightly packed grid formation. When the Covenant fired their plasma weapons at them, there would be no maneuvering room. The Covenant was moving in-system quickly. Captain Keyes counted twenty radar signatures. He didn’t like the odds. “Receiving orders,” Lieutenant Dominique said. “Vice Admiral Stanforth wants the Iroquois at this location ASAP.” On the map, a blue triangle pulsed on the corner of the grid formation. “Ensign Lovell, get us there at best speed.” “Aye, sir,” he replied. Captain Keyes fought down a wave of embarrassment; the Cradle stardock started to pull ahead of the Iroquois. It took up a position directly over the Admiral’s phalanx formation. The refit station rotated, presenting its edge to the incoming Covenant fleet to show them the smallest target area. “Rotating and reversing burn,” Ensign Lovell said. The Iroquois spun about and slowed. “Thrusters to station keeping. We’re locked in position, sir.” “Very good, Ensign. Lieutenant Hikowa, divert as much power as you need to get those MAC guns charged.” “Aye, sir,” Hikowa replied. “Capacitors charging at maximum rate.” “Captain,” Lieutenant Dominique said. “We’re receiving an encrypted firing solution and countdown timers from the Leviathan’s AI.” “Transfer that vector to Lieutenant Hikowa and show me on screen.” A line appeared on the tactical map, connecting the Iroquois to one of the incoming Covenant frigates. The firing timer appeared in the corner: twenty-three seconds. “Now show me the entire fleet’s firing solutions, Lieutenant Dominique.” A web of trajectories crossed the map with tiny countdown times next to each. Vice Admiral Stanforth had the fleet exchanging fire with the Covenant like a line of Redcoats and colonial militia in the Revolutionary War—tactics that could best be described as bloody… or suicidal. What the hell was the Vice Admiral thinking? Keyes studied the displays, trying to divine a method to his commanding officer’s madness… then he understood. Risky, but—if it worked—brilliant."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter21.txt", "text": "The fleet’s firing countdowns were roughly timed so that the shots would be staggered into two, maybe three, massive salvos. The first salvo would—hopefully—knock out the Covenant ships’ shields. The final salvo was to be the knockout punch. But it could only work once. After that, the UNSC fleet would be destroyed when the remaining Covenant ships returned fire. The Iroquois and the other ships were stationary targets. He appreciated that the Vice Admiral couldn’t get too far from Sigma Octanus IV, but with zero momentum—and no room to maneuver—there’d be no way to avoid those plasma bolts. “Sound decompression alarms in all nonessential sections, Lieutenant Hall, and then empty them.” “Aye, sir,” she said, and bit her lower lip. “Guns: status on the MACs?” Keyes’ eyes were glued to the firing countdown. Twenty seconds… fifteen… ten… “Sir, MAC weapon systems are hot!” Hikowa announced. “Removing safeties now.” The Covenant ships started to rotate slowly in space—although their momentum continued to carry them on their inbound trajectory toward the UNSC phalanx. Motes of red light collected along the alien ships’ lateral lines. Five seconds. “Transferring firing control to the computer,” Lieutenant Hikowa said. She punched a series of firing codes into the computer, then locked down the controls. The Iroquois recoiled and spat twin bolts of thunder toward the enemy. The starboard view screen showed UNSC destroyers and frigates launching their opening salvo. The Covenant fleet fired as well; angry red lances of energy raced though space towards them. “Time until that plasma impacts?” Captain Keyes asked Ensign Lovell. “Twenty-two seconds, sir.” The vacuum between the two opposing forces filled with a hundred lines of fire and smoldering metal that seemed to tear through the fabric of space. Their trajectories closed on one another, then crossed, and the bolts of fire grew larger on the main screen. Lieutenant Dominique said, “Receiving a second set of firing solutions and times. Vice Admiral Stanforth on the priority channel, sir.” “Put him on, holotank two,” Keyes ordered. Near the main view screen, a small holographic tank—normally reserved for the ship’s AI—winked into operation. Vice Admiral Stanforth’s ghostly image appeared. “All ships: hold your positions. Divert all engine power to recharge your guns. We’ve got something special cooked up.” His eyes narrowed. “Do not—I repeat, do not—under any circumstance break position or fire before you are ordered to do so. Stanforth out.” The holographic projection of the Vice Admiral snapped out of existence. “Orders, sir?” Ensign Lovell turned in his seat. “You heard the Vice Admiral, Ensign. Thrusters to station keeping. Lieutenant Hikowa: get those guns recharged on the double.” “Aye, sir.” Keyes nodded as Hikowa turned back to her task. “Three seconds until first salvo impact,” she announced. Keyes turned back to the tac display, concentrating on the MAC rounds that crawled across the screen. The fleet’s MAC rounds hammered into the Covenant lines."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter21.txt", "text": "Shields flickered silver-blue and overloaded as the super-dense projectiles rammed into the formation; several ships were spun out of position by the impact. “Guns?” he called out. “Enemy status?” “Multiple hits on Covenant fleet, sir,” Hikowa replied. “Salvo two impact… now.” A handful of the shots were clean misses. Keyes winced; each one of the off-trajectory MAC rounds meant one more enemy ship would survive to return fire. The vast majority, however, slammed into the unshielded alien vessels. The lead Covenant destroyer took a direct hit from a heavy round, which sent the alien ship into a lurching port spin. Keyes saw the destroyer’s engines flare as her pilot struggled to regain control—just as a second MAC round struck on the ship’s opposite side. For an instant, the Covenant vessel shuddered, held position, then flexed as the hull stresses became too great. The destroyer disintegrated and scattered debris in a wide arc. A second Covenant ship—a frigate—shuddered under the impact of multiple MAC rounds. It listed to starboard and rammed the next frigate in the enemy formation. Sparks and small explosions flared from the ships as a gray-white plume of vented atmosphere exploded into space. The ships’ running lights flickered, then dimmed as the pair of dead spacecraft—locked in a deadly embrace—tumbled into the heart of the Covenant line. A moment later, the wrecked ships hit a third Covenant frigate, and they exploded, sending tendrils of plasma through space. A dozen of their ships vented atmosphere and fires flickered within their hulls. The fore view screen, however, was now filled with incoming weapons fire. “Fleet commander on priority channel,” Dominique announced. “Audio only.” “Patch it through, Lieutenant,” Keyes ordered. A hiss of static crackled through the communications-system speakers. A moment later, Vice Admiral Stanforth’s voice calmly broke through the noise. “Lead to all ships: hold your positions,” the Vice Admiral said. “Make ready to fire. Transfer timers to your computers… and hang on to your hats.” A shadow crossed the overhead camera. On the view screen, Captain Keyes watched as the Cradle repair station, the plate nearly a kilometer on edge, rotated and started to slide in front of their phalanx formation. “Christ,” Ensign Lovell whispered, “they’re going to take the hits for us.” “Dominique, hit the scopes. Are there any lifepods outbound from Cradle?” Keyes asked. He already knew the answer. “Sir,” Dominique answered, his deep voice thick with worry. “No escape craft have left the Cradle.” All eyes on the Iroquois’ bridge were riveted to the screen. Keyes’ hands clenched with anger and helplessness. There was nothing to do but watch. The front view screen went black as the station passed in front of them. Pinpoints of red and orange appeared along the back surface, metal vapor venting in plumes. Cradle lurched closer to the fleet, the impact of the plasma torpedoes pushing it back. The station continued to move downward, spreading out the damage."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter21.txt", "text": "Holes appeared in the surface; the internal lattice of steel girders was exposed and, seconds later, glowed white-hot—then the view screen was clear again. “Ventral cameras,” Captain Keyes said. “Now!” The view changed as Dominique switched to the Iroquois’ belly cameras. Cradle station reappeared. She spun and her entire forward surface was aglow… heat spread to the edges, the center liquefied and pulled away. “MAC guns ready to fire in three seconds,” Lieutenant Hikowa announced, her voice cold and angry. “Targeting lock acquired.” Keyes gripped the arms of the command chair. “Cradle’s crew bought this shot for us, Lieutenant,” Captain Keyes growled. “Make it count.” The Iroquois shuddered as the MAC gun fired. On the status display, Keyes watched as the rest of the UNSC fleet fired simultaneously. A twenty-one-gun salute three times over for those on board the station who had given their lives. “All ships: break and attack!” Vice Admiral Stanforth bellowed. “Pick your targets and fire at will. Take as many of these bastards out as you can! Stanforth out.” They had to move before the Covenant plasma weapons recharged. “Give me fifty percent on our engines,” Captain Keyes ordered, “and come about to course two eight zero.” “Aye,” Ensign Lovell and Lieutenant Hall replied in unison. “Lieutenant Hikowa, release safeties on the Archer missile system.” “Safeties disengaged, sir.” The Iroquois moved away at a near-right angle from the phalanx formation. The other UNSC ships scattered at all vectors. One UNSC destroyer, the Lancelot, accelerated straight toward the Covenant line. As the UNSC ships scattered, the MAC salvo reached the Covenant ships. The Admiral’s firing solutions had targeted the remainder of the Covenant battlegroup’s smaller ships. Their shields sparkled, rippled, and then flickered out of existence. Their frigates shattered under the impact of the firepower. Holes ripped through their hulls. Wrecked spacecraft drifted lazily through the battle area. The surprise second salvo had cost the Covenant dearly—a dozen enemy ships were out of the fight. That left eight Covenant vessels—destroyers and cruisers. Pulse lasers and Archer missiles fired, and every ship on-screen accelerated towards one another. Both Covenant and UNSC ships released their single-ship fighters. The tac computer was having trouble tracking everything—Keyes cursed to himself over the lack of a ship AI—as the missile fire and plasma discharges strobed in the blackness. Single ships—the humans’ Longsword fighters and the flat, vaguely piscine Covenant fighters—dove, and fired, and impacted into warships. Archer missiles left trails of exhaust. Blue pulse lasers scattered inside the clouds of vented propellant and atmosphere, and cast a ghostly blue glow over the scene. “Orders, sir?” Lovell asked nervously. Captain Keyes paused—something felt… wrong. The battle was utter chaos, and it was nearly impossible to tell exactly what was happening. Sensor data was thrown off by the constant detonations and the fire of the aliens’ energy weapons. “Scan near the planet, Lieutenant Hall,” Keyes said. “Ensign Lovell, move us closer to Sigma Octanus Four.” “Sir?” Lieutenant Dominique said."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter21.txt", "text": "“We’re not engaging the Covenant fleet?” “Negative, Lieutenant.” The bridge crew paused for a fraction of a second—all except Ensign Lovell, who tapped on the controls and plotted a new course. The bridge crew had all had a taste of being heroes in their last battle, and they wanted more. Captain Keyes knew what that was like… and he knew how dangerous it was. He was not about to charge into battle, however, with the Iroquois at half power, her structural integrity already compromised, and with no AI to mount a point defense against Covenant single ships. One plasma torpedo to their lower decks would gut them. If he remained where he was and attempted to shoot into the fray, he was just as likely to accidentally hit a friendly ship as a Covenant vessel. No. There were several damaged Covenant ships in the area. He would finish them off—make sure they could not launch any attack on their fleet. There was no glory in the action—but considering their present condition, glory was of little concern. Survival was. Captain Keyes watched the battle rage in the starboard camera. The Leviathan took a plasma bolt, and her foredecks burned. One Covenant ship collided with the UNSC frigate Fair Weather; the superstructures of the two craft locked together—and both ships opened fire at point-blank range. The Fair Weather detonated into a ball of nuclear fire that engulfed the Covenant destroyer. Both ships faded from the tactical display. “Covenant ship detected in orbit around Sigma Octanus Four,” Lieutenant Hall reported. “Let me see it,” Keyes said. A small vessel appeared on-screen. It was smaller than the Covenant equivalent of a frigate… but definitely larger than one of the aliens’ dropships. It was sleek and seemed to waver in and out of the blankness of space. The engine pods were baffled and devoid of the characteristic purple-white glow of Covenant propulsion systems. “They’re in a geosynchronous orbit over Côte d’Azur,” Lieutenant Hall reported. “Their thrusters are firing microbursts. Precision station keeping, sir, if I were to guess.” Lieutenant Dominique interrupted. “Detected scattering from a narrow-beam transmission on the planet surface, sir. A far-infrared laser.” Captain Keyes turned toward the main battle on-screen. Was this slaughter just a diversion? The original attack on Sigma Octanus IV had been for the sole purpose of landing ships and invading Côte d’Azur. Once accomplished, their battlegroup had left. And now—whatever the Covenant’s purpose was groundside, they were sending information to this stealth ship… while the rest of their fleet kept the UNSC forces from interfering. “Like hell,” he muttered. “Ensign Lovell, plot a collision course for that ship.” “Aye, sir.” “Lieutenant Hall, push the engines as far as you can. I need every bit of speed you can get me.” “Yes, sir. If we vent primary coolant and use our reserve, I can boost the engine output to sixty-six percent… for five minutes.” “Do it.” The Iroquois moved sluggishly toward the Covenant ship."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter21.txt", "text": "“Intercept in twenty seconds,” Lovell said. “Lieutenant Hikowa, arm Archer missile pods A through D. Blow that Covenant son of a bitch out of the sky.” “Archer missile pods armed, sir,” she replied smoothly. Her hands moved gracefully over the controls. “Firing.” Archer missiles streaked toward the Covenant stealth ship—but as they closed with the target, they started to swerve from side to side, then spun out of control. The spent missiles fell toward the planet. Lieutenant Hikowa cursed quietly in Japanese. “Missile guidance locks jammed,” she said. “Their ECM spoofed the guidance packages, sir.” No other choice, then, Keyes thought. They can jam our missiles—let’s see them jam this. “Run them over, Ensign Lovell,” Keyes ordered. He licked his lips. “Aye, sir.” “Sound collision alarm,” Captian Keyes said. “All hands, brace for impact.” “She’s moving,” Lovell said. “Keep on her.” “Course correcting now. Hang on,” Lovell said. The eight-thousand-ton Iroquois slammed into the tiny Covenant ship. On the bridge, they barely felt the impact. The diminutive alien vessel, however, was crushed from the force. Her crippled hull spun toward Sigma Octanus IV. “Damage report!” Keyes bellowed. “Lower decks 3 through 8 show hull breach, sir,” Hall called out. “Internal bulkheads were already closed, and no one was in those areas, per your orders. No systems damage reported.” “Good. Move to her original position, Ensign Lovell. Lieutenant Dominique, I want that transmission beam intercepted.” The ventral cameras showed the Covenant ship plunge into the atmosphere. Its shield glowed yellow, then white—then dissipated as the ship’s systems failed. It burst into crimson flame and burned across the horizon, a black plume of smoke trailing in its wake. “The Iroquois is losing altitude,” Ensign Lovell said. “We’re falling into the planet’s atmosphere… bringing us about.” The Iroquois spun 180 degrees. The Ensign concentrated on his displays, then said, “No good, we need more power. Sir, permission to fire emergency thrusters?” “Granted.” Lovell exploded the aft emergency thrusters and the Iroquois jumped. Lovell’s eyes were locked on the repeater displays as he fought for every centimeter of maneuvering he could get. Sweat ran down his forehead and soaked his flight suit. “Orbit stabilizing—barely.” Lovell exhaled with relief, then turned to face Keyes. “Got it, sir. Thrusters to precision station keeping.” “Receiving,” Lieutenant Dominique said, and then paused. “Receiving… something, sir. It must be encrypted.” “Make sure you’re recording, Lieutenant.” “Affirmative. Recorders active… but the codebreaker software can’t crack it, sir.” Captain Keyes turned back to the tac displays, half expecting to see a Covenant ship in firing position. There wasn’t much left of either the Covenant or UNSC fleets. Dozens of ships drifted in space, billowing atmosphere and burning. The rest moved slowly. A few flickered with fire. Scattered explosions dotted the black. One undamaged Covenant destroyer turned, however, and left the battlefield. It came about and headed straight for the Iroquois. “Uh oh,” Lovell muttered. “Lieutenant Hall, get me the Leviathan—priority Alpha channel,” Keyes ordered. “Yes, sir,” she said."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Chapter21.txt", "text": "Vice Admiral Stanforth’s image appeared in the holotank. His forehead had a gash across it, and blood trickled into his eyes. He wiped it away with a shaking hand, his eyes blazing with anger. “Keyes? Where the hell is Iroquois?” “Sir, Iroquois is in geosynchronous orbit over Côte d’Azur. We’ve destroyed a Covenant stealth ship and are in the process of intercepting a secure transmission from the planet.” The Vice Admiral stared at him a moment unbelievingly, then nodded as if this made sense to him. “Proceed.” “We have a Covenant destroyer leaving the battle… bearing down on us. I think the reason for the Covenant’s invasion may be in this coded transmission. And they don’t want us to know, sir.” “Understood, son. Hang on. The cavalry’s on its way.” On the aft screen, the remaining eight UNSC ships broke their attacks and turned toward the incoming destroyer. Three MAC guns fired and impacted on the Covenant vessel. Its shields only lapsed for a split second; it took a round through her nose… but it continued toward the Iroquois at flank speed. “Transmission ended, sir,” Lieutenant Dominique announced. “Cut off in midpacket. The signal was terminated at the source.” “Damn.” Captain Keyes considered staying and trying to reacquire that signal—but only for a moment. He decide to take what they had and run with it. “Ensign Lovell, get us the hell out of here!” “Sir!” Lieutenant Hall said. “Look.” The Covenant destroyer was changing course… along with the rest of the surviving Covenant vessels. They were scattering, and accelerating out of the system. “They’re running,” Lieutenant Hikowa said, her normal iron calm replaced by astonishment. Within minutes, the Covenant ships accelerated and vanished into Slipstream space. Captain Keyes looked aft and counted only seven UNSC ships intact, with the balance of the fleet destroyed or disabled. He sat in his command chair. “Ensign Lovell, take us back the way we came. Make ready to take on wounded. Repressurize all uncompromised decks.” “Jesus,” Lieutenant Hall said. “I think we actually… won that one.” “Yes, Lieutenant. We won,” Keyes replied. But Captain Keyes wondered exactly what they had won. The Covenant had come to this system for a reason—and he had a sinking feeling that they may have gotten what they had come for."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter22.txt", "text": "Chapter Twenty-Two 2010 HOURS, JULY 18, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / SIGMA OCTANUS IV, CÔTE D’AZUR It was time to arm the nuke. The small device held the power to destroy Côte d’Azur—wipe the Covenant infection clean off the planet. John carefully removed the bonding strips on the HAVOK tactical nuclear device and attached it to the wall of the sewer. The adhesive on the black half sphere stuck and hardened to the concrete. He slipped the detonator key into a thin slot on the unit’s face. There were no external indicators on the device; instead, a tiny screen winked on his heads up display indicating the nuke was armed. HAVOK ARMED, flashed across his HUD. AWAITING DETONATION SIGNAL. The device—a clean thirty-megaton explosive—could only be detonated by a remote signal… a problem here in the sewers. Even the powerful communications package on a starship would be unable to penetrate the steel and concrete overhead. John quickly rigged a ground-return transceiver, placing it on the pipes overhead. He’d have to set up another unit outside to relay the signal underground… a hot line that would trigger a nuclear firestorm. Technically, his mission parameters had been fulfilled. Green and Red Teams would have the civilians evacuated soon. They had scouted the region and discovered a new Covenant species—the strange floating creature that disassembled and reassembled human machinery, like a scientist or engineer stripping down a device to learn its secrets. He could leave and destroy the Covenant occupation force. He should leave—there was an army of Jackals and Grunts—including at least a platoon of the black-armored veterans—on the streets above. There were three medium Covenant dropships hovering in the air as well. The advance Marine strike forces had been slaughtered, leaving the Spartans no backup. His responsibility now was to make sure his team got out intact. But John’s orders had an unusual amount of flexibility… and that made him uncomfortable. He had been told to reconnoiter the region and gather intelligence on the Covenant. He was positive there was more to be learned here. Certainly they were up to something in Côte d’Azur’s museum. The Covenant had never before been interested in human history—or indeed, in humans or their artifacts of any kind. He had seen a disarmed Jackal fight hand to hand rather than pick up a nearby human assault rifle. And the only thing the Covenant had ever used human buildings for was target practice. So finding out the reason they seized and were protecting the museum definitely qualified as intelligence gathering in his book. Was it worth exposing his team to find out? And if they died, would he be wasting their lives… or spending them for something worthwhile? “Master Chief?” Kelly whispered. “Our orders, sir?” He opened Blue Team’s COM channel. “We’re going in. Use your silencers. Don’t engage the enemy unless absolutely necessary. This place is too hot. We’ll just poke our noses in—see what they’re up to and bug out.” Three acknowledgment lights winked on."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter22.txt", "text": "The Master Chief knew they implicitly trusted his judgment. He just hoped he was worthy of that trust. The Spartans checked their gear and threaded silencers onto their assault rifles. They slipped silently down a wide side passage of the sewer. A rusty ladder ran up to the ceiling, and a steel plate had been welded in place. “Thermite paste already set up,” Fred reported. “Burn it.” The Master Chief stepped to the side and looked away. The thermite sputtered as bright as an electric arc welder, casting harsh shadows into the chamber. When it finished, there was a jagged, glowing red circle in the steel. The Master Chief climbed up the ladder and put his back against the plate—and pushed. It popped free with a metallic snap. He eased the plate down and set it aside. He attached the fiber-optic probe, fed it up through the hole. All clear. He flexed his leg muscles and sent the MJOLNIR armor up through the hole, pulling himself into the next chamber with his left hand. His right hand held the silenced assault rifle as if it were no heavier than a pistol. He braced for incoming enemy fire— —Nothing happened. He moved forward and surveyed the small room. The stone-walled chamber was dark, and was lined with shelving units. Each unit held jars filled with clear liquid and insect specimens. Boxes and crates were stacked neatly on the floor. Kelly entered next, then Fred and James. “Picking up motion sensor signals,” Kelly said over the COM channel. “Jam them.” “Done,” she replied. “They may have gotten a piece of us, though.” “Spread out,” the Master Chief ordered. “Get ready to jump back into the hole if this gets too hot. Otherwise, initiate the standard distract-and-destroy.” The clatter of alien hooves on marble echoed behind a door to their right. The Spartans melted into the shadows. The Master Chief crouched behind a crate and unsheathed his combat knife. The door opened and four Jackals stood in the door frame; they held active energy shields in front of them—warping their already ugly vulture faces. The blue-white glow of the energy shield pulsed through the dark chamber. Good, the Master Chief thought. That should play hell with their night vision. The Jackals held plasma pistols at the ready in their free hands; the barrels of the guns moved erratically as the aliens whispered to one another… then steadied as, in careful, slow movements, they moved in. The aliens fanned out into a rough “delta” formation—the lead Jackal a meter ahead of his compatriots. The group approached the Master Chief’s hiding spot. There was a slight noise: the clink of glass bottles on the other side of the room. The Jackals turned… and presented their unshielded backs to the Master Chief. He exploded from his hiding place and jammed his blade into the base of the closest Jackal’s back."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter22.txt", "text": "He snapped his right foot out, caught the back of the next Jackal’s head, crushing its skull. The remaining aliens spun, glistening energy shields interposed between them and him. There were three coughs from silenced MA5Bs. Alien blood—dark purple in the harsh blue-white light—spattered across the inner surfaces of the energy shields as the silenced rounds found their marks. The Jackals toppled to the ground. The Master Chief policed their plasma pistols and retrieved the shield generators clamped on their forearms. He had standing orders to collect intact specimens of Covenant technology. The Office of Naval Intelligence had not been able to replicate the Covenant’s shield technology. But they were getting close. In the meantime, the Spartans would use these. The Master Chief strapped the curved piece of metal to his forearm. He touched one of the two large buttons on the unit and a scintillating film appeared before him. He handed the other shield devices to his teammates. He pressed the second button and the shield collapsed. “Don’t use these unless you have to,” he said. “The humming and their reflective surfaces might give us away… and we don’t know how long they last.” He got three acknowledgment lights. Kelly and Fred took up positions on either side of the open door. She gave him a thumbs-up. Kelly took point and the Spartans moved, single file, up a circular stairwell. She paused a full ten seconds at the doorway to the main floor. She waved them ahead and they emerged on the main level of the museum. The skeleton of a blue whale was suspended over the main foyer. The dead hulk reminded the Master Chief of a Covenant starship. He turned away from the distraction and slowly moved over the black marble tiles. Oddly, there were no more Jackal patrols. There were a hundred Jackals outside guarding the place… but none inside. The Master Chief didn’t like it. It didn’t feel right… and Chief Mendez had told him a thousand times to trust his instincts. Was it a trap? The Spartans staggered their line and moved cautiously into the east wing. There were displays of the local flora and fauna: gigantic flowers and fist-sized beetles. But their motion sensors were cold. Fred halted… and then, with a quick hand signal, waved John to move up to his position. He stood by a case of pinned butterflies. On the floor, facedown in front of that case, was a Jackal. It was dead, crushed flat. There was an imprint of a large boot where the creature’s back had been. Whatever had done this had easily weighed a ton. The Master Chief spotted a few blood-smeared prints leading away from the Jackal… and into the west wing. He flipped on his infrared sensors and took a long look around—no heat sources here or in the nearby rooms. The Master Chief followed the footprints and signaled the team to follow. The west wing held scientific displays."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter22.txt", "text": "There were static electric generators and quantum field holograms on the walls, a tapestry of darting arrows and wriggling lines. A cloud chamber sat in the corner with subatomic tracers zipping through its misty confines—the Master Chief noted it was unusually active. This place reminded him of Déjà’s classroom on Reach. A branch opened to another wing. The word GEOLOGY was carved on the entry arch. Through that arch there was a strong infrared source, a razor-thin line that shot straight up and out of the building. The Master Chief only caught a glimpse of the thing—a wink and a blink then it was gone again… it was so bright, his IR sensors overloaded and automatically shut down. He waved James to take the left side of the arch. He had Kelly and Fred drop back to cover their flanks, and the Master Chief edged to the right of the arch. He sent a fiber-optic probe ahead, bent it slightly, and poked it around the corner. The room contained display cases of mineral specimens. There were sulfur crystals, raw emeralds, and rubies. There was a monolith of unpolished pink quartz in the center of the room, three meters wide and six tall. Off to one side, however, were two creatures. The Master Chief hadn’t seen them at first—because they were so motionless… and so massive. He had no doubt that one of them had crushed the Jackal that had gotten in its way. The Master Chief got scared all the time. He never showed it, though. He usually mentally acknowledged the apprehension, put it aside, and continued… just as he’d been trained to do. This time, however, he couldn’t easily dismiss the feeling. The two creatures were vaguely man-shaped. They stood two and a half meters tall. It was difficult to make out their features; they were covered from head to toe with a dull blue-gray armor, similar to the hull of a Covenant ship. Blue, orange, and yellow highlights were visible on the few patches of exposed skin the creatures sported. They had slits where their eyes should be. The articulation points looked impregnable. On their left arms they hefted large shields, thick as starship battleplate. Mounted on their right arms were massive, wide-barreled weapons, so large that the arm beneath seemed to blend into the weapon. They moved with slow deliberation. One took a rock from the display case and set it inside a red metal case. It bent over the case while the other turned and touched the control panel of a device that looked like a small pulse laser turret. The laser pointed straight up—and out through the shattered glass dome overhead. That had been the source of the infrared radiation. The laser must have intermittently scattered off the dust in the air—flashed enough energy into his sensors to burn them out. Something that powerful could beam a message straight out into space. The Master Chief made a slow fist—the signal for his team to freeze."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter22.txt", "text": "Then, with slow, deliberate movements, he signaled the Spartans to stay alert and get ready. He waved Fred and Kelly forward. Fred crept closer to him. Kelly slid up next to James. The Master Chief then held up two fingers and made a sideways cut, motioning them into the room. Acknowledgment lights winked on. He went in first, sidestepped to the right, with Fred at his side. James and Kelly took the left flank. They opened fire. Armor-piercing rounds pinged off the aliens’ body armor. One of them turned and brought its shield in front of it—covering its partner, the red case, and the laser beacon. The Spartan bullets didn’t even leave a scratch on the armor. The alien raised its arm slightly and pointed at Kelly and James. A flash of light blinded the Master Chief. There was a deafening explosion and a wave of heat. He blinked for a full three seconds before he recovered his vision. Where Kelly and James had been, there was a burning crater that fanned backward… nothing but charcoal and ash remained of the Science Chamber behind them. Kelly had moved in time; she crouched five meters deeper into the room, still firing. James was nowhere to be seen. The other massive creature turned to face the Master Chief. He hit the button on the shield generator on his arm and brought it up just in time—the nearest alien’s weapon flashed again. The air in front of the Master Chief shimmered and exploded—he flew backward, crashing through the wall, and skidded for ten meters before slamming into the wall of the next room. The Jackal shield generator was white-hot. The Master Chief ripped the melted alien device off and threw it away. Those plasma bolts were like nothing he had seen before. They seemed almost as powerful as the stationary plasma cannons the Jackals used. The Master Chief sprang to his feet and charged back into the chamber. If the aliens’ weapons were similar to Covenant plasma guns, they would need to be recharged. He hoped the Spartans had enough time to take those things out. The Master Chief still felt the fear—it was stronger than it had been before… but his team was still in there. He had to take care of them first before he could indulge in the luxury of feelings. Kelly and Fred circled the creatures, their silenced weapons firing quick bursts. They ran out of ammunition and switched clips. This wasn’t working. They couldn’t take them out. Maybe a Jackhammer missile at point-blank range would penetrate their armor. The Master Chief’s gaze was drawn to the center of the room. He stared for a moment at the monolith of pink quartz. Over the COM channel he ordered, “Switch to shredder rounds.” He changed ammunition and then opened fire—at the floor underneath the enormous creatures’ feet. Kelly and Fred changed rounds and fired, too. Marble tiles shattered and the wood underneath splintered into toothpicks."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter22.txt", "text": "One of the creatures raised its arm again, preparing to fire. “Keep shooting,” John yelled. The floor creaked, buckled, and then fell away; the two massive aliens plunged into the basement below. “Quick,” the Master Chief said. He slung his rifle and moved to the back of the quartz monolith. “Push!” Kelly and Fred leaned their weight against the stone and grunted with effort. The slab moved a tiny bit. James sprinted forward, slammed into the stone, put his shoulder alongside theirs… and pushed. His left arm had been burned away from the elbow down, but he didn’t even whimper. The monolith moved; it inched toward the hole… then tilted and went over. It landed with a dull thud and a crunching noise. The Master Chief peered over the edge. He saw an armored left leg, and on the other side of the stone slab, an arm struggling underneath. The things were still alive. Their motions slowed, but they didn’t cease. The red case was balanced precariously on the edge of the hole. It teetered—no way to reach it in time. He turned to Kelly—the fastest Spartan—and yelled: “Grab it!” The box fell— —and Kelly leaped. In a single bound, she caught the rock as the case dropped, she tucked, rolled, and got to her feet, the rock safely held in one hand. She handed it to the Master Chief. The rock was a piece of granite and glittered with a few jewel-like inclusions. What was as so special about it? He stuffed it into his ammunition sack and then kicked over the Covenant transmission beacon. Outside, the Master Chief heard the clattering and squawking of the army of Jackals and Grunts. “Let’s get out of here, Spartans.” He threw his arm around James and helped him along. They ran into the basement, making sure to give the pinned giants under the stone a wide berth, then jumped through the storm drain and into the sewers. They jogged through the muck and didn’t stop until they had cleared the drain system and emerged in the rice paddies on the edge of Côte d’Azur. Fred rigged the ground-return relay to the pipes overhead and ran a crude antenna outside. The Master Chief looked back at the city. Banshee fliers circled through the skyscrapers. Spotlights from the hovering Covenant transport ships bathed the streets in blue illumination. The Grunts were going crazy; their barks and screams rose to an impenetrable din. The Spartans moved toward the coast and followed the tree line south. James collapsed twice along the way and then finally slipped into unconsciousness. The Master Chief slung him over his shoulder and carried him. They paused and hid when they heard a patrol of a dozen Grunts. The aliens ran past them—they either didn’t see the Spartans, or they didn’t care. The animals sprinted as fast as they could back to the city. When they were a click away from the rendezvous point, the Master Chief opened the COM link."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter22.txt", "text": "“Green Team Leader, we’re on your perimeter, and coming in. Signaling with blue smoke.” “Ready and waiting for you, sir,” Linda replied. “Welcome back.” The Master Chief set off one of his smoke grenades and they marched into the clearing. The Pelican was intact. Corporal Harland and his Marines stood post, and the rescued civilians were safely inside the ship. Blue and Red Teams were hidden in the nearby brush and trees. Linda approached them. She motioned for her team to take James and get him onto the Pelican. “Sir,” she said. “All civilians on board and ready for liftoff.” The Master Chief wanted to relax, sit down, and close his eyes. But this was often the most dangerous part of any mission… those last few steps when you might let down your guard. “Good. Take one more look around the perimeter. Let’s make double sure nothing followed us back.” “Yes, sir.” Corporal Harland approached and saluted. “Sir? How did you do it? Those civilians said you got them out of the city—past an army of Covenant, sir. How?” John cocked his head quizzically. “It was our mission, Corporal,” he said. The Corporal stared at him and then at the other Spartans. “Yes, sir.” When Green Team Leader reported that the perimeter was clear, the last of the Spartans boarded the Pelican. James had regained consciousness. Someone had removed his helmet and propped his head on a folded survival blanket. His eyes watered from the pain, but he managed to salute the Master Chief with his right hand. John gestured at Kelly; she administered a dose of painkiller, and James lapsed into unconsciousness. The Pelican lifted into the air. In the distance, the suns were warming the horizon, and Côte d’Azur was outlined against the dawn. The dropship suddenly accelerated at full speed straight up, and then angled away to the south. “Sir,” the pilot said over the COM channel. “We’re getting multiple incoming radar contacts… about two hundred Banshees inbound.” “We’ll take care of it, Lieutenant,” John replied. “Prepare for EMP and shock wave.” The Master Chief activated his remote radio transceiver. He quickly keyed in the final fail-safe code, then sent the coded burst transmission on its way. A third sun appeared on the horizon. It blotted out the light of the system’s stars, then cooled—from amber to red—and darkened the sky with black clouds of dust. “Mission accomplished,” he said."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter23.txt", "text": "Chapter Twenty-Three 0500 HOURS, JULY 18, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC IROQUOIS, MILITARY STAGING AREA IN ORBIT AROUND SIGMA OCTANUS IV Captain Keyes leaned against the brass railing on the bridge of the Iroquois and surveyed the devastation. The space near Sigma Octanus IV was littered with debris: the dead hulks of Covenant and UNSC ships spun lazily in the vacuum, surrounded by clouds of wreckage: jagged pieces of decimated armor plate, shattered single-ship fuselages, and heat-blackened metal fragments created a million radar targets. The debris field would clutter this system and make for a navigational hazard for the next decade. They had recovered nearly all the bodies from space. Captain Keyes’ gaze caught the remnants of the Cradle as the blasted space dock spun past. The kilometer-wide plate was now safely locked in a high orbit around the planet. She was slowly being torn apart from her own rotation; girders and metal plates warped and bent as the gravitational stresses on the ship increased. The Covenant plasma weapons had burned through ten decks of super-hard metal and armor like so many layers of tissue paper. Thirty volunteers on the repair station had died piloting the unwieldy craft. Vice Admiral Stanforth had gotten his “win”… but at a tremendous cost. Keyes brought up the casualty figures and damage estimates on his data pad. He scowled as the data scrolled across his screen. The UNSC had lost more than twenty ships, and those that survived had all suffered heavy damage; most would require months of time-consuming repair at a shipyard. Nearly one thousand people were killed in the battle, and hundreds more were wounded, many critically. Add to that the sixteen hundred Marine casualties on the surface—and the three hundred thousand civilians murdered in Côte d’Azur at the hands of the Covenant. Some “win,” Keyes thought bitterly. Côte d’Azur was now a smoldering crater—but Sigma Octanus IV was still a human-held world. They had saved everyone else on the planet, nearly thirteen million souls. So perhaps it had been worth it. So many lives and deaths had been measured in this battle. Had the balance of the odds tipped slightly against them—everything could have been lost. That was something he had never taught any of his students at the Academy—how much victory depended on luck, as well as skill. Captain Keyes saw the last of the Marine dropships returning from the planet surface. They docked with the Leviathan, and then the huge cruiser turned and accelerated out of the system. “Sensor sweep complete,” Lieutenant Dominique reported. “I think that was the last of the lifeboats we picked up, sir.” “Let’s make certain, Lieutenant,” Keyes replied. “One more pass through the system please. Ensign Lovell, plot a course and take us around again.” “Yes, sir,” Lovell wearily replied. The bridge crew was exhausted, physically and emotionally. They had all pulled extended shifts as they searched for survivors. Captain Keyes would rotate shifts after this next pass."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter23.txt", "text": "As he looked at this crew, he noticed that something was different. Lieutenant Hikowa’s movements were crisp and determined, as if everything she did now would decide their next battle; it made a startling contrast to her normally lethargic efficiency. Lieutenant Hall’s false exuberance had been replaced by genuine confidence. Dominique almost seemed happy—his hands lightly typing a report to FLEETCOM. Even Ensign Lovell, despite his exhaustion, stepped lively. Maybe Vice Admiral Stanforth was right. Maybe the fleet needed this win more than he had realized. They had beaten the Covenant. Although not widely known, there had been only three small engagements in which the UNSC fleet had decisively defeated the Covenant. And not since Admiral Cole had retaken Harvest colony had there been an engagement on this scale. A complete victory—a world saved. It would show everyone that winning was possible, that there was hope. But, he mused, was there really? They won because they had gotten lucky—and had twice as many ships as the Covenant. And, he suspected, they had beaten the Covenant because the Covenant’s real objective hadn’t been to win. Naval Intelligence officers had come aboard the Iroquois immediately after the battle. They congratulated Captain Keyes on his performance… and then copied and purged every single bit of data they had intercepted from the Covenant planetside transmission. Of course, the ONI spooks left without offering any explanation. Keyes toyed with his pipe, replaying the battle in his mind. No. The Covenant had lost because they were really after something else on Sigma Octanus IV—and the intercepted message was the key. “Sir,” Lieutenant Dominique said. “Incoming orders from FLEETCOM.” “Put it through to my station, Lieutenant,” Captain Keyes said as he sat in his command chair. The computer scanned his retina and fingerprints and then decoded the message. He read on the small monitor: UNITED NATIONS SPACE COMMAND PRIORITY TRANSMISSION 09872H-98 ENCRYPTION CODE: RED PUBLIC KEY: FILE /LIGHTNING-MATRIX-FOUR/ FROM: VICE ADMIRAL MICHAEL STANFORTH, COMMANDING OFFICER, UNSC LEVIATHAN/ UNSC SECTION THREE COMMANDER/ (UNSC SERVICE NUMBER: 00834-19223-HS) TO: CAPTAIN JACOB KEYES, COMMANDING OFFICER UNSC IROQUOIS/ (UNSC SERVICE NUMBER: 01928-19912-JK) SUBJECT: ORDERS FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE CONSIDERATION CLASSIFICATION: SECRET (BGX DIRECTIVE) /START FILE/ KEYES, DROP WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING AND HEAD BACK TO THE BARN. WE’RE BOTH WANTED FOR IMMEDIATE DEBRIEFING BY ONI AT REACH HEADQUARTERS ASAP. LOOKS LIKE THE SPOOKS AT NAVAL INTELLIGENCE ARE UP TO THEIR NORMAL CLOAK-AND-DAGGER TRICKS. CIGARS AND BRANDY AFTERWARD. REGARDS, STANFORTH “Very well,” he muttered to himself. “Lieutenant Dominique: send Vice Admiral Stanforth my compliments. Ensign Lovell, generate a randomized vector as per the Cole Protocol, and make ready to leave system. Take us out for an hour in Slipstream space, then we’ll reorient and proceed to the Reach military installation.” “Aye, sir. Randomized jump vector ready—our tracks are covered.” “Lieutenant Hall: start organizing shore leave for the crew. We’re heading back for repairs and some well-deserved R and R.” “Amen to that,” Ensign Lovell said."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter23.txt", "text": "That wasn’t technically in his orders, but Captain Keyes would make sure his crew got the rest they deserved. That was the least he could do for them. The Iroquois slowly accelerated on an out-system vector. Captain Keyes took one long last look at Sigma Octanus IV. The battle was over… so why did he feel like he was headed into another fight? * * * The Iroquois plowed through a haze of titanium dust—condensed from a UNSC battleplate vaporized by Covenant plasma. The fine particles caught the light from Sigma Octanus and sparkled red and orange, making it look like the destroyer sailed through an ocean of blood. When there was time, a HazMat team would sweep the area and clean up. In the meantime, junk—ranging in size from microscopic up to thirty-meter sections of Cradle—still drifted in the system. One piece of debris in particular floated near the Iroquois. It was small, almost indistinguishable from any of a thousand other softball-sized blobs that cluttered radar scopes and polluted thermal sensors. If anyone had been looking close enough, however, they would have seen that this particular piece of metal drifted in the opposite direction from all the other masses nearby. It trailed behind the accelerating Iroquois… and edged closer, moving with purpose. When it was close enough, it extended tiny electromagnets that guided it to the baffles at the base of the Iroquois’ number-three engine shield. It blended in perfectly with the other vanadium steel components. The object opened a single photo eye and gazed at the stars, collecting data to reference its current position. It would continue to do this for several days. During that time, it would slowly build up a charge. When it reached critical energy, a tiny sliver of thallium nitride memory crystal would be ejected at nearly the speed of light, and a minute Slipstream field would generate around it. If its trajectory was perfect, it would intercept a Covenant receiver located at precise coordinates in the alternate space. … and the tiny automated probe would reveal to the Covenant every place the Iroquois had been."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter24.txt", "text": "Chapter Twenty-Four 1100 HOURS, AUGUST 12, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH UNSC MILITARY COMPLEX, PLANET REACH, CAMP HATHCOCK The Master Chief steered the Warthog to the fortified gate and ignored the barrel of the chain-gun that was not quite pointed in his direction. The guard on duty, a Marine Corporal, saluted smartly when John handed over his identification card. “Sir! Welcome to Camp Hathcock,” the Corporal said. “Follow this road to the inner guardpost and present your credentials there. They’ll direct you to the main compound.” John nodded. The Warthog’s tires crunched on gravel as the massive metal gate swung open. Nestled in the Highland Mountains of Reach’s northern continent, Camp Hathcock was a top-level retreat; heads of state, VIPs, and top brass were the facility’s normal occupants—these and a division of veteran, battle-hardened Marines. “Sir, please follow the Blue Road to this point here,” the Corporal at the inner gate instructed, gesturing at a point on a wall-mounted map, “and park in the Visitors’ Parking area.” Minutes later, the main facility was in sight. John parked the Warthog and strode across the pleasantly familiar compound. He and the other Spartans had covertly made their way up here during their training. John suppressed a smile as he remembered how many times the young Spartans had commandeered food and supplies from the base. He inhaled deeply, smelling piñon pines and sage. He missed this place. He had been away from Reach for far too long. Reach was one of the few places that John considered “safe” from the Covenant. There were a hundred ships and twenty Mark V MAC guns on the orbital stations overhead. Those guns were powered by fusion generators, buried deep within Reach. Each Mark V could propel a projectile so massive, and with such velocity, he doubted if even Covenant shields could withstand a single salvo from them. His home would not fall. Tall fences and razor wire encircled the inner compound of Camp Hathcock. The Master Chief stopped at the inner gate and saluted the MP there. The Marine MP looked over the Master Chief in his dress uniform. He snapped to attention—his mouth dropped open and he stared unblinkingly. “They’re waiting for you, Master Chief, sir. Please go right on in.” The guard’s reaction to the Master Chief—and the medals on his chest—was not uncommon. First word of the Spartans and their accomplishments had spread despite the cloak of secrecy ONI had tried to surround them with. Three years ago, the information had gone public at Vice Admiral Stanforth’s insistence—for morale purposes. It was hard to mistake the Master Chief for anything other than a Spartan. He stood just over two meters tall and weighed in at 130 kilos of rock-hard muscle and iron-dense bone. There was a special insignia on his uniform as well: a golden eagle poised with its talons forward—ready to strike. The bird clutched a lightning bolt in one talon and three arrows in the other."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter24.txt", "text": "The Spartan insignia was not the only thing about his dress uniform that called attention to him. Campaign ribbons and medals covered the left side. Chief Mendez would have been proud of him, but John had long ago stopped keeping track of the honors that had been heaped upon him. He didn’t like the flashy ornamentation. He and the other Spartans preferred to be inside their MJOLNIR armor. Without it, he felt exposed somehow, like he’d left his quarters without his skin. He had grown used to the enhanced speed and strength, to his thoughts and actions melding instantaneously. The Master Chief marched into the main building. Outwardly, it had been designed to look like a simple log cabin, albeit a large one. Its inner walls were lined with Titanium-A armor plate, and underground were bunkers and plush conference rooms that extended a hundred meters below the earth and into the mountain of rock. He rode the elevator to Subbasement III. There, he was instructed by the Military Police attendant to wait in the debriefing lounge for the committee to summon him. Corporal Harland sat in the lounge, reading a copy of STARS magazine, nervously tapping his foot. He immediately stood and saluted as the Master Chief entered the room. “At ease, Corporal,” the Master Chief said. He glanced disapprovingly at the thickly padded couches and decided to stand. The Corporal stared at the Master Chief’s uniform, nervous. Finally he straightened, and said, “May I ask you a question, sir?” The Master Chief nodded. “How do you get to be a Spartan? I mean—” His gaze fell to the floor. “I mean, if someone wanted to join your outfit. How would they do that?” Join? The Master Chief pondered the word. How had he joined? Dr. Halsey had picked him and the other Spartans twenty-five years ago. It had been an honor… but he had never actually joined. In fact, he had never seen any other Spartans other than his class. Once, shortly after he’d “graduated” from the training, he had overheard Dr. Halsey mention that Chief Mendez was training another group of Spartans. He had never seen them—or the Chief. “You don’t join,” he finally told the Corporal. “You are selected.” “I see,” Corporal Harland said, and wrinkled his brow. “Well, sir, if anyone ever asks, tell them to sign me up.” The Military Police attendant appeared. “Corporal Harland? They’re ready for you now.” A set of double doors opened on the far wall. Harland gave John another salute, and nodded. As the Corporal got up and strode toward the doors, he passed an older man on his way out. He wore the uniform of a UNSC Naval officer, a Captain. John sized the man up quickly—polished shoulder insignia, new material. The man was a newly ordained Captain. John stood at attention and snapped a precision salute. “Officer on the deck,” John barked. The Captain paused, and looked John up and down."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter24.txt", "text": "There was a glint of amusement in his eyes as he returned the salute. “As you were, Master Chief.” John stood at ease. The Captain’s name—Keyes, J.—was embroidered on the dress-gray tunic. John recognized the name immediately: Captain Keyes, the hero of Sigma Octanus. At least, he thought, one of the surviving heroes. Keyes glanced at the Master Chief’s uniform. His eyes lingered on the Spartan insignia, and then on the Master Chief’s serial-number tag just under the stripes of his rank emblem. A faint smile appeared on the Captain’s face. “It’s good to see you again, Chief.” “Sir?” The Master Chief had never met Captain Keyes. He had heard of his tactical brilliance at Sigma Octanus, but he had never met the man face-to-face. “We met a very long time ago. Dr. Halsey and I—” He stopped. “Hell. I’m not allowed to talk about it.” “Of course, sir. I understand.” The Military Police attendant appeared in the hallway. “Captain Keyes, you’re wanted topside by Vice Admiral Stanforth.” The Captain nodded to the attendant. “In a moment,” he said. He stepped closer to the Master Chief and whispered, “Be careful in there. The ONI brass are—” He searched for the right word. “—irritated by the end results of our encounter with the Covenant at Sigma Octanus. I’d keep my head down in there.” He glanced back toward the debriefing-chamber doors. “Irritated, sir?” John asked, genuinely puzzled. He would have thought the UNSC top brass would be elated by the victory, despite its cost. “But we won.” Captain Keyes took a step back and cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “Didn’t Dr. Halsey ever teach you that winning isn’t everything, Master Chief?” He saluted. “You’ll excuse me.” John saluted. He was so confused by Captain Keyes’ statement that he kept saluting as the Captain walked out of the room. Winning was everything. How could someone with Captain Keyes’ reputation think otherwise? The Master Chief tried to recall if he had ever read anything like that in any military history or philosophy texts. What else was there other than winning? The only other obvious choice was losing… and he had long been taught that defeat was an unacceptable alternative. Certainly, Captain Keyes didn’t mean that they should have lost at Sigma Octanus? Unthinkable. He stood silently for ten minutes mulling this over. Finally, the Military Police attendant entered the waiting room. “They’re ready for you now, sir.” The double doors opened and Corporal Harland came out. The young man’s eyes were glazed and he trembled slightly. He looked worse than he had looked when the Master Chief had found him on Sigma Octanus IV. The Master Chief gave a curt nod to the Corporal and then entered the debriefing chamber. The doors closed behind him. His eyes instantly adjusted to the dark room. A large, curved desk dominated the far end of the rectangular room. A domed ceiling curved over his head, cameras, microphone, and speakers positioned like constellations."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter24.txt", "text": "A spotlight snapped on and tracked the Master Chief as he approached the desk. A dozen men and women in Navy uniforms sat in the shadows. Even with his enhanced eyesight, the Master Chief could barely make out their scowling features and the glistening brass oak leaves and stars through the glare of the overhead light. He stood at attention and saluted. The debriefing panel ignored the Master Chief and spoke among themselves. “The transmission that Keyes intercepted only makes sense translated this way,” a man in the shadows said. A holotank hummed into operation. Tiny geometric symbols danced in the air above it: squares, triangles, bars, and dots. To the Master Chief, they looked like either Morse code or ancient Aztec hieroglyphics. “I will concede that point,” a woman’s voice in the darkness replied. “But translation software comes up empty. It’s not a new Covenant dialect that we’ve discovered.” “Or a Covenant dialect at all,” someone else said. Finally, one of the officers deigned to notice the Master Chief. “At ease, soldier,” he said. The Master Chief let his arm fall. “Spartan-117, reporting as ordered, sirs.” There was a pause, then the woman’s voice spoke up. “We would like to congratulate you on your successful mission, Master Chief. You’ve certainly given us plenty to consider. We would like to pin down a few details of your mission.” There was something in her voice that made John nervous. Not scared. But it was the same feeling he had going into combat. The same feeling he got when bullets started flying. “You do know, Master Chief,” the first male voice said, “that not answering truthfully—or omitting any relevant details will lead to a court-martial?” John bristled. As if he could ever forget his duty. “I will answer to the best of my abilities, sir,” he replied stiffly. The holotank hummed again and images from a Spartan helmet recorder sprang into view. John noted the camera ID—it was his own. The images blurred forward, then stopped. A three-dimensional image of the floating creatures he had seen in Côte d’Azur hung in the air, motionless. “Playback, loop bookmarks one through nine, please,” the woman’s voice called out. Instantly, the holographic image animated—the alien quickly took apart and then reassembled a car’s electric motor. “This creature,” she continued. “During the mission, did you see any other Covenant species—Grunts or Jackals—interact with them?” “No, ma’am. As far as I could see, they were left alone.” “And this one,” she said. The image changed to his firefight with the gigantic Hunters. “At any time did you see these things interact with the other Covenant species?” “No, ma’am—” The Master Chief reconsidered. “Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. If you could review the recording at time minus two minutes from this frame, please.” The holo paused and then blurred backward. “There,” he said. The video played forward as the Master Chief and Fred examined the crushed Jackal in the museum."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter24.txt", "text": "“That impression in this Jackal’s back,” he said. “I believe it is the armored alien’s bootprint.” “What do you mean, son?” a new man asked. His voice was older and rough. “I can only offer my opinion, sir. I am not a scientist.” “Offer it, Master Chief,” the same scratchy voice said. “I, for one, would be very interested to hear what someone with firsthand experience has to say… for a change.” There was a rustle of papers in the shadows, then silence. “Well, sir—it looks to me like this Jackal simply got in the larger creature’s way. There’s no attempt to move it, and no deviation in the path of the following footfalls. It simply walked over the smaller alien.” “Evidence of a hierarchical caste structure perhaps?” the old man murmured. “Let’s move on,” the woman again spoke, her voice now laced with irritation. The holo image changed yet again. A stone object appeared—the rock the Master Chief recovered from the museum. “This stone,” she said, “is a typical igneous granite specimen but with an unusual concentration of aluminum oxide inclusions—specifically rubies. It is a match for the mineral specimens recovered from grid thirteen by twenty-four. “Master Chief,” she said, “you recovered this rock—” She paused. “From an optical scanner. Is that correct?” “Yes, ma’am. The aliens had placed the rock in a red metallic box. Visible spectrum lasers were scanning the specimen.” “And the infrared pulse laser transmitter was hooked up to this scanner?” she asked. “You are certain?” “Absolutely, ma’am. My thermal imagers caught a fraction of the transmission scattered by the ambient dust.” The woman continued. “The rock sample is roughly pyramidal. The inclusions in the igneous matrix are unusual in that all possible crystalline morphologies for corundum are present: bipyramidal, prismatic, tabular, and rhombohedral. Scanning from the tip to the base with neutron imagers, we produce the following pattern.” Again, a series of squares, triangles, bars and dots appeared on the view screen—symbols that again reminded John of Aztec writing. Déjà had taught the Spartans about the Aztecs—how Cortés with superior tactics and technology had nearly obliterated an entire race. Was the same thing happening between the Covenant and humans? “Now, then,” the first male voice interjected, “this business with the detonation of a HAVOK tactical nuclear device… do you realize that any additional evidence of Covenant activity on Côte d’Azur has been effectively erased? Do you know what opportunities have been lost, soldier?” “I had extremely specific orders, sir,” the Master Chief said without hesitating. “Orders that came directly from NavSpecWeap, Section Three.” “Section Three,” the woman muttered, “which is ONI… it figures.” The old man in the darkness chuckled. The faint glow of a cigar tip flared near his voice, then faded. “Are you insinuating, Master Chief,” the older man said, “that the destruction of all this ‘evidence,’ as my colleges would call it, happened because they ordered it?” There was no good answer to that question."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter24.txt", "text": "Whatever the Master Chief said was sure to irritate someone here. “No, sir. I am simply stating that the destruction—of anything, including any ‘evidence’—is a direct result of the detonation of a nuclear weapon. In full compliance with my orders. Sir.” The first man whispered, “Jesus… what do you expect from one of Dr. Halsey’s windup toy soldiers?” “That’s quite enough, Colonel!” the older man snapped. “This man has earned the right to some courtesy… even from you.” The older man lowered his voice. “Master Chief, thank you. We’re finished here, I think. We may wish to recall you later… but for now, you are dismissed. You are to treat all information you have heard or seen at this debriefing as classified.” “Yes, sir!” The Master Chief saluted, spun on his heel, and marched to the exit. The double doors opened and then sealed behind him. He exhaled. It felt like he was being evac’d from the battlefield. He reminded himself that these last few steps were often the most dangerous. “I hope they treated you well… or at least decently.” Dr. Halsey sat in an overstuffed chair. She wore a long gray skirt that matched her hair. She rose and took his hand and gave it a small squeeze. The Master Chief snapped to attention. “Ma’am, a pleasure to see you again.” “How are you, Master Chief?” she asked. She stared pointedly at the hand pressed to his forehead in a tight salute. Slowly, he dropped his hand. She smiled. Unlike everyone else who greeted the Master Chief and stared at his uniform, medals, ribbons, or the Spartan insignia, Dr. Halsey stared into his eyes. And she never saluted. John had never gotten used to that. “I’m fine, ma’am,” he said. “We won at Sigma Octanus. It was good to have a complete victory.” “Indeed it was.” She paused and glanced about. “How would you like to have another victory?” she whispered. “The biggest we’ve ever had?” “Of course, ma’am,” he said with no hesitation. “I was counting on you to say that, Master Chief.” She turned to the Military Police attendant waiting at the entrance to the lounge. “Open these damn doors, soldier. Let’s get this over with.” “Yes, ma’am,” the MP said. The doors swung inward. She stopped and said to the Master Chief, “I’ll be speaking to you and the other Spartans, soon.” She then entered the darkened chamber and the doors sealed behind her. The Master Chief forgot about the debriefing and Captain Keyes’ puzzling question about not winning. If Dr. Halsey had a mission for him and his team, it would be a good one. She had given him everything: duty, honor, purpose, and a destiny to protect humanity. John hoped she would give him one more thing: a way to win the war."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter25.txt", "text": "Chapter Twenty-Five 0915 HOURS, AUGUST 25, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH UNSC MILITARY COMPLEX, PLANET REACH, OMEGA WING—SECTION THREE SECURE FACILITY “Good morning, Dr. Halsey,” Déjà said. “You’re fourteen point three minutes late this morning.” “Blame security, Déjà,” Dr. Halsey replied, gesturing absently at the AI’s holographic projection floating above her desk. “ONI’s precautions here are becoming increasingly ridiculous.” Dr. Halsey threw her coat over the back of an antique armchair before settling behind her desk. She sighed, and for the thousandth time, wished she had a window. The private office was located deep underground, inside the “Omega Wing” of the super-secure ONI facility, code-named simply CASTLE. Castle was a massive complex, two thousand meters below the granite protection of the Highland Mountains—bombproof, well defended, and impenetrable. The security had its drawbacks, she was forced to admit. Every morning, she descended into the secret labyrinth, passed through a dozen security checkpoints, and submitted to a barrage of retina, voice, fingerprint, and brainwave ID scans. ONI had buried her here years ago when her funding had been shunted to higher profile projects. All other personnel had been transferred to other operations, and her access to classified materials had been severely restricted. Even shadowy ONI was squeamish about her experiments. That’s all changed—thanks to the Covenant, she thought. The SPARTAN project—unpopular with the Admiralty, and the scientific community—had proven most effective. Her Spartans had proven themselves time after time in countless ground engagements. When the Spartans started racking up successes, the Admiralty’s reticence vanished. Her meager budget had mushroomed overnight. They had offered her a corner office in the prestigious Olympic Tower at FLEETCOM HQ. She had, of course, declined. Now the brass and VIPs that wanted to see her had to spend half the day just getting through the security barriers to her lair. She relished the irony—her banishment had become a bureaucratic weapon. But none of that really mattered. It was just a means to an end for Dr. Halsey… a means to getting Project MJOLNIR back on track. She reached for her coffee cup and knocked a stack of papers off her desk. They fell, scattered onto the floor, and she didn’t bother to retrieve them. She examined the mud-brown dregs in the bottom of the mug; it was several days old. The office of the most important scientist in the military was not the antiseptic clean-room environment most people expected. Classified files and papers littered the floor. The holographic projector overhead painted the ceiling with a field of stars. Rich maple paneling covered the walls and hanging there were framed photographs of her SPARTAN-IIs, receiving awards, and the plethora of articles about them that appeared when the Admiralty had made the project public three years ago. They had been called the UNSC’s “super-soldiers.” The military brass had assured her that the boost to morale was worth the compromised security. At first she had protested. But ironically, the publicity had proved convenient."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter25.txt", "text": "With all the attention on the Spartans’ heroics, no one had thought to question their true purpose—or their origin. If the truth ever came to light—abducted children, replaced by fast-grown clones; the risky, experimental surgeries and biochemical augmentations—public opinion would turn against the SPARTAN project overnight. The recent events at Sigma Octanus had given the Spartans and MJOLNIR the final push it needed to enter its final operational phase. She slipped on her glasses and called up the files from yesterday’s debriefing; the ONI computer system once again confirmed her retinal scan and voiceprint. IDENTITY CONFIRMED. UNAUTHORIZED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE UNIT DETECTED. ACCESS DENIED. Damn. ONI grew more paranoid by the day. “Déjà,” she said with a frustrated sigh. “The spooks are nervous. I need to power you down, or ONI won’t give me access to the files.” “Of course, Doctor,” Déjà replied calmly. Halsey keyed the power-down sequence on her desktop terminal, sending Déjà into standby mode. This, she thought, is Ackerson’s work, the bastard. She had fought tooth and nail to keep Déjà free from the programming shackles ONI demanded… and this was their petty revenge. She scowled impatiently until the computer system finally spit out the data she’d requested. The tiny projectors in the frames of her glasses beamed the data directly to her retina. Her eyes darted back and forth rapidly, as if she had entered REM sleep, as she scanned the documentation from the debriefing. Finally she removed her glasses and tossed them carelessly on the desk, a sardonic smirk on her face. The overarching conclusion of the finest military experts on the debriefing committee: ONI didn’t have a clue as to what the Covenant were doing on Sigma Octanus IV. They had learned only four solid facts from the entire operation. First, the Covenant had gone to considerable trouble to obtain a single mineral specimen. Second, the pattern of inclusions in that igneous rock sample matched the signal that had been sent—and intercepted by the Iroquois. Third, the low entropy of the pattern indicated that it was not random. And fourth, and most important, UNSC translation software couldn’t match this pattern to any known Covenant dialect. Her personal conclusions? Either the alien artifact was from a precursor to the present Covenant society… or it was from another, as yet undiscovered, alien culture. When she had dropped that little bombshell of a speculation in the debriefing room yesterday, the ONI specialists had gone scrambling for cover. Especially that arrogant ass, Colonel Ackerson, she thought with a cruel smile. The brass was not happy with either possibility. If it was old Covenant technology, it indicated they still knew virtually nothing about the Covenant culture. Twenty years of intensive study and trillions of credits of research and they barely even understood the aliens’ caste system. And if it was the latter possibility, an artifact of another alien race… that could be even more problematic."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter25.txt", "text": "Colonel Ackerson and some of the brass had immediately considered the logistics of fighting two alien enemies at once. Utterly ridiculous. They couldn’t even fight one. The UNSC could never hope to survive a war on two fronts. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Despite the grim conclusions, there was a silver lining in all this. After the meeting, a new mandate had become the official secret policy of Fleet Command’s Special Operations Command—the parent organization for Naval Special Warfare, the Spartans’ service branch. ONI had new marching orders: to step up funding of Intel and reconnaissance missions by an order of magnitude. Small stealth ships were to be deployed to search remote systems and find where the Covenant were based. And Dr. Halsey had finally received the green light to unleash MJOLNIR. She had mixed feelings about it. Truth be told, she always had. It would be the culmination of her life’s greatest work. She knew the risks—like spinning a roulette wheel, it was long odds, but the payoff was potentially huge. It meant victory against the Covenant… or the death of all her Spartans. The holographic crystals overhead warmed and Cortana appeared, sitting cross-legged on Dr. Halsey’s desk—actually, she sat hovering a centimeter off the table’s edge. Cortana was slender. The hue of her skin varied from navy blue to lavender, depending on her mood and the ambient lighting. Her “hair” was cropped short. Her face had a hard angular beauty. Lines of code flickered up and down her luminous body. And if Dr. Halsey viewed her from the right angle, she could catch a glimpse of the skeletal structure inside her ghostly form. “Good morning, Dr. Halsey,” Cortana said. “I’ve read the committee’s report—” “—which was classified as Top Secret, Eyes Only.” “Hmm…” Cortana mused. “I must have overlooked that.” She hopped off the desk and circled around Dr. Halsey once. Cortana had been programmed with ONI’s best insurgency software, as well as the determination to use those code-cracking skills. While this had been necessary for her mission, when she grew bored, she caused chaos with ONI’s own security measures… and she often grew bored. “I assume you have examined the classified data brought back from Sigma Octanus Four?” Halsey asked. “I might have seen that somewhere,” Cortana said matter-of-factly. “Your analysis and conclusions?” “There is much more evidence to consider than the data in the committee’s files.” She looked off into space as if reading something. “Oh?” “Forty years ago, a geological survey team on Sigma Octanus Four found several igneous rocks with similar—though not identical—anomalous compositions. UNSC geologists believe that these samples were introduced onto the planet via meteorite impacts—they typically are found in long-eroded impact craters on the planet surface. Isotopic dating of the site places those impact craters at present minus sixty thousand years—” Cortana paused as a hint of a smile played across her holographic features."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter25.txt", "text": "“—though that figure may be inaccurate due to human error, of course.” “Of course,” Dr. Halsey replied dryly. “I have also, um… coordinated with UNSC’s astrophysics department and discovered some interesting bits archived in their long-range observational databases. There is a black hole located approximately forty thousand light-years from the Sigma Octanus System. An extremely powerful pulse-laser transmission back-scattered the matter in the accretion disk—essentially trapped this signal as this matter accelerated toward the speed of light. From our perspective, according to special relativity, this essentially froze the residue of this information on the event horizon.” “I’ll take your word for it,” Dr. Halsey said. “This ‘frozen signal’ contains information that matches the sample from Sigma Octanus Four.” Cortana sighed and her shoulders slumped. “Unfortunately, all my attempts at translating the code have failed… so far.” “Your conclusions, Cortana?” Dr. Halsey reminded her. “Insufficient data for complete analysis, Doctor.” “Hypothesize.” Cortana bit her lower lip. “There are two possibilities. The data originates from the Covenant or another alien race.” She frowned. “If it’s another alien species, the Covenant probably wants these artifacts to scavenge their technology. Either conclusion opens several new opportunities for the NavSpecWeap—” “I am aware of that,” Dr. Halsey said, raising her hand. If she allowed the AI to continue, Cortana would talk all day. “One of those opportunities is Project MJOLNIR.” Cortana spun around and her eyes widened. “They approved the final phase?” “Is it possible, Cortana,” Dr. Halsey replied, amused, “that I know something you don’t?” Cortana wrinkled her brow in frustration, then smoothed her features to their normal placid state. “I suppose that is a remote possibility. If you’d like, I can calculate those odds.” “No, thank you, Cortana,” Halsey replied. Cortana reminded Dr. Halsey of herself when she had been an adolescent: smarter than her parents, always reading, talking, learning, and eager to share her knowledge with anyone who would listen. Of course, there was a very good reason why Cortana reminded Dr. Halsey of herself. Cortana was a “smart” AI, an advanced artificial construct. Actually, the terms smart and dumb as applied to AIs, were misleading; all AIs were extraordinarily intelligent. But Cortana was special. So-called dumb AIs within the set limits of their dynamic memory-processing matrix were brilliant in their fields but were lacking in “creativity.” Déjà, for example, was a “dumb” AI—incredibly useful, but limited. Smart AIs like Cortana, however, had no limits on their dynamic memory-processor matrix. Knowledge and creativity could grow unchecked. She would pay a price for her genius, however. Such growth eventually led to self-interference. Cortana would one day literally start thinking too much at the expense of her normal functions. It was as if a human were to think with so much of his brain that he stopped sending impulses to his heart and lungs. Like all the other smart AIs that Dr. Halsey had worked with over the years, Cortana would effectively “die” after an operational life of seven years."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter25.txt", "text": "But Cortana’s mind was unique among all the other AIs Dr. Halsey had encountered. An AI’s matrix was created by sending electrical bursts through the neural pathways of a human brain. Those pathways were then replicated in a superconducting nano-assemblage. The technique destroyed the original human tissue, so they could only be obtained from a suitable candidate that had already died. Cortana, however, had to have the best mind available. The success of her mission and the lives of the Spartans would depend on it. At Dr. Halsey’s insistence, ONI had arranged to have her own brain carefully cloned and her memories flash-transferred to the receptacle organs. Only one in twenty cloned brains actually survived the process. Cortana had literally sprung from Dr. Halsey’s mind, like Athena from the head of Zeus. So, in a way, Cortana was Dr. Halsey. Cortana straightened, her face eager. “When does the MJOLNIR armor become fully operational? When do I go?” “Soon. There are a few final modifications that need to be made in the systems.” Cortana leaped to her “feet,” turned her back to Dr. Halsey, and examined the photographs on the wall. She brushed her fingertips over the glass surfaces. “Which one will be mine?” “Which one do you want?” She immediately gravitated to the picture in the center of Dr. Halsey’s collection. It showed a handsome man standing at attention as Vice Admiral Stanforth pinned the UNSC Legion of Honor upon his chest—a chest that already overflowed with citations. Cortana framed her fingers around the man’s face. “He’s so serious,” she murmured. “Thoughtful eyes, though. Attractive in a primitive animal sort of way, don’t you think, Doctor?” Dr. Halsey blushed. Apparently, she did think so. Cortana’s thoughts mirrored many of her own, only unchecked by normal military and social protocol. “Perhaps it would be best if you picked another—” Cortana turned to face Dr. Halsey and cocked an eyebrow, mock stern. “You asked me which one I wanted.…” “It was a question, Cortana. I did not give you carte blanche to select your ‘carrier.’ There are compatibility issues to consider.” Cortana blinked. “His neural patterns are in sync with my mine within two percent. With the new interface we’ll be installing, that should fall well within tolerable limits. In fact—” Her gaze drifted and the symbols along her body brightened and flashed. “—I have just developed a custom interface buffer that will match us within zero point zero eight one percent. You won’t find a better match among the others. “In fact,” she added coyly, “I can guarantee it.” “I see,” Dr. Halsey said. She pushed away from her desk, stood, and paced. Why was she hesitating? The match was superb. But was Cortana’s predilection for Spartan-117 a result of him being Dr. Halsey’s favorite? And did it matter? Who better to protect him? Dr. Halsey walked over to the picture. “He was awarded this Legion of Honor medallion because he dove into a bunker of Covenant soldiers."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter25.txt", "text": "He took out twenty by himself and saved a platoon of Marines who were pinned down by a stationary energy weapon emplacement. I’ve read the report, but I’m still not sure how he managed to do it.” She turned to Cortana and stared into her odd translucent eyes. “You’ve read his CSV?” “I’m reading it again right now.” “Then you know he is neither the smartest nor the fastest nor the strongest of the Spartans. But he is the bravest—and quite possibly the luckiest. And in my opinion, he is the best.” “Yes,” Cortana whispered. “I concur with your analysis, Doctor.” She drifted closer. “Could you sacrifice him if you had to? If it meant completing the mission?” Dr. Halsey asked quietly. “Could you watch him die?” Cortana halted and the processing symbols racing across her skin froze midcalculation. “My priority Alpha order is to complete this mission,” she replied emotionlessly. “The Spartans’ safety, as well as mine, is a Beta-level priority command.” “Good.” Dr. Halsey returned to her desk and sat down. “Then you can have him.” Cortana smiled and blazed with brilliant electricity. “Now,” Dr. Halsey said, and tapped on her desk to regain Cortana’s attention. “Show me your pick of our ship candidates for the mission.” Cortana opened her hand. In her palm there was a tiny model of a Halcyon-class UNSC cruiser. “The Pillar of Autumn,” Cortana said. Dr. Halsey leaned back and crossed her arms. Modern UNSC cruisers were rare in the fleet. Only a handful of the impressive warships remained… and those were being pulled back to bolster the defense of the Inner Colonies. This junk heap, however, was not one of these ships. “The Pillar of Autumn is forty-three years old,” Cortana said. “Halcyon-class ships were the smallest vessels ever to receive the cruiser designation. It is approximately one-third the tonnage of the Marathon-class cruiser currently in service. “Halcyon-class ships were pulled from long-term storage—they were designated to be scrapped, in fact. The Autumn was refit in 2550, to serve in the current conflict near Zeta Doradus. Their Mark Two fusion engines supply a tenth of the power of modern reactors. Their armor is light by current standards. Weapon refits have upgraded their offensive capabilities with a single Magnetic Acceleration Cannon and six Archer missile pods. “The only noteworthy design feature of this ship is the frame.” Cortana reached down and pulled off the skin of the holographic model as if it were a glove. “The structural system was designed by a Dr. Robert McLees—cofounder of the Reyes-McLees Shipyards over Mars—in 2510. It was, at the time, deemed unnecessarily overmassed and costly due to series of cross-bracings and interstitial honeycombs. The design was subsequently dropped from all further production models. Halcyon-class ships, however, have a reputation for being virtually indestructible. Reports indicate these ships being operational even after sustaining breaches to all compartments and losing ninety percent of their armor.” “Their duty record?” Dr. Halsey asked. “Substandard,” Cortana replied."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter25.txt", "text": "“They are slow and ineffective in offensive combat. They are somewhat of a joke within the fleet.” “Perfect,” Dr. Halsey said. “I concur with your final selection recommendation. We will start the refit operations at once.” “All we need now,” Cortana said, “is a Captain and crew.” “Ah yes, the Captain.” Dr. Halsey slid on her glasses. “I have the perfect man for the job. He’s a tactical genius. I’ll forward you his CSV, and you can see for yourself.” She transferred the file to Cortana. Cortana smiled, but it quickly faded. “His maneuvers at Sigma Octanus Four were performed without an onboard AI?” “His ship left dock without an AI for technical reasons. I believe he has no compunctions about working with computers. In fact, it was one of the first refit requests he put in for the Iroquois.” Cortana did not look convinced. “Besides, he has the most important qualification for this job,” Dr. Halsey said. “The man can keep a secret.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter26.txt", "text": "Chapter Twenty-Six 0800 HOURS, AUGUST 27, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, FLEETCOM MILITARY COMPLEX, PLANET REACH This was the third time John had been in this highly secure briefing room on Reach. The amphitheater had an aura of secrecy, as if matters of grave importance had regularly been discussed within its circular wall. Certainly, every time he had been here, his life had changed. His first time was his indoctrination into the Spartans—a lifetime ago. He recalled with a start how young Dr. Halsey had looked then. The second time was when he graduated from the Spartan program, when he had last seen Chief Mendez. He had sat on the bench next to him—where the Master Chief was sitting now. And today? He had a feeling that everything was about to change all over again. Clustered around him were two dozen Spartans: Fred, Linda, Joshua, James, and many others he had not spoken to for years; constant battle had kept the tight-knit Spartans light-years apart for more than a decade. Dr. Halsey and Captain Keyes entered the chamber. The Spartans stood at attention and saluted. Keyes returned their salute. “At ease,” he said. He escorted Dr. Halsey to the center stage. He sat while she stood at the podium. “Good evening, Spartans,” she said. “Please take your seats.” As one, they sat down. “Assembled here tonight,” she said, “are all surviving Spartans save three, who are otherwise engaged on fields of combat too distant to be easily recalled. In the last decade of combat, there have only been three KIAs and one Spartan too wounded to continue active duty. You are to be commended for having the best operational record of any unit in the fleet.” She paused to look at them. “It is very good to see you all again.” She slipped on her glasses. “Vice Admiral Stanforth has asked me to brief you on the upcoming mission. Due to its complexity and unusual nature, please disregard your normal protocol and ask any questions you have during my presentation. Now, on to the business at hand: the Covenant.” Holographic projectors overhead warmed and sleek Covenant corvettes, frigates, and destroyers appeared in a neat row on Dr. Halsey’s left. On her right were a collection of Covenant species, roughly one-third their normal size. There was a Grunt, a Jackal, the floating, tentacled creature John had seen on Sigma Octanus IV, as well as the heavily armored behemoths he and his team had bested. A spike of adrenaline burned through the Master Chief at the sight of the enemy. Intellectually, he knew that the images were not real… but after a decade of fighting, his instincts were to kill first and get the details later. “The Covenant are still largely unknown to us,” Dr. Halsey began. “Their motivations and thought processes remain a mystery—though our best analysis points to some compelling hypotheses.” She paused, and added, “The following information is, naturally, classified."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter26.txt", "text": "“We know that the Covenant—our translation of their name for themselves—are a conglomerate of a number of different alien species. We believe that they exist in some kind of caste structure, though to date the exact nature of that structure remains unknown. Our best guess is that the Covenant conquer and ‘absorb’ a species, and adapt its strengths into their own. “The Covenant’s science is imitative rather then innovative, a by-product of this societal ‘absorption,’ ” Dr. Halsey continued. “This is not to say that they are lacking intelligence, however. During our first encounter, they gathered computer and network components from our destroyed ships… and they learned at an astonishing pace. “By the time Admiral Cole’s fleet arrived at Harvest, the Covenant initiated a communications link and attempted a primitive software infiltration of our ship AIs. In a matter of weeks, they had learned the rudiments of our computer systems and our language. Our own attempts to decipher Covenant computer systems have only been partially successful, despite our best efforts and decades of time. “Since then they have made increasingly successful forays into our computer networks. That is why the Cole Protocol is so important and carries the punishment of treason for failure to comply. The Covenant may one day not need to capture a ship to steal the information within its navigational databanks.” The Master Chief stole a glance at Captain Keyes. The Captain cupped an antique pipe in one hand; the Navy officer puffed on it once, and stared thoughtfully at Dr. Halsey and the examples of the Covenant vessels. He slowly shook his head. “As I stated earlier,” Dr. Halsey continued, “the Covenant are a collection of genetically distinct groups in what we believe is a rigid caste system.” She waved toward the Grunts and Jackals. “These are most likely part of their military or warrior caste—not the highest ranking caste, either, given how many are sacrificed during ground operations. We also know that there is a ‘race’ of field commanders which we have historically called ‘Elites.’ ” She stepped toward the floating, tentacular aliens. “We believe these are their scientists.” As she moved closer, the figure animated; the image showed the creature disassembling an electric car of human manufacture. John instantly recognized his own battlefield recording. She pointed to the giant armored creatures. “This was recorded on Sigma Octanus Four. Hunters which very well may be superior to either Grunts or Jackals.” The massive aliens also sprang into motion, lumbering into combat, until Dr. Halsey froze the images in place. She turned and strolled back to the podium. “ONI hypothesizes at least two additional castes. A warrior capable of commanding ground forces and possibly piloting their ships, and a leadership caste. We have deciphered a handful of Covenant transmissions that refer to—” She paused, checking notes on the data screen in her glasses. “—Ah, yes."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter26.txt", "text": "‘Prophets.’ We believe that these Prophets are in fact the leadership caste, and that they are viewed by the Covenant rank and file with an almost religious reverence.” Dr. Halsey removed her glasses. “This is where you come in. Your mission will involve these so-called Prophets, and will be executed in four phases. “Phase one. You will engage the Covenant and sufficiently disable, but not destroy, one of their ships.” She turned to face Captain Keyes. “I leave that in the capable hands of Captain Keyes and his newly refitted ship, the Pillar of Autumn.” Captain Keyes acknowledged her compliment with a curt nod. He tapped the stem of his pipe on his lips thoughtfully. The Master Chief was unaware of any Covenant ship ever being captured. He had read the reports of Captain Keyes’ actions at Sigma Octanus IV… and considered the odds of actually capturing a Covenant vessel. Even for a Spartan, it would be a difficult mission. “Phase two,” Dr. Halsey said. “Spartans will board the disabled Covenant ship—neutralize the crew, and crack their navigation database. We will do precisely what they have been trying to do to us: find the location of their home world.” The Master Chief raised his hand. “Yes, Master Chief?” “Ma’am. Will we be given mission specialist personnel to access the Covenant computers?” “In a manner of speaking,” she said, and looked away. “I will come to that point in a moment. Let me assure you, however, that these specialists will cause you no serious complications during this phase. In fact, they will prove rather useful in combat. Shortly, you shall have a demonstration.” Like Captain Keyes’ statement that winning wasn’t everything… Dr. Halsey’s reply was another puzzle. How would such computer specialists not be a liability to the Spartans in combat? Even if they could fight, it was unlikely they’d be anything but weak links in combat. If they couldn’t fight, the Spartans would be forced to baby-sit a vulnerable package in a hot combat zone. “Phase three,” Dr. Halsey said, “will consist of taking the captured Covenant ship to their homeworld.” Several questions immediately formed in the Master Chief’s mind. Who would pilot the alien ship? Had anyone ever deciphered the Covenant control systems? It seemed unlikely since the UNSC had never captured one of their ships before. Were there Covenant recognition signals that had to be sent when entering their space? Or would they just steal their way in-system? When a plan had so many missing pieces of data, the Spartans had been trained to stop and reconsider its effectiveness. Unanswered questions led to complications—“snags.” And snags led to injuries, death, and failed missions. Simple was better. He held his questions, though. Dr. Halsey surely would have planned for these eventualities. “Phase four,” she continued, “will be to infiltrate and capture the Covenant leadership and return with them to UNSC-controlled space.” The Master Chief shifted uneasily. There was no intel or reconnaissance of Covenant-held space."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter26.txt", "text": "What did a Covenant leader—a Prophet—even look like? Chief Mendez had told him to trust Dr. Halsey. The Master Chief decided to hear all the details before he asked any further questions. To do so might undermine her authority. And that’s the last thing he needed the other Spartans to see. And yet, there was one thing he had to clarify. The Master Chief raised his hand again. She nodded toward him. “Dr. Halsey,” he said, “you did say ‘capture’ the Covenant leaders—not eliminate them?” “Correct,” she replied. “Our profile of Covenant society indicates that if you were to kill one of their leader caste, this war could actually escalate. Your orders are to preserve any captured Covenant leaders at all costs. You will bring them back to UNSC headquarters, where we will then use them to broker a truce, possibly even negotiate a peace treaty with the Covenant.” Peace? The Master Chief considered the unfamiliar word. Was that what Captain Keyes had meant? The alternative to winning wasn’t necessarily losing. If you chose not to play a game, then there could be neither winning nor losing. Dr. Halsey took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Some of you already suspect this, but I shall state it anyway for emphasis. It is my opinion, and that of many others, that the war is not going well… despite our recent victories. What is not widely known is how badly it is going for us. ONI predicts that we have months, perhaps as much as a standard year, before the Covenant locates and destroys our remaining Inner Colonies… and then moves against Earth.” The Master Chief had heard the rumors—and promptly dismissed them—but to hear the words from someone he trusted chilled him to the core. “Your mission will prevent this,” Dr. Halsey said. She stopped and frowned, lowered her head, then finally looked up at them again. “This op is considered extremely high risk. There are unknown elements involved and we simply do not have the time to gather the required intelligence. I have persuaded FLEETCOM not to order you on this mission. Vice Admiral Stanforth is asking for volunteers.” The Master Chief understood. Dr. Halsey was unsure if she would be spending their lives or wasting them on this mission. He stood without hesitation—and as he did so, the rest of the Spartans stood as well. “Good,” she said. She paused and blinked several times. “Very good. Thank you.” She stepped away from the podium. “We will meet with you individually within a few days to continue your briefing. I will show you how you will get our computer experts on board the Covenant vessel… and I will show you the one thing that will let you get through this mission in one piece: MJOLNIR.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "Chapter Twenty-Seven 0600 HOURS, AUGUST 29, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, UNSC MILITARY RESERVATION 01478-B, PLANET REACH The firing range was uncharacteristically quiet. Normally, the air would be filled with noise—the sharp, staccato crackle of automatic-weapons fire; the urgent yells of soldiers practicing combat operations; and the barked, curse-laden orders of drill instructors. John frowned as he guided the Warthog to the security checkpoint. The silence on the combat range was somehow unsettling. Even more unsettling were the extra security personnel; today, there were three times the normal number of MPs patrolling the gate. John parked the Warthog and was approached by a trio of MPs. “State your business here, sir,” the lead MP demanded. Without a word, John handed over his papers—orders direct from the top brass. The MP visibly stiffened. “Sir, my apologies. Dr. Halsey and the others are waiting for you at the P and R area.” The guard saluted, and waved the gate open. On survey maps, the combat training range was listed as “UNSC Military Reservation 01478-B.” The soldiers who trained there had a different name for it—“Painland.” John knew the facility well; a great deal of the Spartans’ early training had taken place there. The range was divided into three areas: a live-fire obstacle course; a target practice range; and the P&R—“Prep and Recovery” area—which more often than not doubled as an emergency first-aid station. John had spent plenty of time in the aid station during his training. The Master Chief walked briskly to the prefabricated structure. Another pair of MPs, MA5B assault rifles at the ready, double-checked his credentials before they admitted him to the building. “Ah, here at last,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Let’s go, son, on the double, if you please.” John paused; the speaker was an older man, at least in his sixties, in the coveralls and lab coat of a ship’s doctor. No rank insignia, though, John thought with a twinge of concern. For a moment, the image of his fellow Spartans—very young, and clubbing, kicking, and beating un-uniformed instructors into unconsciousness flashed into his memory with crystal clarity. “Who are you, sir?” he asked, his voice cautious. “I’m a Captain in the UNSC Navy, son,” the man said with a thin-lipped smile, “and I’ve no time for spit and polish today. Let’s go.” A Captain—and new orders. Good. “Yes, sir.” The Captain in the lab coat escorted him into the P&R’s medical bay. “Undress, please,” the man said. John quickly disrobed, then stacked his neatly folded uniform on a nearby gurney. The Captain stepped behind him and began to swab John’s neck and the back of his head with a foul-smelling liquid. The liquid felt ice-cold on his skin. A moment later, Dr. Halsey entered. “This will just take a moment, Master Chief. We’re going to upgrade a few components in your standard-issue neural interface. Lie back and remain still, please.” The Master Chief did as she said."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "A technician sprayed a topical anesthetic on his neck. The skin tingled, then went cold and numb. The Master Chief felt layers of skin incised, and then a series of distinct clicking sounds that echoed through his skull. There was a brief laser pulse and another spray. He saw sparks, felt the room spin, then a sense of vertigo. His vision blurred; he blinked rapidly and it quickly returned to normal. “Good… the procedure is complete,” Dr. Halsey said. “Please follow me.” The Captain handed the Master Chief a paper gown. He slipped it on and followed the doctor outside. A field command dome had been assembled on the range. Its white fabric walls rippled in the breeze. Ten MPs stood around the structure, assault rifles in hand. The Master Chief noted these weren’t regular Marines. They wore the gold comet insignia of Special Forces Orbital Drop Shock Troopers—“Helljumpers.” Tough and iron-disciplined. A flash of memory: the blood of troops—just like these—soaking into the mat of a boxing ring. John felt his adrenaline spike as soon as he saw the soldiers. Dr. Halsey approached the MP at the entrance and presented her credentials. They accepted them and scanned her retina and voiceprint, then did the same to the Master Chief. Once they confirmed his identity, they immediately saluted—which was technically unnecessary, as the Master Chief was out of uniform. He did them the courtesy of returning their salute. The soldiers kept looking around, scanning the field, as if they were expecting something to happen. John’s discomfort grew—not much spooked an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. Dr. Halsey led the Master Chief inside. In the center of the dome stood an empty suit of MJOLNIR armor, suspended between two pillars on a raised platform. The Master Chief knew it was not his suit. His, after years of use, had dents and scratches in the alloy plates and the once iridescent green finish had dulled to a worn olive brown. This suit was spotless and its surface possessed a subtle metallic sheen. He noted the armor plates were slightly thicker, and the black underlayers had a more convoluted weave of components. The fusion pack was half again as large, and tiny luminous slits glowed near the articulation points. “This is the real MJOLNIR,” Dr. Halsey whispered to him. “What you have been using was only a fraction of what the armor should be. This—” She turned to the Master Chief. “—is everything I had always dreamed it could be. Please put the suit on.” The Master Chief stripped the paper gown off and—with the help of a pair of technicians—donned the armor components. Dr. Halsey averted her eyes. Although the armor’s components were bulkier and heavier than his old suit, once assembled and activated, they felt light as air. The armor was a perfect fit. The biolayer warmed and adhered to his skin, then cooled as the temperature difference between the suit and his skin equalized."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "“We’ve made hundreds of minor technical improvements,” she said. “I’ll have the specifications sent to you later. Two of those changes, however, are rather serious modifications to the system. It may take… some getting used to.” Dr. Halsey’s brow furrowed. John had never seen her worried before. “First,” she told him, “we have replicated, and I might add, improved upon the energy shield the Covenant Jackals have been using against us to great effect.” This armor had shields? The Master Chief had known that ONI research had been working on adapting Covenant technology; Spartans had standing orders to capture Covenant machines wherever they could. The researchers and engineers had announced some advancements in artificial gravity—some UNSC ships were already using this technology. The fact that the MJOLNIR armor possessed shields was a stunning breakthrough. For years, there had been no luck back-engineering Covenant shield tech. Most in the scientific community had given up hope of ever cracking it. Maybe that’s why Dr. Halsey was worried. Maybe they hadn’t worked out all the bugs. Dr. Halsey nodded to the technicians. “Let’s begin.” The techs turned to a series of instrument panels. One, a slightly younger man, donned a COM headset. “Okay, Master Chief.” The tech’s voice crackled through John’s helmet speakers. “There’s an activation icon in your heads-up display. There is also a manual control switch located at position twelve in your helmet.” He chinned the control. Nothing happened. “Wait a moment, please, sir. We have to give the suit an activation charge. After that, it can accept regenerative power from the fusion pack. Stand on the platform and be absolutely still.” He stepped onto the platform that had held the MJOLNIR armor. The pillars flickered on and glowed a brilliant yellow. The pillars started to spin slowly around the base of the platform. The Master Chief felt a static charge tingling in his extremities. The glow intensified and his helmet’s blast shield automatically dimmed. The charge in the air intensified; his skin crawled with ionization. He smelled ozone. Then the spinning slowed and the light dimmed. “Reset the activation button now, Master Chief.” The air around the Master Chief popped—as if it jumped away from the MJOLNIR armor. There was none of the shimmer that normal Covenant shields had. Was it working? He ran his hand over his arm and encountered resistance a centimeter from the surface of the armor. It was working. How many times had he and his teammates had to find ways to slip past a Jackal’s shield? He’d have to rethink his tactics. Rethink everything. “It provides full coverage—” Dr. Halsey’s voice piped through the speakers. “—and dissipates energy far more efficiently than the Covenant shields the Spartans have recovered, though the shield is concentrated on your arms, head, legs, chest, and back."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "The energy field tapers down to a hair under a millimeter so you don’t lose the ability to hold or manipulate items with your hands.” The lead technician activated another control, and new data scrawled across John’s display. “There’s a segmented bar in the upper corner of your HUD,” the technician said, “right next to your biomonitor and ammunition indicators. It indicates the charge level of your shield. Don’t let it completely dissipate; when it’s gone, the armor starts taking the hits.” The Master Chief slipped off the platform. He skidded—then came to a halt. His movements felt oiled. His contact with the floor felt tentative. “You can adjust the bottom of your boot emitters as well as the emitters inside your gloves to increase traction. In normal use, you will want to set these to the minimal level—just be aware your defenses will be diminished in those locations.” “Understood.” He adjusted the field strengths. “In zero-gee environment, I should increase those sections to full strength, correct?” “That is correct,” Dr. Halsey said. “How much damage can they take before the system is breached?” “That is what you will learn here today, Master Chief. I think you’ll find that we have several challenges in store for you to see how much punishment the suit can take.” He nodded. He was ready for the challenge. After weeks spent traveling in Slipspace, he was long overdue for a workout. John slid back his helmet visor and turned to face Dr. Halsey. “You said there were two major system improvements, Doctor?” She nodded and smiled. “Yes, of course.” She reached into her lab coat and withdrew a clear cube. “I doubt you’ve ever seen one of these before. It is the memory-processor core of an AI.” “Like Déjà?” “Yes, like your former teacher. But this AI is slightly different. I’d like to introduce you to Cortana.” The Master Chief looked around the tent. He saw no computer interface or holographic projectors. He cocked an eyebrow at Dr. Halsey. “There is a new layer sandwiched between the reactive circuits and the inner biolayers of your armor,” Dr. Halsey explained. “It is a weave of additional memory-processor super-conductor.” “The same material as an AI’s core.” “Yes,” Dr. Halsey replied. “An accurate analysis. Your armor will carry Cortana. The MJOLNIR system has nearly the same capacity as a ship-borne AI system. Cortana will interface between you and the suit and provide tactical and strategic information for you in the field.” “I’m not sure I understand.” “Cortana has been programmed with every ONI computer insurgency routine,” Dr. Halsey told him. “And she has a talent for modifying them on the fly. She has our best Covenant-language-translation software as well. Her primary purpose is to infiltrate their computer and communications systems. She will intercept and decode point-to-point Covenant transmissions and give you updated intelligence in the field.” Intel support in an operation where there had been no reconnaissance. The Master Chief liked that."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "It would level the playing field significantly. “This AI is the computer specialist we’ll be taking onto the Covenant ship,” the Master Chief said. “Yes… and more. Her presence will allow you to utilize the suit more effectively.” John had a sudden flash—AIs handled a great deal of point defense during Naval operations. “Can she control the MJOLNIR armor?” He wasn’t sure he liked that. “No. Cortana resides in the interface between your mind and the suit, Master Chief. You will find your reaction time greatly improved. She will be translating the impulses in your motor cortex directly into motion—she can’t make you send those impulses.” “This AI,” he said, “will be inside my mind?” That must have been what that “upgrade” to his standard-issue UNSC computer interface had been for. “That is the question, isn’t it?” Halsey replied. “I can’t answer that, Master Chief. Not scientifically.” “I’m not sure I understand, Doctor.” “What is the mind, really? Intuition, reason, emotion—we acknowledge they exist, but we still don’t know what makes the human mind work.” She paused, searching for the right words. “We model AIs on human neural networks—on electrical signals in the brain—because we just know that the human brain works… but not how, or why. Cortana resides ‘between’ your mind and the suit, interpreting the electro-chemical messages in your brain and transferring them to the suit via your neural implant. “So, for lack of a better term, yes, Cortana will be ‘inside’ your mind.” “Ma’am, my priority will be to complete this mission. This AI—Cortana—may have conflicting directives.” “There is no need to worry, Master Chief. Cortana has the same mission parameters as you do. She will do anything necessary to make sure that your mission is accomplished. Even if that means sacrificing herself—or you—to accomplish it.” The Master Chief exhaled, relieved. “Now, please kneel down. It’s time to insert her memory-processor matrix into the socket at the base of your neck.” The Master Chief knelt. There was a hissing noise, a pop, and then cold liquid poured into the Master Chief’s mind; a spike of pain jammed into his forehead, then faded. “Not a lot of room in here,” a smooth female voice said. “Hello, Master Chief.” Did this AI have a rank? Certainly, she was not a civilian—or a fellow soldier. Should he treat her like any other piece of UNSC-issued equipment? Then again, he treated his equipment with the respect it deserved. He made sure every gun and knife was cleaned and inspected after every mission. It was unsettling… he could hear Cortana’s voice through his helmet speakers, but it also felt like she was speaking inside his head. “Hello, Cortana.” “Hmm… I’m detecting a high degree of cerebral cortex activity. You’re not the muscle-bound automatons the press makes you out to be.” “Automaton?” the Master Chief whispered. “Interesting choice of words for an artificial intelligence.” Dr. Halsey watched the Master Chief with great interest. “You must forgive Cortana, Master Chief. She is somewhat high-spirited."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "You may have to allow for behavioral quirks.” “Yes, ma’am.” “I think we should begin the test straightaway. There’s no better way for the two of you to get acquainted than in simulated combat.” “No one said anything about combat,” Cortana said. “The ONI brass have arranged a test for you and the new MJOLNIR system,” Dr. Halsey said. “There are some that believe you two are not up to our proposed mission.” “Ma’am!” The Master Chief snapped to attention. “I’m up for it, ma’am!” “I know you are, Master Chief. Others… require proof.” She looked around at the shadows cast by the Marines outside the fabric walls of the command dome. “You hardly need a reminder to be prepared for anything… but stay on your guard, just the same.” Dr. Halsey’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I think some of the ONI brass would prefer to see you fail this test, Master Chief. And they may have arranged to make sure you do—regardless of your performance.” “I won’t fail, Doctor.” Her forehead wrinkled with worry lines, but then they quickly disappeared. “I know you won’t.” She stepped back, and dropped her conspiratorial whisper. “Master Chief, you are ordered to count to ten after I leave. After that, make your way to the obstacle course. At the far end is a bell. Your goal will be to ring it.” She paused, then added, “You are authorized to neutralize any threats in order to achieve this objective.” “Affirmative,” the Master Chief said. Enough uncertainty—now he had an objective, and rules of engagement. “Be careful, Master Chief,” Dr. Halsey said quietly. She gestured at the pair of technicians to follow her, then turned and walked out of the tent. The Master Chief didn’t understand why Dr. Halsey thought he was in real danger—he didn’t have to understand the reason. All he needed to know was that danger was present. He knew how to handle danger. “Uploading combat protocols now,” Cortana said. “Initiating electronic detection algorithms. Boosting neural interface performance to eighty-five percent. I’m ready when you are, Master Chief.” The Master Chief heard metallic clacks around the tent. “Analyzing sound pattern,” Cortana said. “Database match. Identified as—” “As someone cycling the bolt of an MA5B assault rifle. I know. Standard-issue weapons for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers.” “Since you’re ‘in the know,’ Master Chief,” Cortana quipped, “I assume you have a plan.” John snapped his helmet visor back down and sealed the armor’s environment system. “Yes.” “Presumably your plan doesn’t involve getting shot…?” “No.” “So, what’s the plan?” Cortana sounded worried. “I’m going to finish counting to ten.” John heard Cortana sigh in frustration. John shook his head in puzzlement. He’d never encountered a so-called smart AI before. Cortana sounded… like a human. Worse, she sounded like a civilian. This was going to take a lot of getting used to. Shadows moved along the wall of the tent—motion from outside. Eight."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "There was a snag in this mission and he hadn’t even reached the obstacle course. He would have to engage his fellow soldiers. He pushed aside any questions about why. He had his orders and he would follow them. He had dealt with ODSTs before. Nine. Three soldiers entered the tent, moving in slow motion—black-armored figures, helmets snug over their faces, crouched low, and their rifles leveled. Two took flanking positions. The one in the middle opened fire. Ten. The Master Chief blurred into motion. He dove from the activation platform and—before the soldiers could adjust their aim—landed in their midst. He rolled to his feet right next to the soldier who fired first, and grabbed the man’s rifle. John brutally yanked the weapon away from the soldier. There was a loud cracking sound as the man’s shoulder dislocated. The wounded trooper stumbled forward, off balance. John spun the rifle and slammed the butt of the weapon into the soldier’s side. The man exhaled explosively as his ribs cracked. He grunted, and fell unceremoniously to the floor, unconscious. John spun to face the left-flank gunner, assault rifle leveled at the man’s head instantly. He had the man in his sights, but he still had time—the soldier was not quite in position. To John’s enhanced senses, amped up by Cortana and the neural interface, the rifleman seemed to be moving in slow motion. Too slow. The Master Chief lashed out with the rifle butt again. The trooper’s head snapped back from the sudden, powerful blow. He flipped head over tail and slammed into the ground. John sized the man’s condition up with a practiced eye: shock, concussion, fractured vertebrae. Gunner number two was out of the fight. The remaining gunner completed his turn and opened fire. A three-round burst ricocheted off the MJOLNIR armor’s energy shield. The shield’s recharge bar flickered a hairbreadth. Before the soldier could react, the Master Chief sidestepped and slammed his own rifle down—hard. The trooper screamed as his leg gave out. A jagged spoke of bone burst through the wounded man’s fatigues. The Master Chief finished him with a rifle butt to his helmeted head. John checked the condition of the rifle, and—satisfied that it was in working order—began to pull ammo clips from the fallen soldiers’ belt pouches. The lead soldier also carried a razor-edged combat knife; John grabbed it. “You could have killed them,” Cortana said. “Why didn’t you?” “My orders gave me permission to ‘neutralize’ threats,” he replied. “They aren’t threats anymore.” “Semantics,” Cortana replied. She sounded amused. “I can’t argue with the results, though—” She broke off, suddenly. “New targets. Seven contacts on the motion tracker,” Cortana reported. “We’re surrounded.” Seven more soldiers. The Master Chief could open fire now and kill them all. Under any other circumstances, he would have removed such threats. But their MA5Bs were no immediate danger to him… and the UNSC could use every soldier to fight the Covenant."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "He strode to the center pole of the tent, and with a yank, he pulled it free. As the roof fluttered down, he slashed a slit in the tent fabric and shoved through. He faced three Marines; they fired—the Master Chief deftly jumped to one side. He sprang toward them and lashed out with the steel pole, swiped out their legs. He heard bones crack—followed by screams of pain. The Master Chief turned as the tent finished collapsing. The remaining four men could see him now. One reached for a grenade on his belt. The other three tracked him with their assault rifles. The Master Chief threw the pole like a javelin at the man with the grenade. It impacted in his sternum and he fell with a whoopf. The grenade, minus the pin, however, dropped to the ground. The Master Chief moved and kicked the grenade. It arced over the parking lot and detonated in a cloud of smoke and shrapnel. The three remaining Marines opened fire—spraying bullets in a full-auto fusillade. Bullets pinged off the Master Chief’s shield. The shield status indicator blinked and dropped with each bullet impact—the sustained weapons fire was draining the shield precipitously. John tucked and rolled, narrowly avoiding an incoming burst of automatic-weapons fire, then sprang at the nearest Marine. John launched an openhanded strike at the man’s chest. The Marine’s ribs caved in and he dropped without a sound, blood flowing from his mouth. John spun, brought his rifle up, and fired twice. The second soldier screamed and dropped his rifle as the bullets tore through each knee. John kicked the discarded rifle, bending the barrel and rendering the weapon useless. The last man stood frozen in place. The Master Chief didn’t give the man time to recover; he grabbed his rifle, ripped off his bandolier of grenades, then punched his helmet. The Marine dropped. “Mission time plus twenty-two seconds,” Cortana remarked. “Although, technically, you started to move forty milliseconds before you were ordered to.” “I’ll keep that in mind.” The Master Chief slung the assault rifle and bandolier of grenades over his shoulder and ran for the shadows of the barracks. He slipped under the raised buildings and belly-crawled toward the obstacle course. No need to make himself a target for snipers… although it would be an interesting test to see what caliber of bullet these shields could deflect. No. That kind of thinking was dangerous. The shield was useful, but under combined fire it dropped very quickly. He was tough… not invincible. He emerged at the beginning to the obstacle course. The first part was a run over ten acres of jagged gravel. Sometimes raw recruits had to take off their boots before they crossed. Other than the pain—it was the easiest part of the course. The Master Chief started toward the gravel yard. “Wait,” Cortana said. “I’m picking up far infrared signals on your thermal sensors. An encrypted sequence… decoding… yes, there."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "It’s an activation signal for a Lotus mine. They’ve mined the field, Master Chief.” The Master Chief froze. He’d used Lotus mines before and knew the damage they could inflict. The shaped charges ripped though the armor plate of a tank like it was no thicker than an orange peel. This would slow him down considerably. Not crossing the obstacle course was no option. He had his orders. He wouldn’t cheat and go around. He had to prove that he and Cortana were up for this test. “Any ideas?” he asked. “I thought you’d never ask,” Cortana replied. “Find the position of one mine, and I can estimate the rough position of the others based on the standard randomization procedure used by UNSC engineers.” “Understood.” The Master Chief grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, counted to three, and lobbed it into the middle of the field. It bounced and exploded—sending a shock wave through the ground—tripping two of the Lotus mines. Twin plumes of gravel and dust shot into the air. The detonation shook his teeth. He wondered if the armor’s shields could have survived that. He didn’t want to find out while he was still inside the thing. He boosted the field strength on the bottom of his boots to full. Cortana overlaid a grid on his heads-up display. Lines flickered as she ran through the possible permutations. “Got a match!” she said. Two dozen red circles appeared on his display. “That’s ninety-three percent accurate. The best I can do.” “There are never any guarantees,” the Master Chief replied. He stepped onto the gravel, taking short, deliberate steps. With the shields activated on the bottoms of his boots, it felt like he was skating on greased ice. He kept his head down, picking his way between red dots on his display. If Cortana was wrong, he probably wouldn’t even know it. The Master Chief saw the gravel had ended. He looked up. He had made it. “Thank you, Cortana. Well done.” “You’re welcome…” Her voice trailed off. “Picking up scrambled radio frequencies on the D band. Encrypted orders from this facility to Fairchild Airfield. They’re using personal code words, too—so I can’t tell what they’re up to. Whatever it is, I don’t like it.” “Keep your ears open.” “I always do.” He ran to the next section of the obstacle course: the razor field. Here, recruits had to crawl in the mud under razor wire as their instructors fired live rounds over them. A lot of soldiers discovered whether they had the guts to deal with bullets zinging a centimeter over their heads. Along either side of the course there was something new: three 30mm chain-guns mounted on tripods. “Weapons emplacements are targeting us, Chief!” Cortana announced. The Master Chief wasn’t about to wait and see if those chain-guns had a minimum-depth setting. He had no intention of crawling across the field and letting the chain-guns’ rapid rate of fire chip away at his shields."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "The chain-guns clicked and started to turn. He sprinted to the nearest tripod-mounted gun. He opened fire with his assault rifle, shot the lines that powered the servos—then spun the chain-gun around to face the others. He crouched behind the blast shield and unloaded on the adjacent gun. Chain-guns were notoriously hard to aim; they were best known for their ability to fill the air with gunfire. Cortana adjusted his targeting reticle to sync up with the chain-gun. With her help, he hit the adjacent weapon emplacements. John guided a stream of fire into the guns’ ammo packs. Moments later, in a cloud of fire and smoke, the guns fell silent… then toppled. The Master Chief ducked, primed a grenade, and hurled it at the closest of the remaining automated weapons. The grenade sailed through the air—then detonated just above the autogun. “Chain-gun destroyed,” Cortana reported. Two more grenades and the automated guns were out of commission. He noted that his shields had dropped by a quarter. He watched the status bar refill. He hadn’t even known he had taken hits. That was sloppy. “You seem to have the situation under control,” Cortana said. “I’m going to spend a few cycles and check something out.” “Permission granted,” he said. “I didn’t ask, Master Chief,” she replied. The cool liquid presence in his mind withdrew. The Master Chief felt empty somehow. He ran through the razor fields, snapping through steel wire as if it were rotten string. Cortana’s coolness once again flooded his thoughts. “I just accessed SATCOM,” she said. “I’m using one of their satellites so I can get a better look at what’s happening down here. There’s a SkyHawk jump jet from Fairchild Field inbound.” He stopped. The automatic cannons were one thing—could the armor withstand air power like that? The SkyHawk had a quartet of 50mm cannons that made the chain-guns look like peashooters. They also had Scorpion missiles—designed to take out tanks. Answer: he couldn’t do a thing against it. The Master Chief ran. He had to find cover. He sprinted to the next section of the course: the Pillars of Loki. It was a forest of ten-meter-tall poles spaced at random intervals. Typically, the poles had booby traps strung on, under, and between them—stun grades, sharpened sticks… anything the instructors could dream up. The idea was to teach recruits to move slowly and keep their eyes open. The Master Chief had no time to search for the traps. He climbed up the first pole and balanced on top. He leaped to the next pole, teetered, regained his balance—then jumped to the next. His reflexes had to be perfect; he was landing a half ton of man and armor on a wooden pole ten centimeters in diameter. “Motion tracking is picking up an incoming target at extreme range,” Cortana warned. “Velocity profile matches the SkyHawk, Chief.” He turned—almost lost his balance, and had to shift back and forth to keep from falling."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "There was a dot on the horizon, and the faint rumble of thunder. In the blink of an eye, the dot had wings and the Master Chief’s thermal sensors picked up a plume of jetwash. In seconds, the SkyHawk closed—then opened fire with its 50mm cannons. He jumped. The wooden poles splintered into pulp. They were mowed down like so many blades of grass. The Master Chief rolled, ducked, and flattened himself on the earth. He caught a smattering of rounds and his shield bar dropped to half. Those rounds would have penetrated his old suit instantly. Cortana said, “I calculate we have eleven seconds before the SkyHawk can execute a maximum gee turn and make another pass.” The Master Chief got up and ran through the shattered remains of the poles. Napalm and sonic grenades popped around him, but he moved so fast he left the worst of the damage in his wake. “They won’t use their cannons next time,” he said. “They didn’t take us out—they’ll try the missiles.” “Perhaps,” Cortana suggested, “we should leave the course. Find better cover.” “No,” he said. “We’re going to win… by their rules.” The last leg of the course was a sprint across an open field. In the distance, the Master Chief saw the bell on a tripod. He glanced over his shoulder. The SkyHawk was back and starting its run straight toward him. Even with his augmented speed, even with the MJOLNIR armor—he’d never make it to the bell in time. He’d never make it alive. He turned to face the incoming jet. “I’ll need your help, Cortana,” he said. “Anything,” she whispered. The Master Chief heard nervousness in the AI’s voice. “Calculate the inbound velocity of a Scorpion missile. Factor in my reaction time and the jet’s inbound speed and distance at launch, and tell me the instant I need to move to sidestep and deflect it with my left arm.” Cortana paused a heartbeat. “Calculation done. You did say ‘deflect’?” “Scorpion missiles have motion-tracking sensors and proximity detonators. I can’t outrun it. And it won’t miss. That leaves us very few options.” The SkyHawk dove. “Get ready,” Cortana said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.” “Me, too.” Smoke appeared from the jet’s left wingtip and fire and exhaust erupted as a missile streaked toward him. The Master Chief saw the missile track back and forth, zeroing in on his coordinates. A shrill tone in his helmet warbled—the missile had a guidance lock on him. He chinned a control and the sound died out. The missile was fast. Faster than he was ten times over. “Now!” Cortana said. They moved together. He shifted his muscles and the MJOLNIR—augmented by his link to Cortana—moved faster than he’d ever moved before. His leg tensed and pushed him aside; his left arm came up and crossed his chest. The head of the missile was the only thing he saw. The air grew still and thickened."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "Chapter27.txt", "text": "He continued to move his hand, palm open in a slapping motion—as fast as he could will his flesh to accelerate. The tip of the Scorpion missile passed a centimeter from his head. He reached out—fingertips brushed the metal casing— —and slapped it aside. The SkyHawk jet screamed over his head. The Scorpion missile detonated. Pressure slammed though his body. The Master Chief flew six meters, spinning end over end, and landed flat on his back. He blinked, and saw nothing but blackness. Was he dead? Had he lost? The shield status bar in his heads-up display pulsed weakly. It was completely drained—then it blinked red and slowly started to refill. Blood was spattered across the inside of his helmet and he tasted copper. He stood, his muscles screaming in protest. “Run!” Cortana said. “Before they come back for a look.” The Master Chief got up and ran. As he passed the spot where he had stood to face down the missile, he saw a two-meter-deep crater. He could feel his Achilles tendon tear, but he didn’t slow. He crossed the half-kilometer stretch in seventeen seconds flat and skidded to halt. The Master Chief grabbed the bell’s cord and rang it three times. The pure tone was the most glorious sound he had ever heard. Over the COM channel, Dr. Halsey’s voice broke: “Test concluded. Call off your men, Colonel Ackerson! We’ve won. Well done, Master Chief. Magnificent! Stay there; I’m sending out a recovery team.” “Yes, ma’am.” he replied, panting. The Master Chief scanned the sky for the SkyHawk—nothing. It had gone. He knelt and let blood drip from his nose and mouth. He looked down at the bell—and laughed. He knew that stainless-steel dented shape. It was the same one he had rung that first day of boot. The day Chief Mendez had taught him about teamwork. “Thank you, Cortana,” he finally said. “I couldn’t have done it without you.” “You’re welcome, Master Chief,” she replied. Then, her voice full of mischief, she added: “And no, you couldn’t have done it without me.” Today he had learned about a new kind of teamwork with Cortana. Dr. Halsey had given him a great gift. She had given him a weapon with which to destroy the Covenant."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter28.txt", "text": "Chapter Twenty-Eight 0400 HOURS, AUGUST 30, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC PILLAR OF AUTUMN, IN ORBIT AROUND EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH MILITARY COMPLEX Cortana never rested. Although based approximately on a human mind, AIs had no need to sleep or dream. Dr. Halsey had thought she could keep Cortana occupied by checking the systems of the Pillar of Autumn while she attended to her other secret projects. Her assumption was incorrect. While Cortana was intrigued with the unique design and workings of the ship—its preparation barely occupied a fraction of her processing power. She watched with the Pillar of Autumn’s camera as Captain Keyes approached the ship in a shuttle pod. Lieutenant Hikowa left to greet him in the docking bay. From C deck, Captain Keyes spoke over the intercom: “Cortana? Can we have power to move the ship? I’d like to get under way.” She calculated the remaining reactor burn-in time and made an adjustment to run it hotter. “The engines’ final shakedown is in theta cycle,” Cortana replied. “Operating well within normal parameters. Diverting thirty percent power to engines; aye, sir.” “And the other systems’ status?” Captain Keyes asked. “Weapons-system check initiated. Navigational nodes functioning. Continuing systemwide shakedown and triple checks, Captain.” “Very good,” he said. “Apprise me if there are any anomalies.” “Aye, Captain,” she replied. The COM channel snapped off. She continued her checks on the Pillar of Autumn as ordered. There were, however, more important things to consider; namely, a little reconnaissance into ONI databases… and a little revenge. She dedicated the balance of her run time toward probing the SATCOM system around Reach for entry points. There. A ping in the satellite network coordination signal. She broadcast a resonant carrier wave at that signal and piggybacked into the system. First things first. She had two loose ends to take care of. While she and the Master Chief had been on the obstacle course, she had commandeered SATCOM observation beacon 419 and rotated it to view them from orbit. She reentered the back door she had left open in the system, and rewrote the satellite’s guidance thruster subroutine. If the system was analyzed later, it would be determined that this error had altered it to a random orientation rather than a planned position. She withdrew, but left her back door intact. This trick might come in handy again. The other loose end that required her attentions was Colonel Ackerson—the man who had tried to erase her and the Master Chief. Cortana reread Dr. Halsey’s recommended test specifications for the MJOLNIR system on the obstacle course. She had suggested live rounds, yes. But never a squad of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, chain-guns, Lotus mines… and certainly not an air strike. That was the Colonel’s doing. He was an equation that needed to be balanced. What Dr. Halsey might have called “payback.” She linked to the UNSC personnel and planning database on Reach. The ONI AI there, Beowulf, knew her… and knew not to let her in."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter28.txt", "text": "Beowulf was thorough, methodical, and paranoid; in her own way, Cortana couldn’t help but like him. But compared with her code-cracking skills, he might as well have been an accounting program. Cortana sent a rapid series of queries into the network node that processed housing transfer requests. A normally quiet node—she overloaded it with a billion different pings per minute. The network attempted to recover and reconfigure, causing all nodes to lag, including node seventeen—personnel records. She stepped in and inserted a spike wedge, a subroutine that looked like a normal incoming signal, but bounced any handshake protocol. She slipped in. The Colonel’s CSV was impressive. He had survived three battles with the Covenant. Early in the war, he received a promotion and volunteered for a dozen black ops. For the last few years, however, his efforts had focused on political maneuvers rather than battlefield tactics. He had filed several requests for increased funding for his Special Warfare projects. No wonder he wanted the Master Chief gone. The Spartan-IIs and MJOLNIR were his direct competition. Worse, they were succeeding where he failed. At best, Ackerson’s actions were treason. But Cortana wasn’t about to reveal all this to the ONI oversight committee. Despite the Colonel’s methods, the UNSC still needed him—and his SpecWar specialists—in the war. Justice, however, would still be meted out. From the ONI database, she masqueraded as a routine credit check and entered the Colonel’s bank account—to which she wired a substantial amount to a brothel on Gilgamesh. She made sure the bank queries sent to confirm the transaction were copied to his home immediately. Colonel Ackerson was a married man… and his wife should be there to receive them. She cut into his personal E-mail and sent a carefully crafted message—requesting reassignment to a forward area—to personnel. Finally, she inserted a “ghost” record, an electronic footprint that identified the source of the alterations: Ackerson’s personal-computer pad. By the time Ackerson was done untangling all of that, he’d be reassigned to field duty… and get back to fighting the Covenant where he belonged. With all loose ends neatly tied up, Cortana rechecked the Pillar of Autumn’s reactor; the shakedown was proceeding nicely. She tweaked the magnetic-field strength, and part of her watched the output from the engines for fluctuations. She inspected all weapons systems three times, and then went back to her own personal research. She considered how well the Master Chief had performed this morning on the obstacle course. He was more than Cortana could have hoped for. The Master Chief was much more than Dr. Halsey or the press releases had indicated. He was intelligent… not fearless, but as close to it as any human she had encountered. His reaction time under stress was one-sixth the standard human norm. More than that, however, Cortana had sensed that he had a certain—she searched her lexicon for the proper word—nobility. He placed his mission and his duty and honor above his personal safety."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter28.txt", "text": "She reexamined his Career Service Vitae. He had fought in 207 ground engagements against the Covenant, and been awarded every major service medal except the Prisoner of War Medallion. There were holes in his CSV, though. The standard blackout sections courtesy of ONI, of course… but most curious, all data before he entered active duty had been expunged. Cortana wasn’t about to let a mere erasure stop her. She traced where the order to erase that data had originated. Section Three. Dr. Halsey’s group. Curious. She followed the order pathway—crashed into layers of counter code. The code started a trace on her signal. She blocked it—and it restarted a trace of the origin of her block. This was a very well-crafted piece of counterintrusion software, far superior to the normal ONI slugcode. If nothing else, Cortana liked a challenge. She withdrew from the database and looked for an unguarded way into ONI Section Three files. Cortana listened to the hum of coded traffic along the surface of ONI’s secure network. There was an unusual amount of packets today: queries and encrypted messages from ONI operatives. She peered into them and unraveled their secrets as they passed her. There were orders for ship movements and operatives outbound from Reach. This must be the new directive to send scouts into the periphery systems and find the Covenant. She saw several ships docked in Reach’s space docks—ONI stealth jobs made to look like private yachts. They had cute, innocuous names: the Applebee, Circumference, and the Lark. She spotted something she could use: Dr. Halsey had just entered her laboratory. She was at checkpoint three. The doctor waited as her voice and retina patterns were being scanned. Cortana intercepted and killed the signal. The verification system reset. “Please rescan retina, Dr. Halsey,” the system requested, “and repeat today’s code phrase in a normal voice.” Before Dr. Halsey could do this, Cortana sent her own files of Dr. Halsey’s retina and voice scans. She had long ago copied them and occasionally they came in handy. Section Three verification opened for Cortana. She had only a second before the doctor spoke and overrode the previous entry access. Cortana, however, was a lightning strike in the system. She entered, searched, and found what she wanted. Every piece of data on Spartan-117 was copied to her personal directory within seventy milliseconds. She withdrew from the ONI database, routing all traces of her queries back to her Ackerson “ghost.” She closed all connections and returned to the Pillar of Autumn. One quick check of the reactor—yes, operating within normal parameters—and she sent a complete report to Lieutenant Hall on the bridge. Cortana examined the Master Chief’s complete CSV. She scanned backward through time: his performance data on the obstacle course, and the debriefing he had given at ONI headquarters. She paused and pondered the signal the Covenant had sent from Sigma Octanus IV. Intrigued, she tried to translate the sequence. The symbols looked tantalizingly familiar."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter28.txt", "text": "Every algorithm and variation of the standard translation software she attempted, however, failed. Puzzled, she set it aside to examine later. She continued, absorbing the data from the Master Chief’s files. She learned of the augmentations he and the other Spartans were made to endure; the brutal indoctrination and training they had received; and how he had been abducted at the age of six, and a flash clone used to replace him in an ONI black op. All of it had been authorized by Dr. Halsey. Cortana paused for a full three processor cycles churning this new data through her ethics subroutines… not comprehending. How could Dr. Halsey, who was so concerned for her Spartans, have done this to them? Of course—because it was necessary. There was no other way to preserve the UNSC against rebellion. Was Dr. Halsey a monster? Or just doing what had to be done to protect humanity? Perhaps a little of both. Cortana erased her stolen files. No matter. Whatever the Master Chief had been through in the past… it was done. He was in Cortana’s care now. She would do everything in her power—short of compromising their mission—to make sure nothing ever happened to him again."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter29.txt", "text": "Chapter Twenty-Nine 0400 HOURS, AUGUST 30, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC PILLAR OF AUTUMN, IN ORBIT AROUND EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH MILITARY COMPLEX Captain Keyes tapped the thrusters of the shuttle pod Coda. The tiny craft rolled and the Pillar of Autumn came into view. Normally, Captains did not ferry themselves around the space docks of Reach, but Keyes had insisted. All unauthorized personnel were restricted to a narrow flight path around the Pillar of Autumn, and he wanted to take a careful look around the outside of this ship before he took command. From this distance, the Pillar of Autumn could have been mistaken for a Marathon-class carrier. As the shuttle pod moved closer, however, details appeared that betrayed the ship’s age. The Pillar of Autumn’s hull had several larger dents and scratches. Her engine baffles were blackened. What had he gotten himself into by signing up for Dr. Halsey’s mission? He moved within a hundred meters and circled to the starboard. The shuttle bay on this side was sealed off. Red-and-yellow hazard warnings had been painted on metal plates that had been hastily welded over her entrance. He closed to ten meters and saw the plate was not a solid sheet of metal—he could see armored ports, heavily reinforced… almost solid titanium A. Honeycombed throughout this section were the round covers of Archer missile pods. Captain Keyes counted: thirty pods across, ten down. Each pod held dozens of missiles. The Pillar of Autumn had a secret arsenal to rival any real cruiser in the fleet. Captain Keyes drifted toward the stern and noticed concealed and recessed 50mm autocannons for defense against single ships. Underneath were bumps—part of the linear accelerator system for the ship’s lone MAC gun. It looked too small to be truly effective. But he would reserve judgment. Perhaps, like the rest of the Pillar of Autumn, the weapon was more than it appeared to be. He certainly hoped so. Captain Keyes returned to the port side and drifted gently into the shuttle bay. He took note of three Longsword single ships and three Pelican dropships in the bay. One of the Pelicans had double the normal armor plating and what looked like grappling attachments. A serrated titanium ram decorated the dropship’s prow. He touched down on an automated landing platform and locked the controls down. A moment later the shuttle descended belowdecks and was cycled through the airlock. Captain Keyes gathered his duffel bag and stepped onto the flight deck. Lieutenant Hikowa was there to meet him. She saluted. “Welcome aboard, Captain Keyes.” He saluted. “What do you think of her, Lieutenant?” Lieutenant Hikowa’s dark eyes widened. “You’re not going to believe this ship, sir.” Her normally serious face broke with a smile. “They’ve turned it into something… special.” “I saw what they did to my starboard shuttle bay,” Captain Keyes remarked sourly. “That’s just the start,” she said. “I can give you a full tour.” “Please,” Captain Keyes said. He paused at an intercom."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter29.txt", "text": "“Just one thing first, Lieutenant.” He keyed the intercom. “Ensign Lovell, plot a course to the system’s edge and move the Pillar of Autumn on an accelerating vector. We will jump to Slipstream space as soon as we get there.” “Sir,” Lovell replied. “Our engines are still in shakedown mode.” “Cortana?” Captain Keyes asked. “Can we have power to move the ship? I’d like to get under way.” “The engines’ final shakedown is in theta cycle,” Cortana replied. “Operating well within normal parameters. Diverting thirty percent power to engines; aye, sir.” “And the other systems’ status?” Captain Keyes asked. “Weapons-system check initiated. Navigational nodes functioning. Continuing systemwide shakedown and triple checks, Captain.” “Very good,” he said. “Apprise me if there are any anomalies.” “Aye, Captain,” she replied. “We finally have an AI,” he remarked to Hikowa. “We’ve got more than that, sir,” Hikowa replied. “Cortana is running the shakedown and supervising Dr. Halsey’s modifications to the ship. We have a backup AI to handle point defense.” “Really?” Keyes was surprised; getting a single AI was tough enough these days. Getting two was unprecedented. “Yes, sir. I’ll see to the initialization of our AI as soon as Cortana is through running her diagnostics.” Captain Keyes had met Cortana briefly in Dr. Halsey’s office. Although every AI he had met was brilliant, Cortana seemed exceptionally qualified. Captain Keyes had posed several navigation problems and she had figured out all the solutions… and had come up with a few options he had not considered. She was somewhat high-spirited, but that was not necessarily a bad thing. Lieutenant Hikowa led him into the elevator and punched the button for D deck. “At first,” Hikowa said, “I was concerned with all the ordnance on board. One penetrating shot and we could explode like a string of firecrackers. But this ship doesn’t have much empty space—it’s full of braces, honeycombed titanium-A, and hydraulic reinforcements that can be activated in an emergency. She can take a tremendous beating, sir.” “Let’s hope we don’t have to test that,” Captain Keyes said. He checked that his pipe was in his pocket. “Yes, sir.” Their elevator passed through the rotating section of the ship and Captain Keyes felt his weight ease and a flutter of vertigo. He grabbed hold of the rails. The doors opened and they entered the cavernous engine room. The ceiling was four stories high, making this the largest compartment in the ship. Catwalks and platforms ringed the hexagonal chamber. “Here’s the new reactor, sir,” Hikowa said. The device perched within a lattice of nonferric ceramic and leaded crystal. The main reactor ring was nestled in the center of what appeared to be two smaller reactor rings. Technicians floated nearby taking readings and monitoring the output displays on the walls. “I’m not familiar with this design, Lieutenant.” “The latest reactor technology. The Pillar of Autumn is the first ship to get it. The two smaller fusion reactors come online to supercharge the main reactor."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter29.txt", "text": "Their overlapping magnetic fields can temporarily boost power by three hundred percent.” Captain Keyes whistled appreciatively as he scrutinized the room. “I don’t see any coolant pipes.” “There are none, sir. This reactor uses a laser-induced optical slurry of ions chilled to near-absolute zero to neutralize the waste heat. The more we crank up the power, the more juice we have to cool the system. It is very efficient.” The smaller reactors flickered to life and Captain Keyes felt the ambient heat in the room jump, then suddenly cool again. He removed his pipe and tapped it in the palm of his hand. He would have to rethink his old tactics. This new engine could give him new options in battle. “There’s more, sir.” Lieutenant Hikowa led him back into the lift. “We have forty fifty-millimeter cannons for point defense, with overlapping fields of fire covering all inbound vectors.” “What is our least-defended approach vector?” “Bottom fore,” she said, “along the lay line of the MAC system. There are very few gunnery placements there. Transient magnetic bursts tend to magnetize the weapons.” “Tell me about the MAC gun, Lieutenant. It looks underpowered.” “It fires a special light round with a ferrous core, but an outer layer of tungsten carbide. The round splinters on impact—like an assault rifle’s shredder rounds.” She was talking so fast she had to pause and take a deep breath. “This gun has magnetic field recyclers along the length that recapture the field energy. Coupled with booster capacitors, we can fire three successive shots with one charge.” That would be very effective against the Covenant energy shields. The first shot, maybe the first pair of shots, would take down their shields. The last round would deliver a knockout punch. “I take it you approve, Lieutenant?” “To quote Ensign Lovell, sir, ‘I think I’m in love.’ ” Captain Keyes nodded. “I notice we have several single ships and some Pelican dropships in the bay.” “Yes, sir. One of the Longswords is equipped with a Shiva nuclear warhead. It can be remote-piloted. We also have three HAVOK warheads onboard.” “Of course,” Captain Keyes said. “And the Pelicans? One of them had extra armor.” “The Spartans were working on it. Some sort of boarding craft.” “The Spartans?” Captain Keyes asked. “They’re already onboard?” “Yes, sir. They were here before we got on board.” “Take me to them, Lieutenant.” “Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Hikowa stopped the elevator and hit the button for C deck. Twenty-five years ago Captain Keyes had helped procure the Spartan candidates for Dr. Halsey. She had said they might one day be the best hope the UNSC had for peace. At the time he’d assumed that the Doctor was prone to hyperbole—but it appeared that she’d been correct. That didn’t make what they had done right, though. His complicity in those kidnappings still haunted him. The elevator doors opened. The primary storage bay had been converted into barracks for the twenty-five Spartans."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter29.txt", "text": "Every one of them wore MJOLNIR battle armor. They looked alien to him. Part machine, part titan—but completely inhuman. The room was filled with motion—Spartans unpacked crates, others cleaned and field-stripped their assault rifles, and a pair of them practiced hand-to-hand combat. Captain Keyes could barely follow their motions. They were so fast, no hesitation. Strike and block and counterstrike—their movements were a continuous stream of rapid-fire blurs. Captain Keyes had seen the news feeds and heard the rumors, like everyone in the fleet—the Spartans were near-mythological figures in the military. They were supposed to be superhuman soldiers, invulnerable and indestructible—and it was almost the truth. Dr. Halsey had shown him their operational records. Between the Spartans and the refitted Pillar of Autumn, Captain Keyes was beginning to believe Dr. Halsey’s long-shot mission might work after all. “Captain on the deck!” one of the Spartans shouted. Every Spartan stopped and snapped to attention. “As you were,” he said. The Spartans relaxed slightly. One turned and strode toward him. “Master Chief Spartan-117 reporting as ordered, sir.” The armored giant paused, and for a moment, Keyes thought the Spartan looked uncomfortable. “Sir, I regret the unit was not able to ask your permission to come aboard. Vice Admiral Stanforth insisted we keep our presence off the COM channels and computer networks.” Captain Keyes found the reflective faceplates of the Spartans’ helmets disconcerting. It was impossible to read their features. “Quite all right, Master Chief. I just wanted to extend my regards. If you or your men need anything, let me know.” “Yes, sir,” the Master Chief said. An awkward moment of silence passed. Captain Keyes felt like he didn’t belong here—an intruder in a very exclusive club. “Well, Master Chief, I’ll be on the bridge.” “Sir!” The Master Chief saluted. Captain Keyes returned the salute and left with Lieutenant Hikowa. When the elevator doors closed, Lieutenant Hikowa said, “Do you think—I mean with all due respect to the Spartans, sir—don’t you think they’re… strange?” “Strange? Yes, Lieutenant. You might act a little strange if you’d seen and been through as much as they had.” “Some people say they’re not even humans in those suits—that they’re just machines.” “They’re human,” Captain Keyes said. The elevator doors parted and Captain Keyes stepped onto his bridge. It was much smaller than he was accustomed to; the command chair was only a meter from the other stations. View screens dominated the room, and a massive, curved window afforded a panoramic view of the stars. “Status reports,” Captain Keyes ordered. Lieutenant Dominique spoke first. “Communication systems are green, sir. Monitoring FLEETCOM Reach traffic. No new orders.” Dominique had gotten his hair shorn since he had been on the Iroquois. He also had a new tattoo around his left wrist: the wavy lines of a Besell function. “Reactor shakedown eighty percent complete,” Lieutenant Hall reported. “Oxygen, power, rotation, and pressure all green lights, sir.” She smiled, but it wasn’t like before—an automatic gesture. She seemed genuinely happy."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter29.txt", "text": "Lieutenant Hikowa took her seat and strapped in. She gathered her black hair and tied it into a knot. “Weapons panel shows green, sir. MAC gun capacitors at zero charge.” Ensign Lovell finally reported: “Navigation and sensor systems online, Captain, and all green. Ready for your orders.” Lovell was completely focused on his station. A small hologram of Cortana flickered on the AI pedestal near navigation. “Engine shakedown running smoothly, Captain,” she said. “All personnel onboard. You have half-power now if you wish to move the ship. Fujikawa-Shaw generators on-line… you can take us into the Slipstream at your pleasure.” “Very good,” Captain Keyes said. Keyes surveyed his crew, pleased at how they had sharpened up after Sigma Octanus. Gone were the bleary, haggard expressions, and the tentative, nervous mannerisms. Good, he thought. We’re going to need everyone at the top of their game now. The crew had been briefed on their mission—part of it anyway. Captain Keyes had insisted. They were told they would be attempting to capture Covenant technology, with an aim to disabling one of the aliens’ ships and bringing it back intact. What the crew didn’t know were the stakes. “Approaching the system’s edge,” Ensign Lovell reported. “Ready to generate a Slipstream—” “Captain!” Lieutenant Dominique cried. “Incoming Alpha priority transmission from FLEETCOM HQ at Reach… sir, they’re under Covenant attack!”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter3.txt", "text": "Chapter Three 2300 HOURS SEPTEMBER 23, 2517 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH MILITARY COMPLEX, PLANET REACH Dr. Halsey stood on a platform in the center of the amphitheater. Concentric rings of slate-gray risers surrounded her—empty for now. Overhead spotlights focused and reflected off her white lab coat, but she still was cold. She should feel safe here. Reach was one of the UNSC’s largest industrial bases, ringed with high-orbit gun batteries, space docks, and a fleet of heavily-armed capital ships. On the planet’s surface were Marine and Navy Special Warfare training grounds, OCS schools, and between her underground facilities and the surface were three hundred meters of hardened steel and concrete. The room where she now stood could withstand a direct hit from an 80-megaton nuke. So why did she feel so vulnerable? Dr. Halsey knew what she had to do. Her duty. It was for the greater good. All humanity would be served… even if a tiny handful of them had to suffer for it. Still, when she turned inward and faced her complicity in this—she was revolted by what she saw. She wished she still had Lieutenant Keyes. He had proven himself a capable assistant during the last month. But he had begun to understand the nature of the project—at least seen the edges of the truth. Dr. Halsey had him reassigned to the Magellan with a commission to full Lieutenant for his troubles. “Are you ready, Doctor?” a disembodied woman’s voice asked. “Almost, Déjà.” Dr. Halsey sighed. “Please summon Chief Petty Officer Mendez. I’d like you both present when I address them.” Déjà’s hologram flicked on next to Dr. Halsey. The AI had been specifically created for Dr. Halsey’s SPARTAN project. She took the appearance of a Greek goddess: barefoot, wrapped in the toga, motes of light dancing about her luminous white hair. She held a clay tablet in her left hand. Binary cuneiform markings scrolled across the tablet. Dr. Halsey couldn’t help but marvel at the AI’s chosen form; each AI “self-assigned” a holographic appearance, and each was unique. One of the doors at the top of the amphitheater opened and Chief Petty Officer Mendez strode down the stairs. He wore a black dress uniform, his chest awash with silver and gold stars and a rainbow of campaign ribbons. His close-shorn hair had a touch of gray at the temples. He was neither tall nor muscular; he looked so ordinary for a man who had seen so much combat… except for his stride. The man moved with a slow grace as if he were walking in half gravity. He paused before Dr. Halsey, awaiting further instructions. “Up here, please,” she told him, gesturing to the stairs on her right. Mendez mounted the steps of the platform and then stood at ease next to her. “You have read my psychological evaluations?” Déjà asked Dr. Halsey. “Yes. They were quite thorough,” she said. “Thank you.” “And?” “I’m forgoing your recommendations, Déjà."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter3.txt", "text": "I’m going to tell them the truth.” Mendez gave a nearly inaudible grunt of approval—one of the most verbose acknowledgments Dr. Halsey had heard from him. As a hand-to-hand combat and physical-training DI, Mendez was the best in the Navy. As a conversationalist, however, he left a great deal to be desired. “The truth has risks,” Déjà cautioned. “So do lies,” Dr. Halsey replied. “Any story fabricated to motivate the children—claiming their parents were taken and killed by pirates, or by a plague that devastated their planet—if they learned the truth later, they would turn against us.” “It is a legitimate concern,” conceded Déjà, and then she consulted her tablet. “May I suggest selective neural paralysis? It produces a targeted amnesia—” “A memory loss that may leak into other parts of the brain. No,” Dr. Halsey said, “this will be dangerous enough for them even with intact minds.” Dr. Halsey clicked on her microphone. “Bring them in now.” “Aye aye,” a voice replied from the speakers in the ceiling. “They’ll adapt,” Dr. Halsey told Déjà. “Or they won’t, and they will be untrainable and unsuitable for the project. Either way I just want to get this over with.” Four sets of double doors at the top tier of the amphitheater swung open. Seventy-five children marched in—each accompanied by a handler, a Naval drill instructor in camouflage pattern fatigues. The children had circles of fatigue around their eyes. They had all been collected, rushed here through Slipstream space, and only recently brought out of cryo sleep. The shock of their ordeal must be hitting them hard, Halsey realized. She stifled a pang of regret. When they had been seated in the risers, Dr. Halsey cleared her throat and spoke: “As per Naval Code 45812, you are hereby conscripted into the UNSC Special Project, codenamed SPARTAN-II.” She paused; the words stuck in her windpipe. How could they possibly understand this? She barely understood the justifications and ethics behind this program. They looked so confused. A few tried to stand and leave, but their handlers placed firm hands on their shoulders and pushed them back down. Six years old… this was too much for them to digest. But she had to make them understand, explain it in simple terms that they could grasp. Dr. Halsey took a tentative step forward. “You have been called upon to serve,” she explained. “You will be trained… and you will become the best we can make of you. You will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies.” A handful of the children sat up straighter, no longer entirely frightened, but now interested. Dr. Halsey spotted John, subject Number-117, the first boy she had confirmed as a viable candidate. He wrinkled his forehead, confused, but he listened with rapt attention. “This will be hard to understand, but you cannot return to your parents.” The children stirred. Their handlers kept a firm grip on their shoulders."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter3.txt", "text": "“This place will become your home,” Dr. Halsey said in as soothing a voice as she could muster. “Your fellow trainees will be your family now. The training will be difficult. There will be a great deal of hardship on the road ahead, but I know you will all make it.” Patriotic words, but they rang hollow in her ears. She had wanted to tell them the truth—but how could she? Not all of them would make it. “Acceptable losses,” the Office of Naval Intelligence representative had assured her. None of it was acceptable. “Rest now,” Dr. Halsey said to them. “We begin tomorrow.” She turned to Mendez. “Have the children… the trainees escorted to their barracks. Feed them and put them to bed.” “Yes, ma’am,” Mendez said. “Fall out!” he shouted. The children rose—at the urging of their handlers. John-117 stood, but he kept his gaze on Dr. Halsey and remained stoic. Many of the subjects seemed stunned, a few had trembling lips—but none of them cried. These were indeed the right children for the project. Dr. Halsey only hoped that she had half their courage when the time came. “Keep them busy tomorrow,” she told Mendez and Déjà. “Keep them from thinking about what we’ve just done to them.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter30.txt", "text": "Chapter Thirty 0000 HOURS, AUGUST 29, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / NARROW-BAND POINT-TO-POINT TRANSMISSION: ORIGIN UNKNOWN; TERMINATION: SECTION THREE, OMEGA SECURE ANTENNA ARRAY, UNSC HQ EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH MILITARY COMPLEX PLNB PRIORITY TRANSMISSION XX087R-XX ENCRYPTION CODE: GAMMA PUBLIC KEY: N/A FROM: CODENAME: COALMINER TO: CODENAME: SURGEON SUBJECT: PROGRESS REPORT/OPERATION HYPODERMIC CLASSIFICATION: EYES ONLY TOP SECRET (SECTION III X-RAY DIRECTIVE) /FILE EXTRACTION-RECONSTITUTION COMPLETE/ /START FILE/ SECURED SPACE-DOCK REPAIR BAY. CORVETTE CIRCUMFERENCE UNDERGOING FINAL STEALTH UPGRADES. SHIPYARD RECORDS SUCCESSFULLY ALTERED. QUERIES DETECTED FROM TRANSIENT AI. OPERATION DEEMED AT RISK OF BEING UNCOVERED. AS PER CONTINGENCY PLAN TANGO: SHIP REGISTRATION NUMBERS SCRAMBLED; HARD ISOLATED FROM DOCKSIDE COMPUTER NETWORK; COUNTERINTRUSION SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTED; ALPHA SECURITY PROTOCOLS ENACTED ONBOARD. JUST AS YOU CALLED IT, SIR. DON’T WORRY—AS FAR AS THE STATION COMPUTERS ARE CONCERNED, CIRCUMFERENCE NEVER EVEN EXISTED. /END FILE/ /SCRAMBLE–DESTRUCTION PROCESS ENABLED/ PRESS ENTER TO CONTINUE."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter31.txt", "text": "Chapter Thirty-One 0447 HOURS, AUGUST 30, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / REMOTE SENSING STATION FERMION, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM’S EDGE Chief Petty Officer McRobb entered the command center of Remote Sensing Station Fermion. Lieutenants (JG) Bill Streeter and David Brightling stood and saluted. He wordlessly returned their salutes. The wall-sized monitors displayed the contents of the last Slipstream probes: multidimensional charts, a rainbow of false color enhancements, and a catalog of objects adrift in the alternate space. Some of the new officers thought the representations looked “pretty.” To Chief McRobb, however, each pixel on the screens represented danger. So many things could hide in multidimensional space: pirates, black marketers… the Covenant. McRobb inspected their duty stations. He double-checked that all programs and hardware were running within UNSC specifications. He ran his hand along the monitors and keypads looking for dust. Their stations were in tip-top shape. Considering what they were guarding, Reach, anything less than perfection was unacceptable. He made certain his crew knew it, too. “Carry on,” he said. Since the battle of Sigma Octanus, FLEETCOM had reassigned top people to its Remote Sensing Stations. Chief McRobb had been pulled from Fort York on the edge of the Inner Colonies. He had spent the last three months helping his crew brush up on their abstract and complex algebras to interpret the probe data. “Ready to send out the next set of probes, sir,” Lieutenant Streeter said. “Linear accelerator and Slipspace generators online and charged.” “Set for thirty-second return cycle and launch,” Chief McRobb ordered. “Aye, sir. Probes away, sir. Accelerated and entering the Slipstream.” FLEETCOM didn’t really expect anything to attack the Reach Military Complex. It was the heart of the UNSC military operations. If anything did attack it, the battle would be a short one. There were twenty Super MAC guns in orbit. They could accelerate a three-thousand-ton projectile to point four-tenths the speed of light—and place that projectile with pinpoint accuracy. If that wasn’t enough to stop a Covenant fleet, there were anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and fifty ships in the system at any given time. Chief McRobb knew, though, there had been another military base that was once thought too strong to attack—and the military had paid the price for their lack of vigilance. He wasn’t about to let Reach become another Pearl Harbor. Not on his watch. “Probes returning, sir,” Lieutenant Brightling announced. “Alpha reentering normal space in three… two… one. Scanning sectors. Signal acquired at extraction point minus forty five thousand kilometers.” “Process the signals and send out the recovery drone, Lieutenant.” “Aye, sir. Getting signal lock on—” The Lieutenant squinted at his monitor. “Sir, would you take a look at this?” “On the board, Lieutenant.” Radar and neutron imager silhouettes appeared onscreen—and filled the display. Chief McRobb had never seen anything like it in Slipstream space. “Confirm that the data stream is not corrupted,” the Chief ordered. “I’m estimating that object is three thousand kilometers in diameter.” “Affirmative… thirty-two-hundred-kilometer diameter confirmed, sir."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter31.txt", "text": "Signal integrity is green. We’ll have a trajectory for the planetoid as soon as Beta probe returns.” It was rare for any natural object this large to be in Slipstream space. An occasional comet or asteroid had been logged—UNSC astrophysicists still weren’t sure how the things got into the alternate dimension. But there had never been anything like this. At least, not since— “Oh my God,” McRobb whispered. Not since Sigma Octanus. “We’re not waiting for Beta probe,” Chief McRobb barked. “We are initiating the Cole Protocol. Lieutenant Streeter, purge the navigational database, and I mean right now. Lieutenant Brightling, remove the safety interlocks on the station’s reactor.” His junior officers hesitated for a moment—then they understood the gravity of their situation. They moved quickly. “Initiating viral data scavengers,” Lieutenant Streeter called out. “Dumping main and cache memory.” He turned in his seat, his face white. “Sir, the science library is offline for repairs. It has every UNSC astrophysics journal in it.” “With navigation data on every star within a hundred light-years,” the Chief whispered. “Including Sol. Lieutenant, you get someone down there and destroy that data. I don’t care if they have to hit it with a goddamn sledgehammer—make sure that data is wiped.” “Aye, sir!” Streeter turned to the COM and began issuing frantic orders. “Safety interlocks red on the board,” Lieutenant Brightling reported. His lips pressed into a single white line, concentrating. “Beta probe returning, sir, in four… three… two… one. There. Off target one hundred twenty thousand kilometers. Signal is weak. The probe appears to be malfunctioning. Trying to scrub the signal now.” “It’s too much of a coincidence that it’s malfunctioning, Streeter,” the Chief said. “Get FLEETCOM on Alpha channel on the double! Compress and send the duty log.” “Aye, sir.” Lieutenant Streeter’s fingers fumbled with the keypad as he typed—then had to retype the command. “Logs sent.” “Beta probe signal on the board,” Lieutenant Brightling reported. “Calculating the object’s trajectory…” The planetoid was closer. Its edges, however, had abnormalities—bumps and spikes and protrusions. Chief McRobb shifted and clenched his hands into fists. “It will pass though Epsilon Eridani System,” Lieutenant Brightling said. “Intersecting the solar plane in seventeen seconds at the system’s outer edge at zero four one.” He inhaled sharply. “Sir, that’s only a light-second away from us.” Lieutenant Streeter stood and knocked over his chair, almost backing into the Chief. McRobb righted the chair. “Sit down, Lieutenant. We’ve got a job to do. Target the telescope array to monitor that region of space.” Lieutenant Streeter turned and gazed into the rock-solid features of the Chief. He took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.” He sat back down. “Aye, sir, moving the array.” “Gamma probe returning in three… two… one.” Lieutenant Brightling paused. “There’s no signal, sir. Scanning. Time plus four seconds and counting. Probe may have translated on a temporal axis.” “I don’t think so,” the Chief murmured. Lieutenant Streeter said, “Telescope array now on target, sir."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter31.txt", "text": "On the main view screen.” Pinpoints of green light appeared at the edge of the Epsilon Eridani System. They collected and swarmed as if they were caught in a boiling liquid. Space stretched, smeared, and distorted. Half the stars in that region were blotted out. “Radar contact,” Lieutenant Brightling said. “Contact with more than three hundred large objects.” His hands started to shake. “Sir, silhouettes match known Covenant profiles.” “They’re accelerating,” Lieutenant Streeter whispered. “On an intercept course for the station.” “FLEETCOM network connections are being infiltrated,” Lieutenant Brightling said. His trembling hands could barely type in commands. “Cutting our connection.” Chief McRobb stood as straight as he could. “What about the astrophysics data?” “Sir, they’re still trying to end the diagnostic cycle, but that takes a few minutes.” “Then we don’t have a lot of options,” McRobb muttered. He set his hand on Lieutenant Brightling’s shoulder to steady the young officer. “It’s all right, Lieutenant. We’ve done the best we could. We’ve done our duty. There’s nothing more to worry about.” He set his palmprint on the control station. The Chief locked out the reactor safeties and saturated the fusion chamber with their deuterium reserve tanks. Chief McRobb said, “Just one last order to carry out.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter32.txt", "text": "Chapter Thirty-Two 0519 HOURS, AUGUST 30, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC PILLAR OF AUTUMN, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM’S EDGE Something was wrong. John felt it in his stomach first: a slight lateral acceleration—that became a spin strong enough that he had to brace his legs. The Pillar of Autumn was turning. Every other Spartan in the storage bay felt it as well; they paused as they unloaded equipment from crates and readied the cryo tubes for their journey. The lateral motion slowed and stopped. The Pillar of Autumn’s engines rumbled like thunder through the hull of the ship. Kelly approached him. “Sir? I thought we were accelerating to enter Slipspace?” “So did I. Have Fred and Joshua continue to prep the tubes. Have Linda get a team and secure our gear. I’ll find out what’s going on.” “Aye, sir.” The Master Chief marched toward the intercom panel. He hated being on spaceships. The lack of control was disturbing. He and the other Spartans were just extra cargo in a space battle. He hesitated as he reached for the intercom. If Captain Keyes was involved in some tricky maneuver or engaging an enemy, the last thing he needed was an interruption. He pressed the button. “Cortana? We’ve changed course. Is there a problem?” Instead of her voice, however, Captain Keyes spoke over the channel: “Captain Keyes to Spartan-117.” He replied, “Here, sir.” “There’s been a change in plans,” Keyes said. There was a long pause. “This will be easier to explain face-to-face. I’m on my way down to brief you. Keyes out.” John turned and the other Spartans snapped to their tasks. Those without specific orders checked and rechecked their weapons and assembled their combat gear. They had all heard the Captain, however. The sound receivers in their armor could pick up a whisper at a hundred meters. And the Spartans didn’t have to be told this was trouble. John clicked on the monitor near the intercom. The fore camera showed the Pillar of Autumn had indeed turned about. Reach’s sun blazed in the center of the screen. They were heading back. Was something wrong with the ship? No. Captain Keyes wouldn’t be coming to brief him if that was the case. There was definitely a snag. The elevator doors opened and Captain Keyes stepped off the lift. “Captain on the deck!” the Master Chief shouted. The Spartans stood at attention. “At ease,” Captain Keyes said. The expression on the Captain’s face suggested that “ease” was the last thing on his mind. He smoothed his thumb over the antique pipe the Master Chief had seen him carry. “There is something very wrong,” Keyes said. He glanced at the other Spartans. “Let’s talk in private,” he told the Master Chief in a low voice. He walked to the monitor over the intercom. “Sir,” the Master Chief said. “Unless you wish to leave the deck, the Spartans will hear everything we say.” Keyes looked at the Spartans and frowned. “I see."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter32.txt", "text": "Very well, your squad might as well hear this now, too. I don’t know how they found Reach—they bypassed a dozen Inner Colony worlds to get here. It doesn’t matter. They are here. And we have to do something.” “Sir? ‘They’?” “The Covenant.” He turned to the intercom. “Cortana, display the last priority Alpha transmission.” A communiqué flickered on screen, and the Master Chief read: UNITED NATIONS SPACE COMMAND ALPHA PRIORITY TRANSMISSION 04592Z-83 ENCRYPTION CODE: RED PUBLIC KEY: FILE /BRAVO-TANGO-BETA-FIVE/ FROM: ADMIRAL ROLAND FREEMONT, COMMANDING FLEET OFFICER, FLEETCOM SECTOR ONE COMMANDER/ (UNSC SERVICE NUMBER: 00745-16778-HS) TO: ALL UNSC WARSHIPS IN EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM SUBJECT: IMMEDIATE RECALL CLASSIFICATION: CLASSIFIED (BGX DIRECTIVE) /START FILE/ COVENANT PRESENCE DETECTED ON REACH SYSTEM’S EDGE COORDINATES 030 RELATIVE. ALL UNSC WARSHIPS ARE HEREBY ORDERED TO CEASE ALL ACTIVITIES AND REGROUP AT RALLY POINT ZULU AT BEST SPEED. ALL SHIPS ARE TO ENACT THE COLE PROTOCOL IMMEDIATELY. /END FILE/ “Cortana has picked up ship signatures on the Pillar of Autumn’s sensors,” Captain Keyes said. “She cannot be sure how many because of electrical interference, but there are more than a hundred alien ships inbound toward Reach. We have to go. We have our orders. The Section Three mission has to be scrubbed.” “Sir? Scrubbed?” John had never had a mission canceled. “Reach is our strategic headquarters and our biggest ship-building facility, Master Chief. If the shipyards fall, then Dr. Halsey’s prediction of humanity having only months to survive will shrink to weeks.” The Master Chief normally would never have contradicted a superior officer, but this time duty compelled him. “Sir, our two missions are not mutually exclusive.” Captain Keyes lit his pipe—in defiance of three separate regulations of igniting a combustible on a UNSC ship. He puffed once and thoughtfully examined the smoke. “What do you have in mind, Master Chief?” “A hundred alien vessels, sir. Between the combined force of the fleet and Reach’s orbital gun platforms, it is almost guaranteed there will be a disabled ship my squad can board and capture.” Captain Keyes mulled this over. “There will also be hundreds of ships exchanging fire with one another. Missiles, nukes… Covenant plasma torpedoes.” “Just get us close enough,” the Master Chief said. “Punch a hole in their shields long enough for us to get on their hull. We’ll do the rest.” Captain Keyes chewed on his pipe. He tucked it into the cup of his hand. “There are operational complications with your plan. Cortana has been running the Pillar of Autumn’s shakedown. We have our own AI, but by the time we get it initialized and running this ship—the battle may be over.” “I see, sir.” Captain Keyes gazed a moment at the Master Chief, then sighed. “If there is a disabled Covenant ship and if we are close enough to it and if we’re not blown to a million bits by the time we get there, then I’ll transfer Cortana to you."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter32.txt", "text": "I’ve flown ships without an AI before.” Captain Keyes managed a weak smile, but it quickly disappeared. “Yes, sir!” “We’ll be at rally point Zulu in twenty minutes, Master Chief. Have your team ready by then… for anything.” “Sir.” He saluted. Captain Keyes returned the salute and entered the elevator, puffing on his pipe and shaking his head. The Master Chief turned to his teammates. They halted what they were doing. “You all heard. This is it. Fred and James, I want you to refit one of our Pelicans. Get every scrap of C-12 and shape a charge on her nose. If Captain Keyes downs a Covenant shield, we may have to blast our way into the ship’s hull.” Fred and James replied, “Aye, sir.” “Linda, assemble a team and get into every crate ONI packed for us—distribute that gear ASAP. Make sure everyone gets a thruster pack, plenty of ammo, grenades, and Jackhammer launchers if we have them. If we do get on board, we may encounter those armored Covenant types again—this time, I want the firepower to take them out.” “Yes, sir!” The Spartans scrambled to make ready for the mission. The Master Chief approached Kelly. On a private COM channel, he told her, “Crate thirteen on the manifest has three HAVOK nuclear mines. Get them. I have the arming cards. Ready them for transport.” “Affirmative.” She paused. The Master Chief couldn’t see her face past the reflective shield of her helmet, but he knew her well enough to know that the tiny slump of her shoulders meant that she was worried. “Sir?” she said. “I know this mission will be tough, but… do you ever get the feeling that this is like one of Chief Mendez’s missions? Like there’s a trick… some twist that we’ve overlooked?” “Yes,” he replied. “And I’m waiting for it.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter33.txt", "text": "Chapter Thirty-Three 0534 HOURS, AUGUST 30, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC PILLAR OF AUTUMN, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM The Pillar of Autumn detonated its port emergency thrusters. The ship slid out of the path of the asteroid, missing it by ten meters— —The Covenant plasma trailing them did not. It impacted the city-sized rock and sent fountains of molten iron and nickel spewing into space. Nine of the ten teardrop-shaped Covenant fighters—nicknamed “Seraphs” by ONI—dodged the asteroid as well. The tenth ship slammed into the asteroid and vanished from the bridge’s view screen. The other single ships accelerated and swarmed around the Pillar of Autumn, harassing her with pulse laser fire. “Cortana,” Captain Keyes said, “activate our point defense system.” The Pillar of Autumn’s 50mm cannons flashed—chipping away at the Covenant ships’ shields. “Already engaged, Captain,” Cortana said calmly. “Ensign Lovell,” Captain Keyes said. “Engines all stop and bring us about one hundred eighty degrees. Lieutenant Hikowa, ready our MAC gun and arm Archer missile pods A1 through A7. I want a firing solution that has our Archer missiles hitting with the third MAC round.” “On it, sir,” Lieutenant Hikowa replied. “Aye, sir,” Ensign Lovell said. “Answering engines all stop. Coming about. Brace yourselves.” The Pillar of Autumn’s engines sputtered and died. Navigational thrusters fired and rotated the ship to face the real threat—a Covenant carrier. The enormous alien craft had materialized aft of the Pillar of Autumn and launched their single ships. The carrier had then launched two salvos of plasma—which Captain Keyes had only shaken by entering the asteroid field. Cortana maneuvered the massive Pillar of Autumn like it was a sporting yacht; she nimbly dodged tumbling rocks, using them to screen Covenant plasma and pulse laser bolts. But the Pillar of Autumn would emerge from the asteroid field in twenty seconds. “Firing solution online, sir,” Lieutenant Hikowa said. “MAC gun hot and missile safety interlocks removed. Ready to launch.” “Fire missiles at will, Lieutenant.” Rapid-fire thumps echoed though the Pillar of Autumn’s hull and a swarm of Archer missiles sped toward the incoming carrier. “MAC gun is hot,” Hikowa said. “Booster capacitors ready. Firing in eight seconds, sir.” “I must make one small adjustment to your trajectory, Lieutenant,” Cortana said. “Covenant single ships are concentrating their attacks on our underside. Captain? With your permission?” “Granted,” Keyes said. “Firing solution recalculated,” Cortana said. “Hang on.” Cortana fired thrusters and the Pillar of Autumn rotated belly up—brought the majority of her 50mm cannons to bear on the Covenant Seraph fighters underneath her. Overlapping fields of fire wore down their shields—punctured their armored hulls with a thousand rounds, tore through the pilots with a hail of projectiles, and peppered their reactors. Nine puffs of fire dropped behind the Pillar of Autumn and vanished into the darkness. “Enemy single ships destroyed,” Cortana said. “Approaching firing position.” “Cortana, give me a countdown. Lieutenant Hikowa, fire on my mark,” Captain Keyes said. “Ready to fire, aye,” Lieutenant Hikowa said."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter33.txt", "text": "Cortana nodded; her trim figure projected in miniature inside the bridge holotank. As she nodded, a time display appeared, the numbers counting down rapidly. Keyes gripped the edge of the command chair, his eyes glued to the countdown. Three seconds, two, one… “Mark.” “Firing!” Hikowa answered. A triple flash of lightning saturated the forward view screen and bled in from the viewport; three white-hot projectiles crossed the black distance between the Pillar of Autumn and the Covenant carrier. Along the side of the carrier, motes of light collected as they rebuilt the charges of their plasma weapons. Archer missiles were pinpoints of exhaust in the distance; the carrier’s pulse lasers fired and melted a third of the incoming missiles. The Pillar of Autumn rolled to starboard and dove. Captain Keyes floated in free fall for a heartbeat, then landed awkwardly on the deck. The crenellated surface of an asteroid appeared on their port camera—meters away—then vanished. Captain Keyes was grateful that he never had time to initialize the Pillar of Autumn’s AI. Cortana performed superbly. The trio of blazing MAC rounds struck the carrier. The shield flashed once, twice. The third round got through—gutting the ship from stem to stern. The carrier spun sideways. Her shields stuttered once, trying to reestablish a protective screen. A hundred Archer missiles struck, cratered the hull, blossomed into fire and sparks and smoldering metal. The alien carrier listed and crashed into the asteroid the Pillar of Autumn had just narrowly avoided. It stuck there, hull broken and cracked. Columns of fire blossomed from the shattered vessel. Captain Keyes sighed. A victory. The Spartans, however, would not be taking that ship into Covenant space. It wasn’t going anywhere. “Cortana, mark the location of the destroyed ship and the asteroid. We may have a chance to salvage her later.” “Yes, Captain.” “Ensign Lovell,” Captain Keyes said, “turn us around and give me best speed to rally point Zulu.” Lovell tapped the thrusters and rotated the Pillar of Autumn to relative space normal with Reach. The rumble of the engines shook the decks as the ship accelerated in-system. “ETA twenty minutes at best speed, sir.” The battle for Reach could be over by the time he got there. Captain Keyes wished he could move through Slipspace for short, precision jumps like the Covenant. That carrier had materialized a kilometer behind the Pillar of Autumn. If he had that kind of accuracy, he could be at the rally point now—and be of some use. Any attempt to jump in-system, however, would be foolish at best. At worst, it would be a fatal move. Jump targets varied by hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Theoretically, they could reenter normal space inside Reach’s sun. “Cortana, give me maximum magnification on the fore cameras.” “Aye sir,” she said. The view on the forward screen zoomed in—jumped and refocused on planet Reach."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter33.txt", "text": "Twenty thousand kilometers from the planet, a cluster of a hundred UNSC ships collected at rally point Zulu: destroyers, frigates, three cruisers, two carriers—and three refit and repair stations hovering over them… waiting to be used as sacrificial shields. “Fifty-two additional UNSC warships inbound to rally point Zulu,” Cortana reported. “Shift focus to section four by four on-screen, Cortana. Show me those Covenant forces.” The scene blinked and transferred to the approaching Covenant fleet. There were so many ships Captain Keyes couldn’t estimate their numbers. “How many?” he asked. “I am presently tracking three hundred fourteen Covenant ships, Captain,” Cortana replied. Captain Keyes couldn’t tear his gaze away from the ships. The UNSC only won battles with the Covenant when they outnumbered the enemy forces three to one… not the other way around. They had one advantage: the MAC orbital guns around Reach—the UNSC’s most powerful nonnuclear weapon. Some called them “Super” MAC guns or the “big stick.” Their linear accelerator coils were larger than a UNSC cruiser. They propelled a three-thousand-ton projectile at tremendous speed, and could reload within five seconds. They drew power directly from the fusion reactor complex planetside. “Pull back the camera angle, Cortana. Let me see the entire battle area.” The Covenant ships accelerated toward Reach. The fleet at rally point Zulu fired their MAC guns and missiles. The orbital Super MAC guns opened fire as well—twenty streaks of white hot metal burned across the night. The Covenant answered by launching a salvo of plasma torpedoes at the orbital guns—so much fire in space that it looked like a solar flare. Deadly arcs of flame and metal raced through space and crossed paths. The engines of the three refit stations flared to life and the platelike ships moved toward the path of the flaming vapor. A plasma bolt caught the edge of the leading station—fire splashed over its flat surface. More bolts hit, and the station melted, sagged, and boiled. The metal glowed red, then white-hot, tinged with blue. The other two stations maneuvered into position and shielded the orbital guns from the fiery assault. Plasma torpedoes collided with them and sprayed plumes of molten metal into space. After a dozen hits, clouds of ionizing metal enveloped the place where the three stations had been. They had been vaporized. The last of the Covenant plasma hit the haze—scattered, absorbed, and made the cloud glow a hellish orange. Meanwhile, the fleet’s opening salvo and the Super MAC rounds hit the Covenant fleet. The smaller ship-based MAC rounds bounced off the Covenant shields—it took three or more to wear them down. The Super MAC rounds, however, were another story. The first Super MAC shell hit a Covenant destroyer. The ship’s shield flashed and vanished—the remaining impact momentum transferred to the ship—the hull rippled and shattered into a million fragments. Four nuclear mines detonated in the center of the Covenant fleet. Dozens of ships with downed shields flared white and dissolved."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter33.txt", "text": "The other ships however, shrugged off the damage; their shields burned brilliant silver, then cooled. The surviving Covenant vessels advanced in-system—a third of their number were left behind… burning radioactive hulks or utterly destroyed by the Super MAC rounds. Plasma charges collected on the lateral lines of the Covenant ships. They fired. Fingers of deadly energy reached across space… toward the UNSC fleet. One Covenant ship sat in the center of the pack, a gigantic vessel, larger than three UNSC cruisers. White-blue beams flashed from its prow—a split second later, five UNSC vessels detonated. “Cortana… what the hell was that?” Keyes asked. “Lovell, push those engine superchargers as hot as you can make them.” “Running at three hundred ten percent, sir,” Lovell reported. “ETA fourteen minutes.” “Replaying and digitally enhancing video record,” Cortana said. She split the screen and zoomed in on the huge Covenant ship, replaying the video as the large ship fired. The Covenant energy beams looked like pulse lasers… but tinged silver white, the same scintillation effect that they’d seen when their shields were hit. Cortana switched back to view the doomed UNSC destroyer Minotaur. The lance of energy was needle-thin. It struck the vessel on A deck, aft, near the reactor. Cortana pulled the view back and slowed the record frame by frame—the beam punctured through the entire ship, emanating below H deck by the engines. “It drilled through every deck and both sets of battleplate,” Captain Keyes murmured. The beam moved through the Minotaur, slicing a ten-meter-wide swath. “Projected beam path cut through the Minotaur’s reactors,” Cortana said. “A new weapon,” Captain Keyes said. “Faster than their plasma. Deadlier, too.” The large Covenant ship veered off course and accelerated away from the battle. Perhaps it didn’t want to risk getting too close to their orbital MAC guns. Whatever the reason, Keyes was grateful to see it withdraw. The UNSC forces slowly scattered. Some launched missiles to intercept the plasma torpedoes, but the high-energy explosives did nothing to stop the superheated bolts. Fifty UNSC ships went up like flares, burning, exploding, falling toward the planet. The orbital Super MAC guns fired—sixteen hits and sixteen Covenant ships were blasted into flame and glittering fragments. The Covenant fleet split into two groups: half accelerated to engage the dispersing UNSC fleet; the remainder of their ships arced upward relative to the plane of the system. That group maneuvered to get a clear shot around the cloud of vaporized titanium from the refit stations. They were going to target the orbital guns. Plasma charges collected along their sides. The orbital guns fired. The super-heavy rounds tore through the clouds of ionized metal vapor, leaving whorls and spirals in the haze. They impacted eighteen incoming Covenant ships—ripped through them like tinfoil, with enough momentum to pulverize their hulls. Six Covenant ships cleared the interfering cloud of vapor. They had a clear shot. The Super MAC guns fired again. Plasma erupted from the sides of the nearby Covenant ships."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter33.txt", "text": "The Super MAC rounds hit the vessels and obliterated the enemy. The streams of plasma, however, had already launched. They streaked toward the orbital guns—impacted and turned the installations into showers of sparks and molten metal. When the haze cleared, fifteen of the Super MAC orbital installations remained intact… five had been vaporized. The Covenant ships engaging the fleet turned and fled on an out-system vector. The remaining UNSC ships did not pursue. “Incoming orders, sir,” Lieutenant Dominique called out. “We’re being ordered to fall back and regroup.” Keyes nodded. “Cortana,” he said, “can you give me damage and casualty estimates for the fleet?” Her tiny holo image coalesced in the display tank. “Yes, Captain,” she said. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are you sure you want the bad news?” Damage estimates scrolled across his personal screen. They had taken heavy losses—an estimated twenty ships remained. Nearly one hundred shattered and burning UNSC vessels floated, lifeless, in the combat area. Captain Keyes realized that he was holding his breath. He exhaled. “That was too close,” he murmured. “It could have been closer, Captain,” Cortana whispered. He watched the retreating Covenant. Once again—it was too easy. No… it had been anything but “easy” for the UNSC forces, but the Covenant were certainly giving up far earlier than in any previous battle. The aliens had never stopped once they engaged an enemy. Except at Sigma Octanus, he thought. “Cortana,” Captain Keyes said. “Scan the poles of planet Reach and filter out the magnetic interference.” The view screen snapped to Reach’s northern pole. Hundreds of Covenant dropships streamed toward the planet’s surface. “Get FLEETCOM HQ online,” he ordered Lieutenant Dominique. “Copy this message to the Fleet Commander, as well.” “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Dominique said. “Channel connected.” “Tell them they’re being invaded. Dropships inbound at both poles.” Dominique sent the message, listened a moment, then reported, “Message received and acknowledged, sir.” The Super MAC guns pivoted and fired—shattering dozens of the Covenant dropships in the shells’ supersonic wake. The remains of the UNSC fleet split into two groups, moving toward either pole. Missiles and MAC guns fired and blasted the dropships to bits. The poles were punctuated with thousands of meteoroids as the bits of hull burned up in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have gotten through, Keyes thought. “Incoming distress signal from FLEETCOM HQ planet-side, sir,” Lieutenant Dominique said, his voice breaking. “On speakers,” Captain Keyes said. “There are thousands of them. Grunts, Jackals, and their warrior Elites.” The transmission broke into static. “They have tanks and fliers. Christ, they’ve breached the perimeter. Fall back! Fall back! If anyone can hear this: the Covenant is groundside. Massing near the armory… they’re—” White noise filled the speakers. Captain Keyes winced as he heard screams, bones snapping, an explosion. The transmission went dead. “Sir!” Lieutenant Hall said. “The Covenant fleet has altered their outbound trajectory.… they’re turning.” She rotated to face the Captain."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter33.txt", "text": "“They’re coming in for another attack.” Captain Keyes stood straighter and smoothed his uniform. “Good.” He addressed the crew in the calmest voice he could muster. “Looks like we’re not too late after all.” Ensign Lovell nodded. “Sir, ETA to rally point Zulu in five minutes.” “Remove all missile safety locks,” Captain Keyes ordered. “Get our remote-piloted Longsword into the launch tube. And make sure our MAC gun capacitors and boosters are hot.” Captain Keyes pulled out his pipe. He lit it and puffed. The Covenant were, of course, after the orbital guns. Their suicidal frontal charge—while almost effective enough—had been just another diversion. The real danger was on the ground; if their troops took out the fusion generators, the Super MAC guns would be so much floating junk in orbit. “This is bad,” he muttered to himself. Cortana appeared on the AI pedestal near the NAV station. “Captain Keyes, I’m picking up another distress signal. It’s from the Reach space dock AI. And if you think this—” She gestured at the incoming Covenant fleet on screen. “—is bad, wait until you hear this. It gets worse.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter34.txt", "text": "Chapter Thirty-Four 0558 HOURS, AUGUST 30, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC PILLAR OF AUTUMN, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM The mission had just encountered another snag. It never entered the Master Chief’s mind that he would fail to achieve his objectives. He had to succeed. Failure meant death for not only himself, but for all the Spartans… every human. He stood at the view screen in the cargo bay and reread the priority Alpha transmission Captain Keyes had sent down: ALPHA PRIORITY CHANNEL: TO FLEET ADMIRALTY FROM REACH SPACE DOCK QUARTERMASTER AI–8575 (A.K.A. DOPPLER) / /TRIPLE-ENCRYPTION TIME-STAMPED PUBLIC KEY: RED ROVER RED ROVER/ /START FILE/ IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED ITEM: COVENANT DATA INVASION PACKETS DETECTED PENETRATING FIREWALL OF REACH DOC NET. COUNTERINTRUSION SOFTWARE ENACTED. RESOLUTION: 99.9 PERCENT CERTAINTY OF NEUTRALIZATION. ITEM: INITIALIZATION OF TRIPLE-SCREENING PROTOCOL DISCOVERED THE CORVETTECIRCUMFERENCE/BAY GAMMA-9/ ISOLATED FROM REACH DOC NET. ITEM: COVENANT SHIPS DETECTED ON INBOUND SLIPSTREAM VECTOR INTERSECTING BAY GAMMA-9. CONCLUSION: UNSECURED NAVIGATION DATA ON THECIRCUMFERENCE DETECTED BY COVENANT FORCES. CONCLUSION: VIOLATION OF THE COLE PROTOCOL. IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED. /END FILE/ He replayed the distress call from Reach’s groundside FLEETCOM HQ. “… They’ve breached the perimeter. Fall back! Fall back! If anyone can hear this: the Covenant is groundside. Massing near the armory… they’re—” The Master Chief copied these files and sent them over his squad’s COM channel. They had a right to know everything, too. There was only one reason the Covenant would launch a ground invasion: to take out the planetary defense generators. If they succeeded, Reach would fall. And there was only one reason why the Covenant wanted the ship Circumference—to plunder its NAV database—and find every human world, including Earth. Captain Keyes appeared on the view screen. He held his pipe in one hand, squeezing it so tight his knuckles were white. “Master Chief, I believe the Covenant will use a pinpoint Slipspace jump to a position just off the space dock. They may try to get their troops on the station before the Super MAC guns can take out their ships. This will be a difficult mission, Chief. I’m… open to suggestions.” “We can take care of it,” the Master Chief replied. Captain Keyes’ eyes widened and he leaned forward in his command chair. “How exactly, Master Chief?” “With all due respect, sir, Spartans are trained to handle difficult missions. I’ll split my squad. Three will board the space dock and make sure that NAV data does not fall into the Covenant’s hands. The remainder of the Spartans will go groundside and repel the invasion forces.” Captain Keyes considered this. “No, Master Chief, it’s too risky. We’ve got to make sure the Covenant doesn’t get that NAV data. We’ll use a nuclear mine, set it close to the docking ring, and detonate it.” “Sir, the EMP will burn out the superconductive coils of the orbital guns. And if you use the Pillar of Autumn’s conventional weapons, the NAV database may still survive."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter34.txt", "text": "If the Covenant search the wreckage—they may obtain the data.” “True,” Keyes said, and tapped his pipe thoughtfully on his chin. “Very well, Master Chief. We’ll go with your suggestion. I’ll plot a course over the docking station. Ready your Spartans and prep two dropships. We’ll launch you—” he consulted with Cortana “—in five minutes.” “Aye, Captain. We’ll be ready.” “Good luck,” Captain Keyes said, and snapped off the view screen. Luck. The Master Chief always had been lucky. He’d need luck more than ever this time. He turned to face the Spartans… his Spartans. They stood at attention. Kelly stepped forward. “Master Chief sir, permission to lead the space op, sir.” “Denied,” he said. “I’ll be leading that one.” He appreciated her gesture. The space operation would be ten times more dangerous than the ground op. The Covenant would outnumber them ten to one—or more—but the Spartans were used to taking the fight against numerically superior enemies. They had always won on the ground. The extraction of the Circumference database, however, would be in vacuum and zero gravity—and they might have to fight their way past a Covenant warship to reach the objective. Not exactly ideal conditions. “Linda and James,” he said. “You’re with me. Fred, you’re Red Team Leader. You’ll have tactical command of the ground operation.” “Sir!” Fred shouted. “Yes, sir.” “Now make ready,” he said. “We don’t have much time left.” The Master Chief regretted his unfortunate choice of words. The Spartans stood a moment. Kelly called out, “Attention!” They snapped to and gave the Master Chief a crisp salute. He stood straighter and returned their salute. He was intensely proud of them all. The Spartans scattered and gathered their gear, racing for the dropship bay. The Master Chief watched them go. This was the mission the Spartans had been tempered for in mission after mission. It would be their finest moment… but he knew that it might also be their last moment. Chief Mendez had said that a leader would be required to spend the lives of those under his command. The Master Chief knew he would lose comrades today—but would their deaths serve a necessary purpose… or would they be wasted? Either way, they were ready. * * * John tapped the thrusters and rotated the Pelican dropship 180 degrees. He pushed the engines to full power to brake their forward momentum. The Pillar of Autumn had dropped them while she had been cruising at one-third full speed. They’d need every millimeter of the ten thousand kilometers between them and the docking station to slow down. The Master Chief had taken the Spartans’ modified Pelican, rigged with explosives. The station would be locked down—every airlock sealed. They’d have to blast their way in. He glanced aft. Linda checked one of the three sniper rifle variants she had brought. James inspected his thruster pack. He had picked Linda because no other single Spartan was as efficient at long-range combat."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter34.txt", "text": "And that’s what the Master Chief wanted: long-range combat. If it came to hand-to-hand combat in zero gee with hordes of Covenant troopers… even his luck wouldn’t hold out too long. He had picked James because James had never quit. Even when his hand had been burned off, he had shrugged off the shock—at least for a while—and helped them dispatch the Covenant behemoths on Sigma Octanus IV. The Master Chief would need that kind of determination on this mission. He took a long look out the front of the Pelican. Their sister dropship initiated a burn and hurtled toward Reach. Kelly, Fred, Joshua… all of them. Part of him longed to join them in the ground action. The radar panel blinked a proximity warning; the Pelican was one thousand kilometers from the docking ring. The Master Chief tapped the thrusters to align the dropship. He squelched the proximity alert. The alert immediately re-sounded. Strange. He reached for the squelch again—then stopped as he saw the space around the Pelican change. Motes of green light appeared, pinpoints at first, which swelled like bruises on velvet black space. The green smears lengthened, compressed, and distorted the stars. —a Slipstream entry point. The Master Chief cut the Pelican’s engines, slowing them for impact. A Covenant frigate materialized a kilometer from the dropship’s nose. Its prow filed their view screen."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter35.txt", "text": "Chapter Thirty-Five 0616 HOURS, AUGUST 30, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC PELICAN DROPSHIP, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM NEAR REACH STATION GAMMA “Brace for maneuvering!” the Master Chief barked. The Spartans dove for safety harnesses and strapped in. “All secure!” Linda shouted. The Master Chief killed the Pelican’s forward thrusters and triggered a short, sudden reverse burn. The Spartans were brutally slammed forward into their harnesses as the Pelican’s acceleration bled away. The Master Chief quickly shut down the engines. The tiny Pelican faced the Covenant frigate. At a kilometer’s distance, the alien ship’s launch bay and pulse laser turrets looked close enough to touch on the view screen; enough firepower to vaporize the Spartans in the blink of an eye. The Master Chief’s first instinct was to fire their HE Anvil-II missiles and autocannons—but he checked his hand as he reached for the triggers. That would only attract their attention… which was the last thing he wanted. For the moment, the alien vessel ignored them—probably because the Master Chief had shut down the Pelican’s engines. But the ship also seemed dead in space: no lights, no single ships launched, and no plasma weapons charging. The dropship continued toward the docking station, their momentum putting distance between them and the frigate. Space around the Covenant ship boiled and pulled apart—and two more alien ships appeared. They, too, ignored the dropship. Was it too small to bother with? The Master Chief didn’t care. His luck, it seemed, was holding. He checked the radar—thirty kilometers to the docking ring. He ignited the engines to slow them down. He had to or they would crash into the station. Twenty kilometers. Rumbling shook the dropship. They slowed—but it wasn’t going to be enough. Ten kilometers. “Hang on,” he told Linda and James. The sudden impact whiplashed the Master Chief back and forth in his seat. The straps holding him snapped. He blinked… saw only blackness. His vision cleared and he noted that his shield bar was dead. It slowly began to fill again. Every display and monitor in the cockpit had shattered. The Master Chief shook off the disorientation and pulled himself aft. The interior of the dropship was a mess. Everything tied down had come loose. Ammunition boxes had broken open in the crash landing and loose carriages filled the air. Coolant leaked, spraying blobs of black fluid. In zero gravity, everything looked like the inside of a shaken snowglobe. James and Linda floated off the deck of the Pelican. They slowly moved. “Any injuries?” the Master Chief asked. “No,” Linda replied. “I think so,” James said. “I mean, no. I’m good, sir. Was that a landing or did those Covenant ships take a shot at us?” “If they had, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it. Get whatever gear you can and get out, double time,” the Master Chief said. The Master Chief grabbed an assault rifle and a Jackhammer launcher. He found a satchel."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter35.txt", "text": "Inside was a kilogram of C-12, detonators, and a Lotus antitank mine. Those would come in handy. He salvaged five intact clips of ammunition but couldn’t locate his thruster pack. He’d have to do without one. “No more time,” he said. “We’re sitting ducks here. Out the hatch now.” Linda went first. She paused, and—once she was satisfied the Covenant weren’t lying in ambush—motioned them forward. The Master Chief and James exited, clung to the side of the Pelican in zero gravity, and took flanking positions at the fore and aft ends of the dropship. Space dock Gamma was a three-kilometer-diameter ring. Dull gray metal arced in either direction. On the surface were communications dishes and a few conduits—no real cover. The docking bay doors were sealed tight. The station wasn’t spinning. The dockmaster AI must have shut the place up tight when it detected the unsecured NAV database. The Master Chief frowned when he spotted the tail end of their Pelican—crumpled and embedded into the station’s hull. Its engines were ruined. The dropship jutted out at an angle; its prow and the charges of C-12 that were supposed to have blasted them into a Covenant ship—now pointed into the air. The Master Chief started to drift off the station. He clipped himself to the hull of the dropship. “Blue-Two,” he said, “police those explosives.” He gestured to the prow. The motion sent him gyrating. “Yes, sir.” James puffed his thruster pack once and drifted up to the nose of the Pelican. The Spartans had trained to fight in zero gravity. It wasn’t easy. The slightest motion sent you spinning out of control. A flash overhead reflected off the hull. The Master Chief looked up. The Covenant ships were alive now—lances of blue laser fire flashed and motes of red light collected on their lateral lines. Their engines glowed and they moved close to the station. A streak crossed the Master Chief’s field of vision in the blink of an eye. The center Covenant frigate shields strobed silver; the ship shattered into a cloud of glistening fragments. The orbital guns had turned and fired on the new threat. This was a suicide maneuver. How did the Covenant think they could withstand that kind of firepower? “Blue-One,” the Master Chief said. “Scan those ships with your scope.” Linda floated closer to the Master Chief. She pointed her sniper rifle up and sighted the ships. “We’ve got inbound targets,” she said, and fired. The Master Chief hit his magnification. A dozen pods burst from the two remaining Covenant ships. Trails of exhaust pointed right at the Spartans’ position. There were tiny specks accompanying the pods; the Master Chief increased his display’s magnification to maximum. They looked like men in thruster packs— No, they were definitely not men. These things had elongated heads—and even at this distance, the Master Chief could see past their faceplates and noted their pronounced sharklike teeth and jaws."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter35.txt", "text": "They wore armor; it shimmered as they collided with debris—which meant energy shields. These were Elites—the iron heart of the Covenant. Would they best the Spartans this time? They were all about to find out. Linda shot one of the EVA aliens. Shields shimmered around its body and the round bounced off. She didn’t stop. She pumped four more rounds into the creature—hitting a pinpoint target in its neck. Its shields flickered and a round got through. Purple blood gushed from the wound and the creature writhed in space. The other aliens spotted them. They jetted toward their location, firing plasma rifles and needlers. “Take cover,” the Master Chief said. He unclipped himself and clung to the side of the dropship. Linda followed—bolts of fire spattering on the hull next to them, spattering molten metal. Crystalline needles bounced off their shields “Blue-Two,” the Master Chief said. “I said fall back.” James almost had the explosives rigged to the nose free. A shower of needles hit him. One stuck the tank of his thruster harness—penetrated. It remained embedded for a split second… then exploded. Exhaust billowed from the pack. The uncontrolled jets spun James in the microgravity. He slammed into the station, bounced—then rocketed away into space, tumbling end over end, unable to control his trajectory. “Blue-Two! Come in,” the Master Chief barked over the COM channel. “Can—control—” James’ voice was punctuated with static. “They’ve—everywhere—” There was more static and the COM channel went dead. The Master Chief watched his teammate tumble away into the darkness. All his training, his superhuman strength, reflexes, and determination… completely useless against the laws of physics. He didn’t even know if James was dead. For the moment, he had to assume that he was—put him out of his mind. He had a mission to complete. If he survived, then he’d get every UNSC ship in the area to mount a search and rescue op. Linda shrugged out of her thruster harness. The suppressing fire from the aliens halted. Covenant landing pods descended toward the station, touching down at roughly three-hundred-meter intervals. A pod landed twenty meters away. Its sides uncurled like the petals of a flower. Jackals in black-and-blue vacuum suits drifted out. Their boots adhered to the station’s hull. “Let’s pave a path out of here, Blue-One.” “Roger that,” she said. Linda targeted spots their energy shields didn’t cover—boots, the top of one’s head, a fingertip. Three Jackals went down in quick succession, their spacesuits ruptured by her marksmanship. The rest scrambled for cover inside the pod. The Master Chief braced his back against the dropship and fired his assault rifle in controlled bursts. The microgravity played havoc with his aim. One Jackal leaped from his cover—straight towards them. The Master Chief switched to full auto and blasted his shield with enough rounds to send the alien flying backward off the station. He spent the clip, reloaded, and got out a grenade. He pulled the pin and lobbed it."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter35.txt", "text": "He threw it in a flat trajectory. The grenade ricocheted off the far side of the pod and bounced inside. It detonated—a flash and spray of freeze-dried blue vented upward. The explosion had caught the enemy on their unshielded sides. “Blue-One, secure that landing pod. I’ll cover you.” He leveled his rifle. “Yes, sir.” Linda grabbed a pipe that ran along the station and pulled herself hand over hand. When she was inside the pod, she flashed him a green light on his heads-up display. The Master Chief crawled toward the prow of the Pelican. As he crested the ship he saw that the station was swarming with Covenant troops: a hundred Jackals and at least six Elites. They pointed toward the Pelican and slowly started to advance on their position. “Come and get it,” the Master Chief muttered. He pulled two grenades from his satchel and wedged them into the C-12 on the nose of the ship. He pushed off and propelled himself back to his teammate. She grabbed him and pulled him into the interior of the open pod. Bits of a dozen dead Jackals pasted the inside. “You’ve got a new target,” he told her. “A pair of frag grenades. Sight on them and wait for my order to fire.” She propped her rifle on the edge of the open pod and aimed. Jackals crawled over the Pelican—one of the Elites appeared as well, maneuvering in a harness, flying over the ship. The Elite gestured imperiously, directing the Jackals to search the ship. “Fire,” the Master Chief said. Linda fired once. The grenades detonated; the chain reaction set off the twenty kilograms of C-12. A subsonic fist slammed into the Master Chief and threw him to the far side of the landing pod. Even twenty meters away, the sides of the craft warped and the top edges sheared away. He looked over the edge. There was a crater where the Pelican had been. If anything had survived that blast, it was now in orbit. “We have a way in,” the Master Chief remarked. Linda nodded. In the distance, where the station curved out of view, more Covenant pods landed—and the Master Chief saw the silhouettes of hundreds of Jackals and Elites crawling and jetting their way closer. “Let’s go, Blue-One.” They pulled themselves toward the hole. The detonation had blown through five decks, leaving a tunnel of ragged-edged metal and sputtering gas hoses. The Master Chief called up the station’s blueprints on his display. “That one,” he said, and pointed two decks down. “B level. That’s where bay nine and the Circumference should be, three hundred meters to port.” They climbed into the interior and into B deck’s corridor. The station’s emergency lights were on, filling the passage with dull red illumination. The Master Chief paused and signaled her to halt. He pulled out the Lotus antitank mine from his satchel and set it on the deck."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter35.txt", "text": "He set the sensitivity to maximum and triggered its proximity detectors. Anything that tried to follow them would get a surprise. The Master Chief and Linda gripped the handrails along the corridor and pulled themselves up the curved hall. Flashes of automatic-weapons fire flashed in the low light, just ahead of their position. “Blue-One,” the Master Chief said, “Ahead, ten meters—there’s a pressure door open.” They quickly took positions on either side of the door. He sent his optical probe around the corner. The docking bay had a dozen ship berths on two levels. The Master Chief spotted a few battered Pelicans; a station service bot; and in berth eleven, a sleek private craft held in place by massive service clamps. Where the ship’s name should have been painted on the prow there was only a simple circle. That had to be the target. Two berths aft, four Marines in vac suits were pinned down by plasma and needler fire. The Master Chief turned his optical probe and saw what was pinning them down: thirty Jackals were in the forward portion of the bay, slowly advancing, under cover of their energy shields. The Marines tossed frag grenades. The Jackals scrambled for cover and turned their shields. Three silent explosions flashed in the vacuum. Not one of the Jackals fell. Another explosion rippled through the deck—behind them. It shook the Master Chief’s bones in his armor. The Lotus mine had detonated. They didn’t have much time before the Covenant force outside caught up with them. The Master Chief readied his assault rifle. “Take those Jackals out, Blue-One. I’ll make a break for the Circumference.” Linda gripped the edge of the pressure door with her left hand, propped her rifle across it, and curled her right hand around the trigger. “There are a lot of them,” she said. “This may take a few seconds.” A flicker of a contact appeared on the Master Chief’s motion tracker—then vanished. He turned and brought his assault rifle to bear. Nothing. “Hang on, Blue-One. I’m going to check our six.” Linda’s acknowledgment light winked on. The Master Chief eased back down the passage ten meters. No sensor contact. There was just dim red light and shadows… but one of the shadows moved. It only took an instant for the image to fully register: a black film peeled away from the darkness. It was a meter taller than John and wore blue armor similar to that on Covenant warships. Its helmet was elongated and it had rows of sharp teeth; it looked like it was smiling at him. The Elite leveled a plasma pistol. At this range, there was no way the creature would miss—the plasma weapon would cut through John’s slowly recharging shields almost immediately. And if John used his assault rifle, it wouldn’t cut through the alien’s energy shield. In a simple exchange of fire, the alien would win. Unacceptable. He needed to change the odds."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter35.txt", "text": "The Master Chief pushed off the wall and launched himself at the creature. He slammed into the Elite before it had a chance to fire. They tumbled backward and crashed into the bulkhead. The Master Chief saw the alien’s shield flicker and fade— —he hammered on the edge of the alien’s gun. The creature howled soundlessly in the vacuum and dropped the plasma weapon. The Elite kicked him in the midsection; his shield took the brunt of the attack, but the blow sent him spinning end over end. He slapped his hand against the ceiling and stalled his spin—then dove under the Elite’s follow-up attack. The Master Chief tried to grab the alien—but their weakened shields slid and crackled over one another. They bounced down the curved length of the passage. The Master Chief’s boot caught on a railing, twisted—a lance of pain shot up his leg—but he halted their combined momentum. The Elite pushed away and caught a railing on the opposite side of the passage. Then it turned and sprang back toward the Master Chief. John ignored the pain in his leg. He pushed himself at the alien. They collided—the Master Chief struck with both fists, but the force slid off the Elite’s shields. The Elite grabbed him and threw him. They both spun into the wall. The Master Chief was pinned—perfect: he had something to brace against in the zero gravity. He swung his fist, used every muscle in his body, and connected with the alien’s midsection. Its shield shimmered and crackled but some of the momentum transferred. The alien doubled over and reeled backwards— —and its hands found the plasma weapon that it had dropped. The Elite recovered quickly and aimed at the Master Chief. The Master Chief jumped, grabbed its wrist. He locked his armor’s glove articulation—it became a vise clamp. They wrestled for control. The gun pointed at the alien—then the Master Chief. The alien was as strong as the Master Chief. They spun and bounced off the floor, ceiling, and walls. They were too evenly matched. The Master Chief managed to force a stalemate: the pistol now pointed straight up between their bodies. If it went off it would hit them both—one shot at point-blank range might collapse their shields. They’d both fry. The Master Chief whipped his forearm and elbow over the creature’s wrist and slammed it in the head. For a split second it was stunned and its strength ebbed. John turned the gun into its face—squeezed the firing mechanism. The plasma discharge exploded into the creature. Fire sprayed across its shields; they shimmered, flickered, and dimmed. The energy splash washed over the Master Chief; his shields drained to a quarter. The internal suit temperature spiked to critical levels. But the Elite’s shields were dead. He didn’t wait for the plasma gun to recharge."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter35.txt", "text": "The Master Chief grabbed the creature with his left hand—his right fist struck an uppercut to the head, a hook to the throat and chest, three rapid-fire strikes with his forearm to its helmet—that cracked and hissed atmosphere. The Master Chief pushed away and fired the pistol again. The bolt of fire caught the Elite in the face. It writhed and clawed at nothing. The Elite shuddered… suspended in midair; it twitched and finally stopped moving. The Master Chief shot it again to make sure it was dead. Motion sensors picked up multiple targets approaching down the corridor—forty meters and closing. The Master Chief turned and double-timed it back to Blue-One. Linda was where he left her, shooting her targets with absolute concentration and precision. “There are more on the way,” he told her. “Reinforcements have already arrived in the bay,” she reported. “Twenty, at least. They’re learning, overlapping their shields—can’t get a good shot in.” Static crackled over the Master Chief’s COM channel: “Master Chief, this is Captain Keyes. Did you get the NAV database?” The Captain sounded out of breath. “Negative, sir. We’re close.” “We’re bound in-system to retrieve you. ETA is five minutes. Destroy the Circumference’s database and get out ASAP. If you cannot accomplish your mission… I’ll have to take out the station with the Pillar of Autumn’s weapons. We are running out of time.” “Understood, sir.” The channel snapped off. Captain Keyes was wrong. They weren’t running out of time… time had already run out."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter36.txt", "text": "Chapter Thirty-Six 0616 HOURS, AUGUST 30, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC PILLAR OF AUTUMN, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM NEAR REACH STATION GAMMA The plan started to fall apart almost the instant the Pillar of Autumn launched their Pelican dropships. “Bring us about to heading two seven zero,” Captain Keyes ordered Ensign Lovell. “Aye, Captain,” Lovell said. “Lieutenant Hall, track the dropships’ trajectories.” “Pelican One on target to dock with station Gamma,” Lieutenant Hall reported. “Pelican Two initiating descent burn. They are five by five to land just outside FLEET HQ—” “Captain,” Cortana interrupted. “Spatial disruption behind us.” The view screen snapped to the aft. Black space bubbled with green points of light; the stars in the distance faded and stretched—a Covenant frigate appeared from nowhere. “Lieutenant Dominique,” Captain Keyes barked, “notify FLEETCOM that we have unwanted visitors in the backyard. I respectfully suggest they reorient those orbital guns ASAP. Ensign Lovell, turn this ship around and give me maximum power to the engines. Lieutenant Hikowa, prepare to fire the MAC gun and arm Archer missile pods B1 through B7.” The crew jumped to their tasks. The Pillar of Autumn spun about, her engines flared, and she slowly came to a halt. The ship started back toward the new Covenant threat. “Sir,” Cortana said. “Spatial disruptions increasing exponentially.” Two more Covenant frigates appeared, flanking the first ship. As soon as they exited Slipstream space—a white-hot line streaked across the blackness. A Super MAC gun had targeted them and fired. The Covenant ship only existed for a moment longer. Its shields flashed and the hull blasted into fragments. “They’re powered down,” Captain Keyes said. “No lights, no plasma weapons charging, no lasers. What are they doing?” “Perhaps,” Cortana said, “their pinpoint jumps require all their energy reserves.” “A weakness?” Captain Keyes mused. “Not for long,” Cortana replied. “Covenant energy levels climbing.” The two remaining Covenant ships powered up—lights snapped on, engines glowed, and motes of red light appeared and streamed along their lateral lines. “Entering optimal firing range,” Lieutenant Hikowa announced. “Targeting solutions computer for both ships, Captain.” “Target the port vessel with our MAC gun,” Lieutenant Hikowa. “Ready Archer missiles for the starboard target. Let’s hope we can draw their fire.” Lieutenant Hikowa typed in the commands. “Ready, sir.” “Fire.” The Pillar of Autumn’s MAC gun fired three times. Thunder roiled up from the ventral decks. Archer missiles snaked through space toward the Covenant frigate on the starboard edge of the enemy formation. The Covenant ships fired… but not at the Pillar of Autumn. Plasma bolts launched toward the two closest orbital guns. The Pillar of Autumn’s MAC rounds struck the Covenant ship once, twice. Their shields flared, glowed, and dimmed. The third round struck clean and penetrated her hull aft—sent the ship spinning counterclockwise. The orbital MAC guns fired again—a streak of silver and the port Covenant vessel shattered—a split second later, the starboard ship exploded, too."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter36.txt", "text": "But their plasma torpedoes continued toward their targets, splashing across two of the orbital defense platforms. The guns melted and collapsed into boiling molten spheres in the microgravity. Thirteen guns left, Captain Keyes thought. Not exactly a lucky number. “Lieutenant Dominique,” he said, “request FLEETCOM to send all arriving vessels in-system to take up defense positions near our guns. The Covenant is willing to sacrifice a ship for one of our orbital guns. Advise them the Covenant ships appear to be dead in space for a few seconds after they execute a pinpoint jump.” “Got it, sir,” Lieutenant Dominique said. “Message away.” “Lieutenant Hikowa,” Captain Keyes said. “Send the destruction codes to those wild missiles we launched.” “Aye, sir.” “Belay that,” Captain Keyes said. Something didn’t feel right. “Lieutenant Hall, scan the region for anything unusual.” “Scanning, sir,” she said. “There are millions of hull fragments; radar is useless. Thermal is off the charts—everything is hot out there.” She paused, leaned closer, and a hank of her blond hair fell into her face, but she didn’t brush it aside. “Reading motion toward Gamma station, sir. Landing pods.” “Lieutenant Hikowa,” Keyes said. “Repurpose those Archer missiles. New targets—link with Lieutenant Hall for coordinates.” “Yes, Captain,” they said in unison. “Diversion, distraction, and deceit,” Captain Keyes said. “The Covenant’s tactics are almost getting predictable.” A hundred pinpoints of fire dotted the distant space as their missiles found Covenant targets. “Picking up activity just out of the effective range of our orbital guns,” Cortana said. “Show me,” Captain Keyes said. The titanic Covenant vessel Keyes had seen before was back. It fired its brilliant blue-white beam—a lance across space—that struck the destroyer Herodotus, one hundred thousand kilometers distant. The beam cut clean through the ship, stem to stern, bisecting her. “Christ,” Ensign Lovell whispered. A salvo of orbital gun rounds fired at this new target… but it was too far away. The ship moved out of the trajectory of the shells. They missed. Another beam flashed from the Covenant vessel. Another ship—a carrier, the Musashi—was severed amidships as it moved to cover the orbital guns. The aft section of the ship continued to thrust forward, her engines still running hot. “They’re going to sniper our ships,” Keyes said. “Leave us nothing to fortify Reach.” He took out his pipe and tapped it in the palm of his hand. “Ensign Lovell. Plot an intercept course. Engines to maximum. We’re going to take that ship out.” “Sir?” Lovell sat straighter. “Yes, sir. Plotting course now.” Cortana appeared on the holographic display. “I assume you have another brilliant navigational maneuver to evade this enemy, Captain.” “I thought I’d fly straight in, Cortana… and let you do the driving.” “Straight? You are joking.” Logic symbols streamed up her body. “I never joke when it comes to navigation,” Captain Keyes said. “You will monitor the energy state of that ship."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter36.txt", "text": "The instant you detect a buildup in their reactors, a spike of particle emissions—anything—you fire our emergency thrusters to throw off their aim.” Cortana nodded. “I’ll do my best,” she said. “Their weapon does travel at light speed. There won’t be much time to—” A bang resonated through their portside hull. Captain Keyes flew sideways. Blue-white light flashed on their port view screen. “One shot missed,” Cortana replied. Captain Keyes stood up and straightened his uniform. “Ready MAC gun, Lieutenant Hikowa. Arm Archer missile pods C1 through E7. Give me a firing solution for missile impact on our last MAC round.” Lieutenant Hikowa arched an eyebrow. She had good reason to be dubious. They would be firing more than five hundred missiles at a single target. “Solution online, sir. Guns hot and ready.” “Distance, Lieutenant Hall?” “Closing in on extreme range for MAC guns, sir. In four… three…” An explosion to starboard and the Pillar of Autumn jumped. Keyes was braced this time. “Fire, Lieutenant Hikowa. Send them back where they belong.” “Missiles away, sir. Waiting to coordinate MAC rounds.” Blue lightning washed out the view screen. Dull thumps sounded through the Pillar of Autumn like a string of fire-crackers going off. The ship listed to port, and it started to roll. “We’re hit!” Lieutenant Hall said. “Decompression on Decks C, D, and E. Sections two through twenty-seven. Venting atmosphere. Reactor’s damaged, sir.” She listened to her headset. “Can’t get a clear report of what’s going on belowdecks. We’re losing power.” “Seal those sections. Lieutenant Hikowa, do we have gun control?” “Affirmative.” “Then fire at will, Lieutenant.” The Pillar of Autumn shuddered as its MAC gun fired. Pings and groans diffused though her damaged hull. A trio of white-hot projectiles appeared on the view screen, chasing the Archer missiles toward their intended target. The first round struck the Covenant ship; its shields rippled. The second and third rounds struck, and more than five hundred missiles detonated along her length. Flame dotted the massive vessel, and her shields blazed solid silver. They faded and popped. A dozen missiles impacted her hull and exploded, scarring the bluish armor. “Minimal damage to the target, sir,” Lieutenant Hall reported. “But we downed their shields,” Captain Keyes said. “We can hurt them. That’s all I needed to know. Lieutenant Hikowa, make ready to fire again. Identical targeting solution. Lieutenant Hall, launch our remote-piloted Longsword interceptor and arm its Shiva nuclear warhead. Cortana, take control of the single ship.” Cortana tapped her foot. “Longsword away,” she said. “Where do you want me to park this thing?” “Intercept course for the Covenant ship,” he told her. “Sir,” Lieutenant Hikowa cried. “We have an insufficient charge rate to fire the MAC guns.” “Understood,” Captain Keyes said. “Divert all power from the engines to regenerate gun capacitors.” “May I point out—” Cortana said and crossed her arms."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter36.txt", "text": "“—that if you power down the engines, we will be inside the blast radius of the Shiva warhead when it reaches the Covenant ship?” “Noted,” Captain Keyes said. “Do it.” “Capacitors at seventy-five percent,” Lieutenant Hikowa announced. “Eighty-five. Ninety-five. Full charge, sir. Ready to fire.” “Fire at will,” Captain Keyes ordered. “Missiles away—” A javelin of blue-white energy from the Covenant ship slashed at the Pillar of Autumn. The beam struck, and cut through the hull. The Pillar of Autumn slid into a flat spin as the explosive decompression knocked the ship off course. As the Autumn spun, the Covenant energy beam carved a spiral pattern in the hull, shredding armor and puncturing deep into the ship. The ship lurched sickeningly as the beam played across the portside Archer pods; the missiles detonated in their tubes. Keyes was nearly thrown from the command chair as the deck bucked beneath him. He tightened his safety straps and scowled at the tactical displays. “Damage report!” he yelled, his voice competing with the dozens of hazard alarms that blared through the bridge speakers. Cortana brought up a holographic view of the ship and flagged damaged areas in pulsing red. “Port launch and storage bays have been breached—fires on all decks, all sections. Primary fusion chamber is breached.” The Pillar of Autumn tumbled out of control. “Cortana, get us straight and level. We have to fire our guns!” “Yes, Captain.” Her body became a blur of mathematical symbols. “This is an extremely chaotic trajectory,” she said. “Atmosphere still venting. Hang on. There. Got it.” The Pillar of Autumn righted herself. The Covenant ship centered on the main view screen. This close, Captain Keyes saw how huge the ship was—three times the mass of a normal cruiser. There was a pod mounted on the top deck; it swiveled and tracked the Pillar of Autumn, bringing the turret to bear. It glowed electric white as it built up another lethal charge. “Fire when ready, Lieutenant Hikowa,” Captain Keyes ordered. “Firing!” Thunder rumbled belowdecks. “MAC rounds away.” The shells struck the Covenant vessel; Archer missiles impacted… only a handful got though her downed shields. “Cortana, crash-land our Longsword on that bastard. Set timer delay on the nuke for fifteen seconds.” “Afterburners on,” Cortana replied. “Impact in three… two… one. She’s down, sir.” The Pillar of Autumn sped past the Covenant ship. “Lieutenant Hall, divert any power you can muster to the engines.” “Bringing secondary reactor back online, sir. That gives us fifteen percent.” “Aft camera on center screen,” Captain Keyes ordered. The Covenant ship slowly turned toward the Pillar of Autumn and its turret tracked their position. For the first time in his life, Keyes prayed that a Covenant ship’s shields would hold. The alien ship became a flash of white light; its outline blurred. Their shields held for a split second as the Shiva war-head detonated inside its protective aura. The shockwave rebounded off the asymmetrical shape of the shields just before their collapse."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter36.txt", "text": "Jets of energy exploded outward at three different angles. Thunder and plasma roiled into space… cleanly missing the Pillar of Autumn. The light faded and the Covenant flagship was gone. Captain Keyes puffed again on his pipe and tapped it out. Maybe now they had a chance to rally what remained of the UNSC fleet and defend Reach. “Congratulations Captain,” Cortana said. “I couldn’t have done better myself.” “Thank you, Cortana. Is there a planet nearby?” “Beta Gabriel,” she said. “Fourteen million kilometers. Practically next door.” “Good. Ensign Lovell, plot a course for a slingshot orbit. Reverse our trajectory back in-system.” “Sir,” Lieutenant Dominique interrupted. “Incoming transmission from Reach. It’s the Spartans.” “On speakers, Lieutenant.” Static hissed from the channel. A man’s voice broke through. “—bad. Reactor complex seven has been compromised. We’re falling back. Might be able to save number three. Set off those charges now!” There was a series of explosions… more white noise, then the man returned. “Be advised Pillar of Autumn, groundside reactors are being taken. Orbital guns at risk. Nothing we can do. Too many. We will have to use the nukes—” Static washed away the transmission. “Captain,” Cortana said. “You need to see this, sir.” She overlaid a tactical map of the system on the main view screen. Tiny triangular red markers winked on the edges: Covenant ships—dozens of them—reentered the system from Slipspace. “Sir,” she said, “when the guns around Reach go down…” “There will be nothing left to stop the Covenant,” he finished. Captain Keyes turned to Lieutenant Dominique. “Get those Spartans back online,” he said. “Tell them to evac ASAP. In a few minutes, it’s going to get very nasty around Reach.” He took a deep breath. “Then raise the Master Chief on a secure channel. Let’s hope he has some good news for us.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter37.txt", "text": "Chapter Thirty-Seven 0637 HOURS, AUGUST 30, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH STATION GAMMA “Multiple signals on motion tracker,” the Master Chief said. “They’re all around us.” The passageway behind the Master Chief and Blue-One swarmed with blips. So did docking Bay Nine, ahead of them. The Master Chief saw, however, not all the blips were hostiles. Four Marine friend-or-foe tags strobed on his heads-up display: SGT. JOHNSON, PVT. O’BRIEN, PVT. BISENTI, and PVT. JENKINS. The Master Chief opened up a COM channel to them. “Listen up, Marines. Your lines of fire are sloppy; tighten them up. Concentrate on one Jackal at a time—or you’ll just waste your ammo on their shields.” “Master Chief?” Sergeant Johnson said, startled. “Sir, yes sir!” “Blue-One,” the Master Chief said. “I’m going in. We’re going to open up the Circumference like a tin can.” He nodded toward the Pelican in the adjacent bay. “Give me a few grenades over the top.” “Understood,” she replied. “You’re covered, sir.” She primed two frag grenades, swung around the pressure doors, and threw them behind the Jackals. The Master Chief pushed off the wall—propelled himself in the zero gee across the bay. The grenades detonated and caught the Jackals on their backsides. Blue blood spattered on the insides of their shields and across the deck. The Master Chief crashed into the Pelican’s hull. He pulled himself to the side hatch, opened it, and crawled in. He got into the cockpit, released the docking clamps, and tapped the maneuvering thrusters once to break free. The Pelican lifted off the deck. The Master Chief said over the COM channel, “Marines and Blue-One: take cover behind me.” He maneuvered the Pelican into the center of the docking bay. A dozen Jackals poured in through the passage that Blue-One had just left. The Master Chief fired with the Pelican’s autocannon—cut down their shields and peppered the aliens with hundreds of rounds. They exploded into chunks; alien blood twisted crazily in zero gravity. “Master Chief,” Linda said, “I’m picking up thousands of signals on the motion tracker, inbound from all directions. The entire station is crawling.” The Master Chief opened the Pelican’s back hatch. “Get in,” he said. Blue-One and the Marines piled inside. The Marines did a double take at Blue-One and the Master Chief in their MJOLNIR armor. The Master Chief turned the Pelican to face the Circumference. He sighted the autocannon on the ship’s forward viewports—and opened fire. Thousands of rounds streamed from the chain-gun and cracked through the thick, transparent windows. He followed up with an Anvil-II missile. It blasted through the prow and peeled the craft open. “Take the controls,” he told Blue-One. He slipped out the side hatch and jumped to the Circumference. The inside of the ship’s cockpit was scrap metal. He accessed the computer panel in the floor deck and located the NAV database core. It was a cube of memory crystal the size of his thumb."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter37.txt", "text": "Such a tiny thing to cause so much trouble. He shot it three times with his assault rifle. It shattered. “Mission completed,” he said. One small victory in all this mess. The Covenant wouldn’t find Earth… today. He exited the Circumference. Jackals appeared on the level above them in the docking bay. His motion tracker blinked with solid contacts. He jumped back into the Pelican, strapped himself in the pilot’s chair, and turned the ship to face the outer doors. “Blue-One, signal the dockmaster AI to open the outer bay doors.” “Signal sent,” she said. “No response, sir.” She looked around. “There’s a manual release by the outer door.” She moved toward the aft hatch. “I’ll get this one, sir. It’s my turn. Cover me.” “Roger, Blue-One. Keep your head down. I’ll draw their fire.” She launched herself out the back hatch. The Master Chief tapped the Pelican’s thrusters and the ship rose higher in the bay—up to the second level. The upper decks were the mechanic bays; the area was littered with ships that were partially disassembled in various stages of repair. It was also where a hundred Jackals and a handful of Elites were waiting for him. They opened fire. Plasma bolts scored the hull of the Pelican. The Master Chief fired the chain-gun and let loose a salvo of missiles. Alien shields blazed and failed. Blue and green blood splashed and flash-froze in the icy vacuum. He hit the top thrusters and dropped down to the lower level—slammed the ship back into a berth for cover. Blue-One crouched by the manual release. The outer doors eased open, revealing the night and stars beyond. “You’re clear for exit, Master Chief. We’re home free—” A new contact on the Pelican’s targeting display appeared—right behind Linda. He had to warn her— A bolt of plasma struck her in the back. Another bolt of fire blazed from the upper decks and splashed across her front. She crumpled—her shields flickered and went out. Two more bolts hit her chest. A third blast smashed into her helmet. “No!” the Master Chief said. He felt each of those plasma bolts as if they had hit him, too. He moved the Pelican to cover her. Plasma struck the hull, melting its outer skin. “Get her inside!” he ordered the Marines. They jumped out, grabbed Linda and her smoldering armor, and pulled her inside the Pelican. The Master Chief sealed the hatch, ignited the engines, and pushed them to full thrust—rocketing into space. “Can you fly this ship?” he asked the Marine Sergeant. “Yes, sir,” Johnson replied. “Take over.” The Master Chief went to Linda and knelt by her side. Sections of her armor had melted and adhered to her. Underneath, in patches, bits of carbonized bone showed. He accessed her vital signs on his heads-up display. They were dangerously low. “Did you do it?” she whispered. “Get the database?” “Yes. We got it.” “Good,” she said."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter37.txt", "text": "“We won.” She clasped his hand and closed her eyes. Her vital signs flatlined. John squeezed her hand and let go. “Yes,” he said bitterly. “We won.” “Master Chief, come in.” Captain Keyes’ voice sounded over the COM channel. “The Pillar of Autumn will be in rendezvous position in one minute.” “We’re ready, Captain,” he answered. He set Linda’s hand over her chest. “I’m ready.” * * * The instant the Master Chief docked the Pelican to the Pillar of Autumn, he felt the cruiser accelerate. He took Linda’s body double time to a cryo chamber and immediately froze her. She was clinically dead—there was no doubt of that. Still, if they could get her to a Fleet hospital, they might be able to resuscitate her. It was a long shot—but she was a Spartan. The med techs wanted to check him out as well, but he declined and took the elevator to the bridge to report to Captain Keyes. As he rode inside the lift he felt the ship accelerate port—then starboard. Evasive maneuvers. The elevator doors parted and the Master Chief stepped onto the bridge. He snapped a crisp salute to Captain Keyes. “Reporting for debriefing, sir.” Captain Keyes turned and looked surprised to see him… or maybe he was shocked to see the condition of his armor. It was charred, battered, and covered with alien blood. The Captain returned the Master Chief’s salute. “The NAV database was destroyed?” he asked. “Sir, I would not have left if my mission was incomplete.” “Of course, Master Chief. Very good,” Captain Keyes replied. “Sir, may I ask that you scan for active FOF tags in the region?” The Master Chief glanced at the main view screen—saw scattered fights between Covenant and UNSC warships in the distance. “I lost a man on the station. He may be floating out there… somewhere.” “Lieutenant Hall?” the Captain asked. “Scanning,” she said. After a moment she looked back and shook her head. “I see,” the Master Chief replied. There could be worse deaths… but not for one of his Spartans. Floating helpless. Slowly suffocating and freezing—losing to an enemy that could not be fought. “Sir,” the Master Chief said, “when will the Pillar of Autumn rendezvous with my planetside team?” Captain Keyes turned from the Master Chief and stared out into space. “We won’t be picking them up,” he said quietly. “They were overrun by Covenant forces. They never made orbit. We’ve lost contact with them.” The Master Chief took a step closer. “Then I would like permission to take a dropship and retrieve them, sir.” “Request denied, Master Chief. We still have a mission to perform. And we cannot remain in this system much longer. Lieutenant Dominique, aft camera on the main screen.” Covenant vessels swarmed through the Epsilon Eridani System in five-ship crescent formations. The remaining UNSC ships fled before them… those that could still move. Those ships too damaged to outrun the Covenant were blasted with plasma and laser fire."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter37.txt", "text": "The Covenant had won this battle. They were mopping up before they glassed the planet; the Master Chief had seen this happen in a dozen campaigns. This time was different, however. This time the Covenant was glassing a planet… with his people still on it. He tried to think of a way to stop them… to save his teammates. He couldn’t. The Captain turned and strode to the Master Chief, stood by his side. “Dr. Halsey’s mission,” he said, “is more important than ever now. It may be the only chance left for Earth. We have to focus on that goal.” Three dozen Covenant craft moved toward Gamma station and the now inert orbital defense platforms. They bombarded the installations—the mightiest weapons in the UNSC arsenal—with plasma. The guns melted, and boiled away. The Master Chief clenched his hands into fists. The Captain was correct: there was nothing to do now except complete the mission they had set out to do. Captain Keyes barked, “Ensign Lovell, give me our best acceleration. I want to enter Slipstream space as soon as possible.” Cortana said, “Excuse me, Captain. Six Covenant frigates are inbound on an intercept course.” “Continue evasive maneuvers, Cortana. Prepare the Slip-space generators and get me an appropriate randomized exit vector.” “Aye, sir.” Navigation symbols flashed along the length of her holographic body. The Master Chief continued to watch as the Covenant ships closed in on them. Was he the only Spartan left? Better to die than live without his teammates. But he still had a mission: victory against the Covenant—and vengeance for his fallen comrades. “Generating randomized exit vector per the Cole Protocol,” Cortana said. The Master Chief glanced at her translucent body. She looked vaguely like a younger Dr. Halsey. Tiny dots, ones, and zeros slid over her torso, arms, and legs. Her thoughts were literally worn on her sleeve; the symbols also appeared on Ensign Lovell’s NAV station. He cocked his head as the symbols and numbers scrolled across the NAV console. The representations of Slipspace vectors and velocity curves twisted across the screen—tantalizingly familiar. He’d seen them somewhere before—but he could not make the connection. “Something on your mind, Master Chief?” Cortana asked. “Those symbols… I thought I had seen them somewhere before. It’s nothing.” Cortana got a far-off look in her eyes. The marks cycling on her hologram shifted and rearranged. The Master Chief saw the Covenant fleet gathered around planet Reach. They swarmed and circled like sharks. The first of their plasma bombardments launched toward the surface. Clouds in the fire’s path boiled away. “Jump to Slipspace, Ensign Lovell,” the Captain said. “Get us the hell out of here.” John remembered Chief Mendez’s words—that they had to live and fight another day. He was alive… and there was still plenty of fight left in him. And he would win this war—no matter what it took."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter4.txt", "text": "Chapter Four 0530 HOURS, SEPTEMBER 24, 2517 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH MILITARY COMPLEX, PLANET REACH “Wake up, trainee!” John rolled over in his cot and went back to sleep. He was dimly aware that this wasn’t his room, and that there were other people here. A shock jolted him—from his bare feet to the base of his spine. He yelled in surprise and fell off the cot. He shook off the disorientation from being nearly asleep and got up. “I said up, boot! You know which way up is?” A man in a camouflage uniform stood over John. His hair was shorn and gray at his temples. His dark eyes didn’t look human—too big and black and they didn’t blink. He held a silver baton in one hand; he flicked it toward John and it sparked. John backed away. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Only little kids were afraid… but his body instinctively moved as far away from the instrument as possible. Dozens of other men roused the rest of the children. Seventy-four boys and girls screamed and jumped out of their cots. “I am Chief Petty Officer Mendez,” the uniformed man next to John shouted. “The rest of these men are your instructors. You will do exactly as we tell you at all times.” Mendez pointed to the far end of the cinderblock barracks. “Showers are aft. You will all wash and then return here to dress.” He opened a trunk at the foot of John’s cot and pulled out a matching set of gray sweats. John leaned closer and saw his name stenciled on the chest: JOHN-117. “No slacking. On the double!” Mendez tapped John between his shoulder blades with the baton. Lightning surged across John’s chest. He sprawled on the cot and gasped for breath. “I mean it! Go Go GO!” John moved. He couldn’t inhale—but he ran anyway, clutching his chest. He managed a ragged breath by the time he got to the showers. The other kids looked scared and disoriented. They all stripped off their nightshirts and stepped onto the conveyor, washed themselves in lukewarm soapy water, then rinsed in an icy cold spray. He ran back to his bunk, got into underwear, thick socks, pulled on the sweats and a pair of combat boots that fit his feet perfectly. “Outside, trainees,” Mendez announced. “Triple time… march!” John and the others stampeded out of the barracks onto a strip of grass. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and the edge of the sky was indigo. The grass was wet with dew. There were dozens of rows of barracks, but no one else was up and outside. A pair of jets roared overhead and arced up into the sky. Far away, John heard a metallic crackle. Chief Petty Officer Mendez barked, “You will make five equal-length rows. Fifteen trainees in each.” He waited a few seconds as they milled about. “Straighten those rows. You know how to count to fifteen, trainee?"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter4.txt", "text": "Take three steps back.” John stepped into the second row. As he breathed the cold air he began to wake up. He started to remember. They had taken him in the middle of the night. They injected him with something and he slept for a long time. Then the woman who had given him the coin told him he couldn’t go back. That he wouldn’t see his mother or father— “Jumping jacks!” Mendez shouted. “Count off to one hundred. Ready, go.” The officer started the exercise and John followed his lead. One boy refused—for a split-second. An instructor was on him instantly. The baton whipped into the boy’s stomach. The kid doubled over. “Get with the program, boot,” the trainer snarled. The boy uncurled and started jumping. John had never done so many jumping jacks in his life. His arms and stomach and legs burned. Sweat trickled down his back. “Ninety-eight—99—100.” Mendez paused. He drew in a deep breath. “Sit-ups!” He dropped onto the grass. “Count off to one hundred. No slacking.” John threw himself on the ground. “The first crewman who quits,” Mendez said, “gets to run around the compound twice—and then comes back here and does two hundred sit-ups. Ready… count off! One… two… three.…” Deep squats followed. Then knee bends. John threw up, but that didn’t buy him any respite. A trainer descended on him after a few seconds. John rolled back over and continued. “Leg lifts.” Mendez continued like he was a machine. As if they all were machines. John couldn’t go on—but he knew he’d get the baton again if he stopped. He tried; he had to move. His legs trembled and only sluggishly responded. “Rest,” Mendez finally called. “Trainers: get the water.” The trainers wheeled out carts laden with water bottles. John grabbed one and gulped down the liquid. It was warm and slightly salty. He didn’t care. It was the best water he’d ever had. He flopped on his back in the grass and panted. The sun was up now. It was warm. He rolled to his knees and let the sweat drip off him like a heavy rain. He slowly got up and glanced at the other children. They crouched on the ground, holding their sides, and no one talked. Their clothes were soaked through with perspiration. John didn’t recognize anyone from his school here. So he was alone with strangers. He wondered where his mother was, and what— “A good start, trainees,” Mendez told them. “Now we run. On your feet!” The trainers brandished their batons and herded the trainees along. They jogged down a gravel path through the compound, past more cinderblock barracks. The run seemed to go on forever—they ran alongside a river, over a bridge, then by the edge of a runway where jets took off straight into the air. Once past the runway, Mendez led them on a zigzagging path of stone."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter4.txt", "text": "John wanted to think about what had happened, how he got here, and what was going to happen next… but he couldn’t think straight. All he could feel was the blood pounding through him, the ache in his muscles, and hunger. They ran into a courtyard of smooth flagstones. A pole in the center flew the colors of the UNSC, a blue field with stars and Earth in the corner. At the far end of the yard was a building with a scalloped dome and white columns and dozens of wide steps leading to the entrance. The words NAVAL OFFICERS ACADEMY were chiseled into the arch over the entrance. A woman stood on the top step and beckoned to them. She wore a white sheet wrapped around her body. She looked old to John, yet young at the same time. Then he saw the motes of light orbiting her head and knew she was an AI. He had seen them on vids. She wasn’t solid, but she was still real. “Excellent work, Chief Petty Officer Mendez,” she said in a resonant, silk-smooth voice. She turned to the children. “Welcome. My name is Déjà and I will be your teacher. Please come in. Class is about to start.” John groaned out loud. Several of the others grumbled, too. She turned and started to walk inside. “Of course,” she said, “if you prefer to skip your lessons, you may continue the morning calisthenics.” John double-timed it up the steps. It was cool inside. A tray with crackers and a carton of milk had been laid out for each of them. John nibbled on the dry stale food, then gulped down his milk. John was so tired he wanted to lay his head down on the desk and take a nap—until Déjà started to tell them about a battle and how three hundred soldiers fought against thousands of Persian infantry. A holographic countryside appeared in the classroom. The children walked around the miniature mountains and hills and let the edge of the illusionary sea lap at their boots. Toy-sized soldiers marched toward what Déjà explained was Thermopylae, a narrow strip of land between steep mountains and the sea. Thousands of soldiers marched toward the three hundred who guarded the pass. The soldiers fought: spears and shields splintered, swords flashed and spilled blood. John couldn’t take his eyes off the spectacle. Déjà explained that the three hundred were Spartans and they were the best soldiers who had ever lived. They had been trained to fight since they were children. No one could beat them. John watched, fascinated, as the holographic Spartans slaughtered the Persian spearmen. He had eaten his crackers but he was still hungry, so he took the girl’s next to him when she wasn’t looking, and munched them down as the battle raged on. His stomach still growled and grumbled. When was lunch? Or was it dinnertime already? The Persians broke and ran and the Spartans stood victorious on the field."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter4.txt", "text": "The children cheered. They wanted to see it again. “That’s all for today,” Déjà said. “We’ll continue tomorrow and I’ll show you some wolves. Now it’s time for you to go to the playground.” “Playground?” John said. That was perfect. He could finally just sit on a swing, relax, and think for a moment. He ran out of the room, as did the other trainees. Chief Petty Officer Mendez and the trainers waited for them outside the classroom. “Time for the playground,” Mendez said, and waved the children closer. “It’s a short run. Fall in.” The “short run” turned into two miles. And the playground was like nothing John had ever seen. It was a forest of twenty-meter tall wooden poles. Rope cargo nets and bridges stretched between the poles; they swayed, crossed and crisscrossed one another, a maze suspended in the air. There were slide poles and knotted climbing ropes. There were swings and suspended platforms. There were ropes looped through pulleys and tied to baskets that looked sturdy enough to hoist a person. “Trainees,” Mendez said, “form three lines.” The instructors moved in to herd them, but John and the others made three rows without comment or fuss. “The first person in every row will be team number one,” Mendez said. “The second person in each row will be team number two… and so on. If you do not understand this, speak up now.” No one spoke. John looked to his right. A boy with sandy hair, green eyes, and darkly tanned skin gave him a weary smile. Stenciled on his sweat top was SAMUEL-034. In the row beyond Samuel was a girl. She was taller than John, and skinny, with a long mane of hair dyed blue. KELLY-087. She didn’t look too happy to see him. “Today’s game,” Mendez explained, “is called ‘Ring the Bell.’ ” He pointed to the tallest pole on the playground. It stood an additional ten meters above the others and had a steel slide pole next to it. Hung at the very top of that pole was a brass bell. “There are many ways to get to the bell,” he told them. “I leave it up to each team to find their own way. When every member of your team has rung the bell, you are to get groundside double time and run back here across this finish line.” Mendez took his baton and scratched a straight line in the sand. John raised his hand. Mendez glared at him for a moment with those black unblinking eyes. “A question, trainee?” “What do we win?” Mendez cocked one eyebrow and appraised John. “You win dinner, Number-117. Tonight, dinner is roast turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, brownies, and ice cream.” A murmur of approval swept though the children. “But,” Mendez added, “for there to be winners there must be a loser. The last team to finish goes without food.” The children fell silent—and then looked at each other warily."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter4.txt", "text": "“Make ready,” Mendez said. “I’m Sam,” the boy whispered to John and the girl on their team. She said, “I’m Kelly.” John just looked at them and said nothing. The girl would slow him down. Too bad. He was hungry and he wasn’t about to let them make him lose. “Go!” Mendez shouted. John ran through the pack of children and scrambled up a cargo net onto a platform. He raced across the bridge—jumped onto the next platform, just in time. The bridge flipped and sent five others into the water below. He paused at the rope tied to the large basket. It ran up through a pulley and then back down. He didn’t think he was strong enough to pull himself up in it. Instead, he tackled a knotted climbing rope and scrunched his body up. The rope swung wildly around the center pole. John looked down and almost lost his grip. It looked twice as far down as it had looked from the ground. He saw all the others, some climbing, others floundering in the water, getting up and starting over. No one was as close to the bell as he was. He swallowed his fear and kept climbing up. He thought of the ice cream and chocolate brownies and how he was going to win. John got to the top, grabbed the bell, and rang it three times. He then clasped the steel pole and slid all the way to the ground, falling into a pile of cushions. He got up and ran smiling all the way to the Chief Petty Officer. John crossed the finish line and gave a victory cry. “I was first,” he said, panting. Mendez nodded and made a check on his clipboard. John watched as the others made it and up rang the bell, then raced across the finish line. Kelly and Sam had trouble. They got stuck in a line to get to the bell as everyone bunched up at the end. They finally rang the bell, slid down together… but they crossed the finish line last. They glared at John. He shrugged. “Good work, trainees,” Mendez said, and he beamed at them all. “Let’s get back to the barracks and chow down.” The children, covered in mud and leaning on each another, cheered. “—all except team three,” Mendez said, and looked at Sam, Kelly, and then John. “But I won,” John protested. “I was first.” “Yes, you were first,” Mendez explained, “but your team came in last.” He then addressed all the children. “Remember this: you don’t win unless your team wins. One person winning at the expense of the group means that you lose.” John ran in a stupor all the way back to the barracks. It wasn’t fair. He had won. How can you win and still lose? He watched as the others stuffed themselves with turkey, white meat dripping with gravy."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter4.txt", "text": "They spooned down mountains of vanilla ice cream and left the mess hall with chocolate encrusting the corners of their mouths. John got a liter of water. He drank it, but it didn’t have any taste. It did nothing to fill his hunger. He wanted to cry, but he was too tired. He collapsed in his bunk, thinking of ways to get even with Sam and Kelly for messing him up—but he couldn’t think. Every muscle and bone ached. John fell asleep as soon as his head hit the flat pillow. * * * The next day was the same—calisthenics and running all morning, then class until the afternoon. Today Déjà taught them about wolves. The classroom became a holographic meadow, and the children watched seven wolves hunt a moose. The pack worked together, striking wherever the giant beast wasn’t facing. It was fascinating and horrifying to watch the wolves track down, and then devour, an animal many times their size. John avoided Sam and Kelly in the classroom. He stole a few extra crackers when no one was looking, but they didn’t dull his hunger. After class, they ran back to the playground. Today it was different. There were fewer bridges and more complicated rope-and-pulley systems. The pole with the bell was now twenty meters taller than any of the others. “Same teams as yesterday,” Mendez announced. Sam and Kelly walked up to John. Sam shoved him. John’s temper flared—he wanted to hit Sam in the face, but he was too tired. He’d need all his strength to get to the bell. “You better help us,” Sam hissed, “or I’ll push you off one of those platforms.” “And I’ll jump on top of you,” Kelly added. “Okay,” John whispered. “Just try not to slow me down.” John examined the course. It was like doing a maze on paper, only this one twisted and turned into and out of the page. Many bridges and rope ladders led to dead ends. He squinted—then found one possible route. He nudged Sam and Kelly, then pointed. “Look,” he said, “that basket and rope on the far side. It goes straight to the top. It’s a long pull, though.” He flexed his biceps, uncertain if he could make it in his weakened state. “We can do it,” Sam said. John glanced at the other teams; they were searching the course as well. “We’ll have to make a quick run for it,” he said. “Make sure no one else gets there first.” “I’m fast,” Kelly said. “Real fast.” “Trainees, get ready,” Mendez shouted. “Okay,” John said. “You sprint ahead and hold it for us.” “Go!” Kelly shot forward. John had never seen anyone move like her. She ran like the wolves he had seen today; her feet seemed barely to touch the ground. She got to the basket. John and Sam were only halfway there. One boy beat them to the basket. “Get out,” he ordered Kelly."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter4.txt", "text": "“I’m going up.” Sam and John ran up and pushed him back. “Wait your turn,” Sam said. John and Sam joined Kelly in the basket. Together they pulled on the rope and raised themselves up. There was a lot of rope—for every three meters they pulled, they only rose one meter. A breeze made the basket sway and bounce into the pole. “Faster,” John urged. They pulled as one person, six hands working in unison, and accelerated into the sky. They didn’t get there first. They were third. Each of them got to ring the bell, though—Kelly, Sam, and John. They slid down the pole. Kelly and Sam waited for John to land, and then together they ran across the finish line. Chief Petty Officer Mendez watched them. He didn’t say anything, but John thought he saw a smile flicker across his face. Sam clapped John and Kelly on their backs. “That was good work,” Sam said. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “We can be friends… I mean, if you want. It’d be no big deal.” Kelly shrugged and replied, “Sure.” “Okay,” John said. “Friends.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter5.txt", "text": "Chapter Five 0630 HOURS, JULY 12, 2519 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH MILITARY WILDERNESS TRAINING PRESERVE, PLANET REACH John held on tight as the dropship accelerated up and over a jagged snowcapped mountain range. The sun peeked over the horizon and washed the white snow with pinks and oranges. The other members of his unit pressed their faces to the windows and watched. Sam sat next to him and looked outside. “Nice place for a snowball fight.” “You’ll lose,” Kelly said. She leaned over John’s shoulder to get a better look at the terrain. “I’m a dead aim with snowballs.” She scratched the stubble of her shorn hair. “Dead is right,” John muttered. “Especially when you load them with rocks.” CPO Mendez stepped from the cockpit into the passenger compartment. The trainees stood and snapped to attention. “At ease, and sit down.” The silver at Mendez’s temples had grown to a band across the side of his closely shaved hair, but if anything he had gotten stronger and tougher since John had first laid eyes on him two years ago. “Today’s mission will be simple for a change.” Mendez’s voice easily penetrated the roar of the dropship’s engines. He handed a stack of papers to Kelly. “Pass these out, recruit.” “Sir!” She saluted smartly and handed one paper to each of the seventy-five children in the squad. “These are portions of maps of the local region. You will be set down by yourselves. You will then navigate to a marked extraction point and we will pick you up there.” John turned his map over. It was just one part of a much larger map—no drop or extraction point marked. How was he supposed to navigate without a reference point? But he knew this was part of the mission, to answer that question on his own. “One more thing,” Mendez said. “The last trainee to make it to the extraction point will be left behind.” He glanced out a window. “And it’s a very long walk back.” John didn’t like it. He wasn’t going to lose, but he didn’t want anyone else to lose, either. The thought of Kelly or Sam or any of the others marching all the way back made him uneasy… if they could make it all the way back alone over those mountains. “First drop in three minutes,” Mendez barked. “Trainee 117, you’re up first.” “Sir! Yes, sir!” John replied. He glanced out the window and scanned the terrain. There was a ring of jagged mountains, a valley thick with cedars, and a ribbon of silver—a river that fed into a lake. John nudged Sam, pointed to the river, then jerked his thumb toward the lake. Sam nodded, then pulled Kelly aside and pointed out the window. Kelly and Sam moved quickly down the line of seated trainees. The ship decelerated. John felt his stomach rise as they dropped toward the ground."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter5.txt", "text": "“Trainee 117: front and center.” Mendez stepped to the rear of the compartment as the ship’s tail split and a ramp extended. Cold air blasted into the ship. He patted John on the shoulder. “Watch out for wolves in the forest, 117.” “Yes, sir!” John looked over his shoulder at the others. His teammates gave him an almost imperceptible nod. Good, everyone got his message. He ran down the ramp and into the forest. The dropship’s engines roared to life and it rose high into the cloudless sky. He zipped up his jacket. He wore only fatigues, boots, and a heavy parka—not exactly the gear he’d pack for a prolonged stay in the wilderness. John started toward one particularly sharp peak he had spotted from the air; the river lay in that direction. He’d follow it downstream and meet the others at the lake. He marched through the woods until he heard the gurgling of a stream. He got close enough to see the direction of the flow, then headed back into the forest. Mendez’s exercises often had a twist to them—stun mines on the obstacle course, snipers with paint pellet guns during parade drills. And with the Chief up in that dropship, John wasn’t about to reveal his position unless he had a good reason. He passed a blueberry bush and took the time to strip it before he moved on. This was the first time in months he had been alone and could just think. He popped a handful of berries into his mouth and chewed. He thought about the place that had been his home, his parents… but more and more that seemed like a dream. John knew it wasn’t, and that he had once had a different life. But this was the life he wanted. He was a soldier. He had an important job to train for. Mendez said they were the Navy’s best and brightest. That they were the only hope for peace. He liked that. Before, he never knew what he would be when he grew up. He never really thought about anything other than watching vids and playing—nothing had been a challenge. Now every day was a challenge and a new adventure. John knew more things, thanks to Déjà, than he ever thought he could have learned at his old school: algebra and trigonometry, the history of a hundred battles and kings. He could string a trip line, fire a rifle, and treat a chest wound. Mendez had shown him how to be strong… not only with his body, but strong with his head, too. He had a family here: Kelly, Sam, and all the others in his squad. The thought of his squadmates brought him back to Mendez’s mission—one of them was going to be left behind. There had to be a way to get them all home. John decided he wasn’t going to leave if he couldn’t figure it out. He arrived at the edge of the lake, stood, and listened."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter5.txt", "text": "John heard an owl hooting in the distance. He marched toward the sound. “Hey, owl,” he said when he was close. Sam stepped out from behind a tree and grinned. “That’s ‘Chief Owl’ to you, trainee.” They walked around the circumference of the lake, gathering the rest of the children in the squad. John counted them to make sure: seventy-four. “Let’s get the map pieces together,” Kelly suggested. “Good idea,” John said. “Sam, take three and scout the area. I don’t want any of the Chief’s surprises sneaking up on us.” “Right.” Sam picked Fhajad, James, and Linda, and then the four of them took off into the brush. Kelly collected the map pieces and settled in the shade of an ancient cedar tree. “Some of these don’t belong, and some are copies,” she said, and she laid them out. “Yes, here’s an edge. Got it—this is the lake, the river, and here…” She pointed to a distant patch of green. “That’s got to be the extraction point.” She shook her head and frowned. “If the legend on this map is right, it’s a full day’s hike, though. We better get started.” John whistled and a moment later Sam and his scouts returned. “Let’s move out,” John said. No one argued. They fell into line behind Kelly as she navigated. Sam blazed the trail ahead. He had the best eyes and ears. Several times he stopped and signaled everyone to freeze or hide—but it turned out to be just a rabbit or a bird. After several miles of marching, Sam dropped back. He whispered to John, “This is too easy. It’s not like any of the Chief’s normal field exercises.” John nodded. “I’ve been thinking that, too. Just keep your eyes and ears sharp.” They stopped at noon to stretch and eat berries they had gathered along the trail. Fhajad spoke up. “I want to know one thing,” he said. He paused to wipe the sweat off his dark skin. “We’re going to get to the extraction point at the same time. So who’s getting left behind? We should decide now.” “Draw straws,” someone suggested. “No,” John said, and stood. “No one’s being left behind. We’re going to figure a way to get all of us out.” “How?” Kelly asked, scratching her head. “Mendez said—” “I know what he said. But there’s got to be a way—I just haven’t thought of one yet. Even if it has to be me that stays behind—I’ll make sure everyone gets back to the base.” John started marching again. “Come on, we’re wasting time.” The others fell in behind him. The shadows of the trees lengthened and melted together and the sun turned the edge of the sky red. Kelly halted and motioned for everyone else to stop. “We’re almost there,” she whispered. “Me and Sam will scout it out,” John said. “Everyone fall out… and keep quiet.” The rest of the children silently followed his orders."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter5.txt", "text": "John and Sam crept through the underbrush and then hunkered down at the edge of a meadow. The dropship sat in the center of the grassy field; her floodlights illuminated everything for thirty meters. Six men sat on the open launch ramp, smoking cigarettes and passing a canteen between themselves. Sam motioned to drop back. “You recognize them?” he whispered. “No. You?” Sam shook his head. “They’re not in uniform. They don’t look like any soldiers I’ve ever seen. Maybe they’re rebels. Maybe they stole the dropship and killed the Chief.” “No way,” John said. “Nothing can kill the Chief. But one thing’s for sure: I don’t think we can just walk up there and get a free ride back to the base. Let’s go back.” They crept back into the woods and then explained the situation to the others. “What do you want to do?” Kelly asked him. John wondered why she thought he had an answer. He looked around and saw everyone was watching him, waiting for him to speak. He shifted on his feet. He had to say something. “Okay… we don’t know who these men are or what they’ll do when they see us. So we find out.” The children nodded, seeming to think this was the right thing to do. “Here’s how,” John told them. “First, I’ll need a rabbit.” “That’s me,” Kelly said, and sprang to her feet. “I’m the fastest.” “Good,” John said. “You go to the edge of the meadow—and then let them see you. I’ll go along and hide nearby and watch. In case anything happens to you, I’ll report back to the others.” She nodded. “Then you lure a few back here. Run right past this spot. Sam, you’ll be out in the open, pretending like you’ve broken your leg.” “Gotcha,” Sam said. He walked over to Fhajad and had him scrape his shin with his boot. Blood welled from the wound. “The rest of you,” John said, “wait in the woods in a big circle. If they try to do anything but help Sam…” John made a fist with his right hand and slammed it into his open palm. “Remember the moose and the wolves?” They all nodded and grinned. They had seen that lesson many times in Déjà’s classroom. “Get some rocks,” John told them. Kelly stripped off her parka, stretched her legs and knees. “Okay,” she said, “let’s do this.” Sam lay down, clutching his leg. “Oooh—it hurts, help me.” “Don’t overdo it,” John said, and kicked some dirt on him. “Or they’ll know it’s a setup.” John and Kelly then crept toward the meadow and halted a few meters from the edge. He whispered to her, “If you want me to be the rabbit…” She slugged him in the shoulder—hard. “You think I can’t do my part?” “I take it back,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. John moved off ten meters to her flank, took cover, and watched."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter5.txt", "text": "Kelly emerged at the edge of the meadow, stepping into the illumination from the dropship’s floodlights. “Hey!” she said, and waved her arms over her head. “Over here. You got any food? I’m starving.” The men slowly stood and pulled out stun batons. “There’s one,” John heard them whisper. “I’ll get her. The rest of you stay here and wait for the others.” The man cautiously approached Kelly, a stun baton held behind his back so she couldn’t see it. She stayed put and waited for him to get closer. “Hang on a sec,” she said. “I dropped my jacket back there. I’ll be right back.” She turned and ran. The man leaped after her, but she had already vanished into the shadows. “Stop!” “This will be too easy,” one of the other men said. “Kids won’t know what hit them.” Another remarked, “Fish in a barrel.” John had heard enough. He ran after Kelly, but realized that neither he nor the other man had a chance to catch her. He halted when he got close to where Sam lay. The man stopped. He looked around, his eyes not quite adjusted to the dark, then spotted Sam on the ground holding his bloody leg. “Please, help me,” Sam whimpered. “It’s broken.” “I got your broken leg right here, kid.” The man raised his baton. John picked up a rock. He threw it, but missed. The man spun around. “Who’s there?” Sam rolled to his feet and darted away. There was a rustling in the forest, then a hail of stones whistled through the trees, pelting the man. Kelly appeared and sidearmed a rock as hard as she could—and hit the man dead center in the forehead. He toppled and slammed into the ground. The other children moved in. “What do we do with him?” Sam asked. “It’s just an exercise, right?” Fhajad said. “He has to be with Mendez.” John rolled the man over. A trickle of blood snaked from his head into his eye socket. “You heard him,” John whispered. “You saw what he was going to do to Sam. Mendez or our trainers would never do that to us. Ever. He’s got no uniform. No insignias. He’s not one of us.” John kicked the man in the face and then the ribs. The man reflexively curled into a ball. “Get his baton.” Sam grabbed the weapon. He kicked him, too. “Now we go back and get the others,” John told them. “Kelly, you be the rabbit again. Just get them to the edge of the clearing. Duck out, and let us do the rest.” She nodded and started back to the meadow. The rest of the squad fanned out, collecting rocks along the way. After a minute Kelly stepped onto the grassy field and shouted, “That guy fell and hit his head. Over here!” The five remaining men stood and ran toward her. When they were close enough, John whistled. The air suddenly swarmed with stones."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter5.txt", "text": "The men held up their hands and tried to protect themselves. They dropped and covered their heads. John whistled again and seventy-five children charged screaming toward the bewildered men. The men got up to defend themselves. They looked stunned—like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Sam smashed his baton over a man’s head. Fhajad was hit squarely in the face by one man’s fist, and he fell. The men were overwhelmed by a wave of flesh, beaten to the ground with fists and stones and boots until they no longer moved. John stood over their bleeding bodies. He was mad. They would have hurt him and his squad. He wanted to kick in their skulls. He took a deep breath and then exhaled. He had better things to do and bigger problems to figure out—anger would have to wait. “Want to call Mendez now?” Sam asked as he pulled Fhajad shakily to his feet. “Not yet,” John told him. He marched onto the dropship. No one else was on board. John accessed the COM system and opened the mail link. He linked up with Déjà. Her face appeared, a scratchy hologram hovering over the terminal. “Good evening, Trainee 117,” she said. “Do you have a homework question?” “Kind of,” he replied. “One of CPO Mendez’s assignments.” “Ah.” After a moment’s pause she said, “Very well.” “I’m in an Albatross dropship. There’s no pilot, but I need to get home. Teach me to fly it, please.” Déjà shook her head. “You are not rated to fly that craft, trainee. But I can help. Do you see the winged icon in the corner of your screen? Tap it three times.” John tapped it and a hundred icons and displays filled the screen. “Touch the green arrows at nine o’clock twice,” she told him. He did and then the words autopilot activated flashed on-screen. “I have control now,” Déjà said. “I will get you home.” “Hang on a second,” John said and ran outside. “Everyone onboard—double time!” The children ran onto the ship. Kelly paused and asked, “Who’s getting left behind?” “No one,” John said. “Just get in.” He made sure he was the last on the ship, then said, “Okay, Déjà, get out us out of here.” The dropship’s jets roared to life and it rose into the sky. * * * John stood at attention in Chief Petty Officer Mendez’s office. He had never been in here. No one had. A trickle of sweat dripped down his back. The dark wood paneling and the smell of cigar smoke made him feel claustrophobic. Mendez glowered at John as he read the report on his clipboard. The door opened and Dr. Halsey walked in. Mendez stood, gave her a curt nod and then sat back in his padded chair. “Hello, John,” Dr. Halsey said. She sat across from Mendez, crossed her legs, and then adjusted her gray skirt. “Dr. Halsey,” John replied instantly. He saluted."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Chapter5.txt", "text": "None of the other grown-ups called him by his first name, ever. He didn’t understand why she did. “Trainee 117,” Mendez snapped. “Tell me again why you stole UNSC property… and why you attacked the men I had assigned to guard it.” John wanted to explain that he was just doing what had to be done. That he was sorry. That he would do anything to make it up. But John knew the Chief hated whiners, almost as much as he hated excuses. “Sir,” John said. “The guards were out of uniform. No insignia. They failed to identify themselves, sir!” “Hmm,” Mendez mused over the report again. “So it seems. And the ship?” “I took my squad home, sir. I was the last onboard—so if anyone should have been left—” “I didn’t ask for a passenger list, Crewman.” His voice softened to a growl and he turned to Dr. Halsey. “What are we going to do with this one?” “Do?” She pushed her glasses higher on her nose and examined John. “I think that’s obvious, Chief. Make him a Squad Leader.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter6.txt", "text": "Chapter Six 1130 HOURS MARCH 09, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE MEDICAL FACILITY, IN ORBIT AROUND PLANET REACH “I want that transmission decoded now,” Dr. Halsey snapped at Déjà. “The encryption scheme is extremely complex,” replied Déjà with a hint of irritation in her normally glass-smooth voice. “I don’t even know why they bothered. Who else but Beta-5 Division even has the resources to use this data?” “Spare me the banter, Déjà. I’m not in the mood. Just concentrate on the decryption.” “Yes, Doctor.” Dr. Halsey paced across the antiseptic white tile of the Observation Room. One side of the room was filled with floor-to-ceiling terminals that monitored the vital signs of the children—test subjects, she corrected herself. They displayed drug uptake rates and winking green, blue, and red status indicators: EKGs, pulse rates, and a hundred other pieces of medical data. The other side of the observation room overlooked dozens of translucent domes, windows into the surgical bays on the level below. Each bay was a sealed environment staffed with the best surgeons and biotechnicians that the Office of Naval Intelligence could drum up. The bays had been scrubbed and irradiated and were in the final preparation stages to receive and hold the special biohazardous materials. “Done,” Déjà announced. “The file awaits your inspection, Doctor.” Dr. Halsey stopped her pacing and sat. “On my glasses, please, Déjà.” Her glasses scanned retinal and brain patterns, and the security barrier of the file lifted. With a blink of her eyes, she opened the file. It read: UNITED NATIONS SPACE COMMAND PRIORITY TRANSMISSION 09872H-98 ENCRYPTION CODE: RED PUBLIC KEY: FILE /EXCISED ACCESS OMEGA/ FROM: ADMIRAL YSIONRIS JEROMI, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, UNSC RESEARCH STATION HOPEFUL TO: DR. CATHERINE ELIZABETH HALSEY M.D.,PH.D., SPECIAL CIVILIAN CONSULTANT (CIVILIAN IDENTIFICATION NUMBER: 10141-026-SRB4695) SUBJECT: MITIGATING FACTORS AND RELATIVE BIOLOGICAL RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH QUERIED EXPERIMENTAL MEDICAL PROCEDURES CLASSIFICATION: RESTRICTED (BGX DIRECTIVE) /START FILE/ CATHERINE, I AM AFRAID FURTHER ANALYSIS HAS YIELDED NO VIABLE ALTERNATIVES TO MITIGATE THE RISKS IN YOUR PROPOSED “HYPOTHETICAL” EXPERIMENTATION. I HAVE, HOWEVER, ATTACHED THE SYNOPSIS OF MY TEAM’S FINDINGS AS WELL AS ALL RELEVANT CASE STUDIES. PERHAPS YOU WILL FIND THEM USEFUL. I HOPE IT IS A HYPOTHETICAL STUDY… THE USE OF BONOBOS IN YOUR PROPOSAL IS TROUBLESOME. THESE ANIMALS ARE EXPENSIVE AND RARE NOW SINCE THEY ARE NO LONGER BRED IN CAPTIVITY. I WOULD HATE TO SEE SUCH VALUABLE SPECIMENS WASTED IN SOME SECTION THREE PROJECT. BEST, Y.J. She winced at the veiled rebuke in the Admiral’s communiqué. He had never approved of her decision to work with the Office of Naval Intelligence, and made his disappointment with his star pupil evident every time she visited Hopeful. It was hard enough to justify the morality of the course she was about to embark upon. Jeromi’s disapproval only made her decision more difficult. Dr. Halsey gritted her teeth and returned to the report. SYNOPSIS OF CHEMICAL/BIOLOGICAL RISKS WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PROCEDURES ARE CLASSIFIED LEVEL-3 EXPERIMENTAL."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter6.txt", "text": "PRIMATE TEST SUBJECTS MUST BE CLEARED THROUGH UNSC QUARTERMASTER GENERAL OFFICE CODE: OBF34. FOLLOW GAMMA CODE BIOHAZARD DISPOSAL PROTOCOL. 1. CARBIDE CERAMIC OSSIFICATION: ADVANCED MATERIAL GRAFTING ONTO SKELETAL STRUCTURES TO MAKE BONES VIRTUALLY UNBREAKABLE. RECOMMENDED COVERAGE NOT TO EXCEED 3 PERCENT TOTAL BONE MASS BECAUSE SIGNIFICANT WHITE BLOOD CELL NECROSIS. SPECIFIC RISK FOR PRE- AND NEAR-POSTPUBESCENT ADOLESCENTS: SKELETAL GROWTH SPURTS MAY CAUSE IRREPARABLE BONE PULVERIZATION. SEE ATTACHED CASE STUDIES. 2. MUSCULAR ENHANCEMENT INJECTIONS: PROTEIN COMPLEX IS INJECTED INTRAMUSCULARLY TO INCREASE TISSUE DENSITY AND DECREASE LACTASE RECOVERY TIME. RISK: 5 PERCENT OF TEST SUBJECTS EXPERIENCE A FATAL CARDIAC VOLUME INCREASE. 3. CATALYTIC THYROID IMPLANT: PLATINUM PELLET CONTAINING HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE CATALYST IS IMPLANTED IN THE THYROID TO BOOST GROWTH OF SKELETAL AND MUSCLE TISSUES. RISK: RARE INSTANCES OF ELEPHANTIASIS. SUPPRESSED SEXUAL DRIVE. 4. OCCIPITAL CAPILLARY REVERSAL: SUBMERGENCE AND BOOSTED BLOOD VESSEL FLOW BENEATH THE RODS AND CONES OF SUBJECT’S RETINA. PRODUCES A MARKED VISUAL PERCEPTION INCREASE. RISK: RETINAL REJECTION AND DETACHMENT. PERMANENT BLINDNESS. SEE ATTACHED AUTOPSY REPORTS. 5. SUPERCONDUCTING FIBRIFICATION OF NEURAL DENDRITES: ALTERATION OF BIOELECTRICAL NERVE TRANSDUCTION TO SHIELDED ELECTRONIC TRANSDUCTION. THREE HUNDRED PERCENT INCREASE IN SUBJECT REFLEXES. ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE OF MARKED INCREASE IN INTELLIGENCE, MEMORY, AND CREATIVITY. RISK: SIGNIFICANT INSTANCES OF PARKINSON’S DISEASE AND FLETCHER’S SYNDROME. /END FILE/ PRESS ENTER TO OPEN LINKED ATTACHMENTS. Dr. Halsey closed the file. She erased all traces of it—sent Déjà to track the file pathways all the way back to Hopeful and destroy Admiral Jeromi’s notes and files relative to this incident. She removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry,” Déjà said. “I, too, had hoped there would be some new process to lower the risks.” Dr. Halsey sighed. “I have doubts, Déjà. I thought the reasons so compelling when we first started project SPARTAN. Now? I… I just don’t know.” “I have been over the ONI projections of Outer Colony stability three times, Doctor. Their conclusion is correct: massive rebellion within twenty years unless drastic military action is taken. And you know the ‘drastic military action’ the brass would like. The SPARTANS are our only option to avoid overwhelming civilian losses. They will be the perfect pinpoint strike force. They can prevent a civil war.” “Only if they survive to fulfill that mission,” Dr. Halsey countered. “We should delay the procedures. More research needs to be done. We could use the time to work on MJOLNIR. We need time to—” “There is another reason to proceed expeditiously,” Déjà said. “Although I am loath to bring this to your attention, I must. If the Office of Naval Intelligence detects a delay in their prize project, you will likely be replaced by someone who harbors… fewer doubts. And regrettably for the children, most likely someone less qualified.” “I hate this.” Dr. Halsey got up and strode to the fire exit. “And sometimes, Déjà, I hate you, too.” She left the observation room. Mendez was waiting for her in the hallway. “Walk with me, Chief,” she said."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter6.txt", "text": "He followed without a word as they took the stairs to the pre-op wing of the hospital. They entered room 117. John lay in bed and an IV drip was attached to his arm. His head had been shaved and incision vectors had been lasered onto his entire body. Despite these indignities, Dr. Halsey marveled at what a spectacular physical specimen he had grown into. Fourteen years old and he had the body of an eighteen-year-old Olympic athlete, and a mind the equal of any Naval Academy honors graduate. Dr. Halsey forced the best smile she could muster. “How are you feeling?” “I’m fine, ma’am,” John replied groggily. “The nurse said the sedation would take effect soon. I’m fighting it to see how long I can stay awake.” His eyelids fluttered. “It’s not easy.” John spotted Mendez and he struggled to sit up and salute, but failed. “I know this is one of the Chief’s exercises. But I don’t know what the twist is. Can you tell me, Dr. Halsey? Just this time? How do I win?” Mendez looked away. Dr. Halsey leaned closer to John as he closed his eyes and started to breathe deeply. “I’ll tell you how to win, John,” she whispered. “You have to survive.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter7.txt", "text": "Chapter Seven 0000 HOURS MARCH 30, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC CARRIER ATLAS EN ROUTE TO THE LAMBDA SERPENTIS SYSTEM “And so we commit the bodies of our fallen brothers to space.” Mendez solemnly closed his eyes for a moment, the ceremony completed. He pressed a control and the ash canisters moved slowly into the ejection tubes… and the void beyond. John stood rigidly at attention. The carrier’s missile launch bays—normally cramped, overcrowded, and bustling with activity—were unusually quiet. The Atlas’ firing deck had been cleared of munitions and crew. Long, unadorned black banners now hung from the bay’s overhead gantries. “Honors… ten hut!” Mendez barked. John and the other surviving Spartans saluted in unison. “Duty,” Mendez said. “Honor and self-sacrifice. Death does not diminish these qualities in a soldier. We shall remember.” A series of thumps resounded through the Atlas’ hull as the canisters were hurled into space. The view screen flickered and displayed a field of stars. The canisters appeared one by one, quickly falling behind the carrier as it continued on its course. John watched. With each of the stainless-steel cylinders that drifted by, he felt that he was losing a part of himself. It felt like leaving his people behind. Mendez’s face might as well been chiseled from stone, for all the emotion it showed. He finished his protracted salute and then said, “Crewmen, dismissed.” Not everything had been lost. John glanced around the launch chamber; Sam, Kelly, and thirty others still stood at attention in their black dress uniforms. They had made it unharmed through the last—“mission” wasn’t quite the right word. More or less. There were a dozen others, though, who had lived… but were no longer soldiers. It hurt John to look at them. Fhajad sat in a wheelchair, shaking uncontrollably. Kirk and René were in neutral-buoyancy gel tanks, breathing through respirators; their bones had been so twisted they no longer looked human. There were others, still alive, but with injuries so critical they could not be moved. Orderlies pushed Fhajad and the other injured toward the elevator. John strode toward them and stopped, blocking their path. “Stand fast, Crewman,” he demanded. “Where are you taking my men?” The orderly halted and his eyes widened. He swallowed and then said, “I, sir… I have my orders, sir.” “Squad Leader,” Mendez called out. “A moment.” “Stay,” John told the orderly, and marched to face Chief Mendez. “Yes, sir.” “Let them go,” Mendez said quietly. “They can’t fight anymore. They don’t belong here.” John inadvertently glanced at the view screen and the long line of canisters as they shrank in the distance. “What will happen to my men?” “The Navy takes care of its own,” Mendez replied, and lifted his chin a little higher. “They may no longer be the fastest or the strongest soldiers—but they still have sharp minds. They can still plan missions, analyze data, troubleshoot ops…” John exhaled a sigh of relief."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter7.txt", "text": "“That’s all any of us ask for, sir: a chance to serve.” He turned to face Fhajad and the others. He snapped to attention and saluted. Fhajad managed to raise one shaking arm and return the salute. The orderlies wheeled them away. John looked at what remained of his squad. None of them had moved since the memorial ceremony. They were waiting for their next mission. “Our orders, sir?” John asked. “Two days full bed rest, Squad Leader. Then microgravity physical therapy aboard the Atlas until you recover from the side effects of your augmentation.” Side effects. John flexed his hand. He was clumsy now. Sometimes he could barely walk without falling. Dr. Halsey had assured him that these “side effects” were a good sign. “Your brain must relearn how to move your body with faster reflexes and stronger muscles,” she told him. But his eyes hurt, and they bled a little in the morning, too. He had constant headaches. Every bone in his body ached. John didn’t understand any of this. He only knew that he had a duty to perform—and now he feared he wouldn’t be able to. “Is that all, sir?” he asked Mendez. “No,” the Chief replied. “Déjà will be running your squad through the dropship pilot simulator as soon as they are up to it. And,” he added, “if they are up for the challenge, she wanted to cover some more organic chemistry and complex algebra.” “Yes, sir,” John replied, “we’re up to the challenge.” “Good.” John continued to stand fast. “Was there something else, Squad Leader?” John furrowed his brow, hesitated, and then finally said, “I was Squad Leader. The last mission was therefore my responsibility… and members of my squad died. What did I do wrong?” Mendez stared at John with his impenetrable black eyes. He glanced at the squad, then back to John. “Walk with me.” He led John to the view screen. He stood and watched as the last of the canisters vanished into the darkness. “A leader must be ready to send the soldiers under his command to their deaths,” Mendez said without turning to face John. “You do this because your duty to the UNSC supersedes your duty to yourself or even your crew.” John looked away from the view screen. He couldn’t look at the emptiness anymore. He didn’t want to think of his teammates—friends who were like brothers and sisters to him—forever lost. “It is acceptable,” Mendez said, “to spend their lives if necessary.” He finally turned and met John’s gaze. “It is not acceptable, however, to waste those lives. Do you understand the difference?” “I… believe I understand, sir,” John said. “But which was it on this last mission? Lives spent? Or lives wasted?” Mendez turned back toward the blackness of space and didn’t answer. 0430 HOURS, APRIL 22, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC CARRIER ATLAS ON PATROL IN THE LAMBDA SERPENTIS SYSTEM John oriented himself as he entered the gym."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter7.txt", "text": "From the stationary corridor, it was easy to see that this section of the Atlas rotated. Like other ships of this age, acceleration gave the circular walls a semblance of gravity. Unlike the other portions of the dated carrier, however, this section wasn’t cylindrical, but rather a segmented cone. The outer portion was wider and rotated more slowly than the narrower inner portion—simulating gravitational forces from one quarter to two gravities along the length of the gym. There were free weights, punching and speed bags, a boxing ring, and machines to stretch and tone every muscle group. No one else was up this early. He had the place to himself. John started with arm curls. He went to the center section, calibrated at one gee, and picked up a twenty-kilogram dumbbell. It felt wrong—too light. The spin must be off. He set the weights down and picked up a forty-kilogram set. That felt right. For the last three weeks the Spartans had gone through a daily routine of stretching, isometric exercises, light sparring drills, and lots of eating. They were under orders to consume five high-protein meals a day. After every meal they had to report to the ship’s medical bay for a series of mineral and vitamin injections. John was looking forward to getting back to Reach and his normal routine. There were only thirty-two other soldiers left in his squad. Thirty candidates had “washed out” of the Spartan program; they died during the augmentation process. The other dozen, suffering from side effects of the process, had been permanently reassigned within the Office of Naval Intelligence. He missed them all, but he and the others had to go on—they had to recover and prove themselves all over again. John wished Chief Mendez had warned him. He could have prepared. Maybe that was the trick to the last mission—to learn to be prepared for anything. He wouldn’t let his guard down again. He took a seat at the leg machine, set it to the maximum weight—but it felt too light. He moved to the high-gee end of the gym. Things felt normal again. John worked every machine, then moved to a speed bag, a leather ball attached to the floor and ceiling by a thick elastic band. There were only certain allowed frequencies at which the bag could be hit, or it gyrated chaotically. His fist jabbed forward, cobra-quick, and struck. The speed bag moved, but slowly, like it was underwater… far too slowly considering how hard he had hit it. The tension on the line must be turned way down. He twanged the line and it hummed. It was tight. Was everything broken in this room? He pulled a pin from the locking collar on the bench press. John walked to the center section—supposedly one gee. He held the pin a meter off the deck and dropped it. It clattered on the deck. It looked as if it had fallen normally… but somehow it also looked slow to John."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter7.txt", "text": "He set the timer on his watch and dropped the pin again. Forty-five-hundredths of a second. One meter in about a half second. He forgot the formula for distance and acceleration, so he ran through the calculus and rederived the equation. He even did the square root. He frowned. He had always struggled with math before. The answer was a gravitational acceleration of nine point eight meters per second squared. One standard gee. So the room was rotating correctly. He was out of calibration. His experiment was cut short. Four men entered the gym. They were out of uniform, wearing only shorts and boots. Their heads were cleanly shaven. They were all heavily muscled, lean, and fit. The largest of the four was taller than John. Scars covered one side of his face. John could tell they were Special Forces—Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. The ODSTs had the traditional tattoos burned onto their arms: DROP JET JUMPERS and FEET FIRST INTO HELL. “Helljumpers”—the infamous 105th. John had overheard mess hall chatter about them. They had a reputation for success… and for brutality, even against fellow soldiers. John gave them a polite nod. They just brushed past him and started on the high-gravity free weights. The largest ODST lifted the bar of the bench press. He struggled and the bar wavered unsteadily. The iron plates on the right end slid off and fell to the deck. The opposite end of the bar tilted, and he dropped the weight, almost crushing his spotter’s foot. Startled by the noise, John jumped up. “What the—” The big ODST stood and glared at the locking collar that had slipped off. “Someone took the pin.” He growled and turned to John. John picked up the pin. “The error was mine,” he said and stepped forward. “My apologies.” The four ODSTs moved as one toward John. The big guy with the scars stood a hand’s breadth away from John’s nose. “Why don’t you take that pin and shove it, meat?” he said, grinning. “Or better yet, maybe I should make you eat it.” He nodded to his friends. John only knew three ways to react to people. If they were his superior officers, he obeyed them. If they were part of his squad, he helped them. If they were a threat, he neutralized them. So when the men surrounding him moved… he hesitated. Not because he was afraid, but because these men could have fallen into any of John’s three categories. He didn’t know their rank. They were fellow servicemen in the UNSC. But, at the moment, they didn’t seem friendly. The two men flanking him grabbed John’s biceps. The one behind him tried to slip an arm around his neck. John hunched his shoulders and tucked his chin to his chest so he couldn’t be choked. He whipped his right elbow over the hand holding him, pinned it to his side, and then straight punched the man and broke his nose."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Chapter7.txt", "text": "The other three reacted, tightening their grips and stepping closer—but like the dropped pin, they moved slowly. John ducked and slipped out of the unsuccessful headlock. He spun free, breaking the grasp of the man on his left at the same time. “Stand down!” A booming voice echoed across the gym. A sergeant stepped into the gym and strode toward them. Unlike Mendez, who was fit and trim and was always serious, this man’s stomach bulged over his belt, and he looked bemused. John snapped to attention. The others stood there and continued to glare at John. “Sarge,” the man with the bleeding nose said. “We were just—” “Did I ask you a question?” the Sergeant barked. “No, Sergeant!” the man replied. The Sergeant eyed John, then the ODSTs. “You’re all are so eager to fight, get in the ring and go to it.” “Sir!” John said. He went to the boxing ring, slipped through the ropes, and stood there waiting. This was starting to make sense. It was a mission. John had received orders from a superior officer, and the four men were now targets. The big ODST pushed through the ropes and the others gathered to watch. “I’m going to rip you to pieces, meat,” he grunted through clenched teeth. John sprang off his back foot and launched his entire weight behind his first strike. His fist smashed into the man’s wide chin. John’s left hand followed and impacted on the soldier’s jaw. The man’s hands came up; John stepped in, pinned one of the man’s arms to his chest, and followed through with a hook to his floating ribs. Bones broke. The man staggered back. John took a short step, brought his heel down on the man’s knee. Three more punches and the man was against the ropes… then he stopped moving, his arm and leg and neck tilted at unnatural angles. The three other men moved. The one with the bloody nose grabbed an iron bar. John didn’t need orders this time. Three attackers at once—he had to take them out before they surrounded him. He might be faster, but he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head. The man with the iron bar swung a vicious blow at John’s ribs; John sidestepped, grabbed the man’s hand, and clamped it to the bar. He twisted the bar and crushed the bones of his attacker’s wrist. John snapped a side kick toward the second man, caught him in the groin, crushing the soft organs and breaking his target’s pelvis. John pulled the bar free—whipped around and caught the third man in the neck, hitting him so hard the ODST was propelled over the ropes. “At ease, Number-117,” Chief Petty Officer Mendez barked. John obeyed and dropped the bar. Like the pin, it seemed to take too long for the impromptu weapon to hit the deck. The ODSTs lay crumpled on the ground, either unconscious or dead."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Chapter7.txt", "text": "Mendez, at the far end of the gym, strode toward the boxing ring. The Sergeant stood with his mouth open. “Chief Mendez, sir!” He snapped a crisp salute. “What are you—” He turned to John, his eyes widened, and he murmured, “He’s one of them, isn’t he?” “Medics are on their way,” Mendez said calmly. He stepped closer to the Sergeant. “There are two intel officers waiting for you in Ops. They’ll debrief you…” He stepped back. “I suggest you report to them immediately.” “Yes, sir,” the Sergeant said. He almost ran out of the gym. He looked once over his shoulder at John; then he moved even faster. “Your workout is over for today,” Mendez told John. John saluted and left the ring. A team of medics entered with stretchers and rushed toward the boxing ring. “Permission to speak, sir?” John said. Mendez nodded. “Were those men part of a mission? Were they targets or teammates?” John knew that this had to be some sort of mission. The Chief had been too close for it to be a coincidence. “You engaged and neutralized a threat,” Mendez replied. “That action seems to have answered your question, Squad Leader.” John wrinkled his forehead as he thought it through. “I followed the chain of command,” he said. “The Sergeant told me to fight. I was threatened and in imminent danger. But they were still UNSC Special Forces. Fellow soldiers.” Mendez lowered his voice. “Not every mission has simple objectives or comes to a logical conclusion. Your priorities are to follow the orders in your chain of command, and then to preserve your life and the lives of your team. Is that clear?” “Sir,” John said. “Yes, sir.” He glanced back at the ring. Blood was seeping into the canvas mat. John had an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach. He hit the showers and let the blood rinse off him. He felt strangely sorry for the men he had killed. But he knew his duty—the Chief had even been unusually verbose in order to clarify the matter. Follow orders and keep himself and his team safe. That’s all he had to focus on. John didn’t give the incident in the gym another thought."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter8.txt", "text": "Chapter Eight 0930 HOURS, SEPTEMBER 11, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH UNSC MILITARY COMPLEX, PLANET REACH Dr. Halsey reclined in Mendez’s padded chair. She considered pilfering one of the Sweet William cigars from the box on his desk—see why he considered them such a treat. The stench wafting from the box, however, was too overwhelming. How did he stand them? The door opened and CPO Mendez halted in the doorway. “Ma’am,” he said, and stood straighter. “I wasn’t informed that you would be visiting today. In fact, I had understood that you were out of the system for another week. I would have made arrangements.” “I’m sure you would have.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Our situation has changed. Where are my Spartans? They are not in their barracks, nor on any of the ranges.” Mendez hesitated. “They can no longer train here, ma’am. We have had to find them… other facilities.” Dr. Halsey stood and smoothed the pleats in her gray skirt. “Maybe you should explain that statement, Chief.” “I could,” he replied, “but it will be easier to show you.” “Very well,” Dr. Halsey said, her curiosity piqued. Mendez escorted her to his personal Warthog parked outside his office. The all-terrain combat vehicle had been refitted; the heavy chain-gun on the back had been removed and replaced with a rack of Argent V missiles. Mendez drove them off the base and onto winding mountain roads. “Reach was first colonized for its rich titanium deposits,” Mendez told her. “There are mines in these mountains thousands of meters deep. The UNSC uses them for storage.” “I presume you do not have my Spartans taking inventory today, Chief?” “No, ma’am. We just need the privacy.” Mendez drove the Warthog past a manned guardhouse and into a large tunnel that sloped steeply underground. The road wound down in a spiral, deeper into solid granite. Mendez said, “Do you remember the Navy’s first experiments with powered exoskeletons?” “I’m not sure I see the connection between this place, my Spartans, and the exoskeleton projects,” Dr. Halsey replied, frowning, “but I’ll play along a bit further. Yes, I know all about the Mark I prototypes. We had to scrap the concept and redesign battle armor from the ground up for the MJOLNIR project. The Mark Is consumed enormous energy. Either they had to be plugged into a generator or use inefficient broadcast power—neither option is practical on a battlefield.” Mendez decelerated slightly as he approached a speed bump. The Warthog’s massive tires thudded over the obstacle. “They used the units that weren’t scrapped,” Dr. Halsey continued, “as dock loaders to move heavy equipment.” She cocked one eyebrow. “Or might they have been dumped in a place like this?” “There are dozens of the suits here.” “You haven’t put my Spartans in some of those antiques?” “No. Their trainers are using them for their own safety,” Mendez replied."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter8.txt", "text": "“When the Spartans recovered from microgravity therapy, they were eager to get back to their routine. However, we experienced some—” He paused, searching for the right word, “… difficulties.” He glanced at his passenger. His face was grim. “Their first day back, three trainers were accidentally killed during hand-to-hand combat exercises.” Dr. Halsey cocked an eyebrow. “Then they are faster and stronger than we anticipated?” “That,” Mendez replied, “would be understating the situation.” The tunnel opened into a large cavern. There were lights scattered on the walls, overhead a hundred meters up on the ceiling and along the floor, but they did little to dissipate the overwhelming darkness. Mendez parked the Warthog next to a small, prefabricated building. He jumped out and helped Dr. Halsey step from the vehicle. “This way, please.” Mendez gestured to the room. “We’ll have a better view from inside.” The building had three glass walls and several monitors marked MOTION, INFRARED, DOPPLER, and PASSIVE. Mendez pushed a button and the room climbed a track along the wall until they were twenty meters off the floor. Mendez keyed a microphone and spoke: “Lights.” Floodlights snapped on and illuminated a section of the cavern the size of a football field. In the center stood a concrete bunker. Three men in the primitive Mark I power armor stood on top. Six more stood evenly spaced around the perimeter. A red banner had been planted in the center of the bunker. “Capture the flag?” Dr. Halsey asked. “Past all that heavy armor?” “Yes. The trainers in those exoskeletons can run at thirty-two KPH, lift two tons, and have a thirty-millimeter minigun mounted on self-targeting armatures—stun rounds, of course. They’re also equipped with the latest motion sensors and IR scopes. And needless to say, their armor is impervious to standard light weapons. It would take two or three platoons of conventional Marines to take that bunker.” Mendez spoke again in the microphone, and his voice echoed off the cavern walls: “Start the drill.” Sixty seconds ticked by. Nothing happened. One hundred twenty seconds. “Where are the Spartans?” Dr. Halsey asked. “They’re here,” Mendez replied. Dr. Halsey caught a glimpse of motion in the dark: a shadow against shadows, a familiar silhouette. “Kelly?” she whispered. The trainers turned and fired at the shadow, but it moved with almost supernatural quickness. Even the self-targeting systems couldn’t track it. From above, a man free-rappelled down from the girders and gantries overhead. The newcomer landed behind one of the perimeter guards, quiet as a cat. He punched the guard’s armor twice, denting the heavy plates, then dropped low and swept the target’s legs out from under him. The guard sprawled on the ground. The Spartan attached his rappelling line to the trainer. A moment later the writhing guard shot upward, into the darkness. Two other guards turned to attack. The Spartan dodged, rolled, and melted into the shadows. Dr. Halsey realized the trainer’s exoskeleton wasn’t being pulled up—it was being used as a counterweight."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter8.txt", "text": "Two more Spartans, dangling from the other end of that rope, dropped unnoticed into the center of the bunker. Dr. Halsey immediately recognized one of them, although he was dressed entirely in black, save his open eye slits—Number-117. John. John landed, braced, and kicked one guard. The man landed in a heap… eight meters away. The other Spartan jumped off the bunker; he flipped end over end, evading the stun rounds that filled the air. He threw himself at the farthest guard and they skidded together into the shadows. The guard’s gun strobed once, and then it was dark again. On top of the bunker, John was a blur of slashing motions. A second guard’s exosuit erupted in a fountain of hydraulic fluid and then collapsed under the armor’s weight. The last guard on the bunker turned to fire at John. Halsey gripped the edge of her chair. “He’s at point-blank range! Even stun rounds can kill at that distance!” As the guard’s gun fired, John sidestepped. The stun rounds slashed through the air, a clean miss. John grabbed the weapon’s armature—twisted—and with a screech of stressed metal, wrenched it free of the exoskeleton. He fired directly into the man’s chest and sent him tumbling off the bunker. The remaining quartet of perimeter guards turned and sprayed the area with suppression fire. A heartbeat later, the lights went out. Mendez cursed and keyed the mike. “Backups. Hit the backup lights now!” A dozen amber floods flickered to life. Not a Spartan was in sight, but the nine trainers were either unconscious or lay immobile in inert battle armor. The red flag was gone. “Show me that again,” Dr. Halsey said unbelievingly. “You recorded all that, didn’t you?” “Of course.” Mendez tapped a button, but the monitors played back—static. “Damn it. They got to the cameras, too,” he muttered, impressed. “Every time we find a new place to hide them, they disable the recording devices.” Dr. Halsey leaned against the glass wall staring at the carnage below. “Very well, Chief Mendez, what else do I need to know?” “Your Spartans can run at bursts of up to fifty-five KPH,” he explained. “Kelly can run a little faster, I think. They will only get quicker as they adjust to the ‘alterations’ we’ve made to their bodies. They can lift three times their body weight—which, I might add, is almost double the norm due to their increased muscle density. And they can virtually see in the dark.” Dr. Halsey pondered this new data. “They should not be performing so well. There must be unexplained synergistic effects brought on by the combined modifications. What are their reaction times?” “Almost impossible to chart. We estimate it at twenty milliseconds,” Mendez replied. He shook his head, then added, “I believe it’s significantly faster in combat situations when their adrenaline is pumping.” “Any physiological or mental instabilities?” “None. They work like no team I’ve ever seen before. Damn near telepathic, if you ask me."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter8.txt", "text": "They were dropped in these caves yesterday, and I don’t know where they got black suits or the rope for that maneuver, but I can guarantee they haven’t left this room. They improvise and improve and adapt. “And,” he added, “they like it. The tougher the challenge, the harder the fight… the better their morale becomes.” Dr. Halsey watched as the first trainer stirred and struggled to get out of his inert armor. “They might as well have been killed,” she murmured. “But can the Spartans kill, Chief? Kill on purpose? Are they ready for real combat?” Mendez looked away and paused before he spoke. “Yes. If we ordered them to, they would kill quite efficiently.” His body stiffened. “May I ask what ‘real combat’ you mean, ma’am?” She clasped her hands and wrung them nervously. “Something has happened, Chief. Something ONI and the Admiralty never expected. The brass wants to deploy the Spartans. They want to test them in a real combat mission.” “They’re as ready for that as I can make them,” Mendez said. He narrowed his dark eyes. “But this is far ahead of your schedule. What happened? I’ve heard rumors there was some heavy action near Harvest colony.” “Your rumors are out-of-date, Chief,” she said, and a chill crept into her voice. “There’s no more fighting at Harvest. There is no more Harvest.” Dr. Halsey punched the descent button, and the observation room slowly lowered to the floor. “Get them out of this hole,” she said crisply. “I want them ready to muster at 0400. We have a briefing at 0600 tomorrow aboard the London. We’re taking them on a mission ONI has been saving for the right crew and the right time. This is it.” “Yes, ma’am,” Mendez replied. “Tomorrow we see if all the pain they’ve been through has been worth it.”"}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Chapter9.txt", "text": "Chapter Nine 0605 HOURS, SEPTEMBER 12, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC DESTROYER PIONEER, EN ROUTE TO ERIDANUS SYSTEM John and the other Spartans stood at ease. The briefing room aboard the UNSC Destroyer Pioneer made him uncomfortable. The holographic projectors at the fore end of the triangular room showed the field of stars visible off the bow of the ship. John wasn’t used to seeing so much space; he kept expecting the room to decompress explosively. The stars flickered and faded and the overhead lights warmed. Chief Petty Officer Mendez and Dr. Halsey entered the room. The Spartans snapped to attention. “At ease,” Mendez said. He clasped his hands behind his back and clenched his jaw muscles. The Chief looked almost… nervous. That made John nervous, too. Dr. Halsey walked to the podium. The overhead light reflected off her glasses. “Good morning, Spartans. I have good news for you. The word has come down. Command has decided to test your unique abilities. You have a new mission: an insurgent base in the Eridanus System.” A star map appeared on the wall and zoomed in to show a warm orange sun ringed with twelve planets. “In 2513, an armed insurrection in this system was suppressed by the UNSC force—Operation: TREBUCHET.” An intersystem tactical map appeared, and tiny icons representing destroyers and carriers winked on. They engaged a force of a hundred smaller ships. Pinpoints of fire appeared against the dark. “The insurrection was put down,” Dr. Halsey continued. “However, elements of the rebel forces escaped and regrouped in the local asteroid belt.” The map tilted and moved into the circle of debris around the star. “Billions of rocks,” Dr. Halsey said, “where they hid from our forces… and continue to hide to this day. For some time ONI believed that the rebels were disorganized, and were lacking in leadership. That appears to have changed. “We believe that one of these asteroids has been hollowed out, and that a formidable base has been constructed within. UNSC explorations into the belt have met either with no contact or with an ambush by superior forces.” She paused, pushed up her glasses, and added, “The Office of Naval Intelligence has also confirmed that FLEETCOM has discovered a security breach within their organization—a rebel sympathizer leaking information to these forces.” John and the other Spartans shifted uneasily. A leak? It was possible. Déjà had shown them many historical battles that had been won and lost because of traitors or informants. But it never occurred to him that it could happen in the UNSC. A flat picture flashed over the star map: a middle-aged man with thinning hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and watery gray eyes. “This is their leader,” Dr. Halsey said. “Colonel Robert Watts. The original photo was taken after Operation: TREBUCHET and has been computer aged. “Your mission is to infiltrate the rebel base, capture Watts, and return him—alive and unharmed—to UNSC-controlled space. This will deprive the rebels of their new leadership."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Chapter9.txt", "text": "And it will provide ONI a chance to interrogate Watts and root out traitors within FLEETCOM.” Dr. Halsey stepped aside. “Chief Mendez?” Mendez exhaled and unclasped his hands. He strode to the podium and cleared his throat. “This operation will be different from your previous missions. You will be engaging the enemy using live rounds and lethal force. They will be returning the favor. If there is any doubt, any confusion—and make no mistake: in combat, there will be confusion—take no chances. Kill first, ask questions later. “Support on this mission will be limited to the resources and firepower of this destroyer,” Mendez continued. “This is to minimize the chance of a leak in the command structure.” Mendez walked to the star map. The face of Colonel Watts snapped off and blueprints for a Parabola-class freighter appeared. “Although we don’t know the location of the rebel base, we believe they receive periodic shipments from Eridanus Two. The independent freighter Laden is due to leave space dock in six hours for a routine recertification of her engines. She is being loaded with enough food and water to supply a small city. Additionally, her captain has been identified as a rebel officer thought to have been killed during Operation: TREBUCHET. “You will slip aboard this freighter and hopefully hitch a ride to the rebel base. Once there, infiltrate the installation, grab Watts, and get off of that rock any way you can.” Chief Mendez gazed at them all. “Questions?” “Sir,” John said. “What are our extraction options?” “You have two options: a panic button that will relay a distress signal to a preestablished listening ship. Also, the Pioneer will stay on-station… briefly. Our window here is thirteen hours.” He tapped the star map on the edge of the asteroid belt and it glowed with a blue NAV marker. “I’ll leave the extraction choice up to you. But let me point out that this asteroid belt has a circumference of more than a billion kilometers… making it impossible to canvass with ONI surveillance craft. If things get hot, you will be on your own. “Any other questions?” The Spartans sat, silent and immobile. “No? Well, listen up, recruits,” Mendez added. “This time I’ve told you all the twists that I know of. Be prepared for anything.” His gaze fixed on John. “Squad Leader, you are hereby promoted to the rank of Petty Officer Third Class.” “Sir!” John snapped to attention. “Assemble your team and equipment. Be ready to muster at 0300. We’ll drop you off at the Eridanus Two docks. You’re on your own from there.” “Yes, sir!” John said. Mendez saluted. He and Dr. Halsey then left the room. John turned to face his teammates. The other Spartans stood at attention. Thirty-two—too many for this operation. He needed a small team: five or six maximum. “Sam, Kelly, Linda, and Fred, meet me in the weapons locker in ten minutes.” The other Spartans sighed and their gazes dropped to the deck."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Chapter9.txt", "text": "“The rest of you fall out. You’ll have the more difficult part of this mission: you’ll have to wait here.” * * * The weapons locker of the Pioneer had been stocked with a bewildering array of combat equipment. On a table were guns, knives, communication gear, body armor explosives, medical packs, survival gear, portable computers, even a thruster pack for maneuvering in space. More important than the equipment, however, John assessed his team. Sam had recovered from the augmentation faster than any of the other Spartans. He paced impatiently around the crates of grenades. He was the strongest of them all. He stood taller than John by a head. He had grown out his sandy hair to three centimeters. Chief Mendez had warned him that he was going to look like a civilian soon. Kelly, in contrast, had taken the longest to recover. She stood in the corner with her arms crossed over her chest. John had thought she wasn’t going to make it. She was still gaunt and her hair had yet to grow back. Her face, however, still had its rough, angular beauty. She scared John a little, too. She was fast before… now no one could touch her if she didn’t allow it. Fred sat cross-legged on the deck, twirling a razor-edged combat knife in glittering arcs. He always came in second in all the contests. John thought he could have come in first, but he just didn’t like the attention. He was neither too short nor too tall. He wasn’t overly muscled or slim. His black hair was shot with streaks of silver—a feature he hadn’t had before the augmentation. If anyone in the group could blend into a crowd, it would be him. Linda was the quietest member of the group. She was pale, had close-cropped red hair, and green eyes. She was a crack shot, an artist with a sniper rifle. Kelly circled the table once, and then selected a pair of grease-stained blue coveralls. Her name had been sloppily embroidered on the chest. “These our new trainee uniforms?” “ONI provided them,” John said. “They’re supposed to match what the crew of the Laden wears.” Kelly held the coveralls up and frowned. “They don’t give a girl much to work with.” “Try this on for size.” Linda held a black bodysuit up to Kelly’s long slender frame. They had used these black suits before. They were formfitting, lightweight polymer body armor. They could deflect a small-caliber round and had refrigeration/heating units that would mask infrared signatures. The integrated helmet had encryption and communications gear, a heads-up display, and thermal and motion detectors. Sealed tight, the unit had a fifteen-minute reserve of oxygen to let the wearer survive in a vacuum. The suits were uncomfortable, and they were tricky to repair in the field. And they always needed repairs. “They’re too tight,” Kelly said. “It’ll limit my range of motion.” “We wear them for this op,” John told her."}
{"ID": "The Fall of Reach -- Nylund, Eric S_ -- Halo en 1, 2001 -- ePubLibre -- c9ac8e2f4e1adc3ba1e720ba6cdbd1fd -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Chapter9.txt", "text": "“There are too many places between here and there with nothing to breathe but vacuum. As for the rest of your equipment, take what you want—but stay light. Without recon data on this place, we’re going to be moving fast… or we’ll be dead.” The team started selecting their weapons first. “Three-ninety caliber?” Fred asked. “Yes,” John replied. “Everyone take guns that use .390-caliber ammunition so we can share clips if we have to. Except Linda.” Linda gravitated to a matte-black long-barreled rifle—the SRS99C-S2 AM. The sniper rifle system had modular sections: scopes, stocks, barrels, even the firing mechanism could be swapped. She quickly stripped the rifle down and reconfigured it. She assembled a flash-and-sound suppression barrel, and then to compensate for the lower muzzle velocity, she increased the ammunition caliber to .450. She ditched all the sights and scopes and settled for an integrated link to her helmet’s heads-up display. She pocketed five extended ammunition clips. John also chose an MA2B, a cut-down version of the standard MA5B assault rifle. It was tough and reliable, with electronic targeting and an ammo supply indicator. It also had a recoil-reduction system, and could deliver an impressive fifteen rounds per second. He picked up a knife: twenty-centimeter blade, one serrated edge, nonreflective titanium carbide, and balanced for throwing. John grabbed the panic button—a tiny single-shot emergency beacon. It had two settings. The red setting alerted the Pioneer that it had hit the fan, and to come in guns blazing. The green setting merely marked the location of the base for later assault by the UNSC. He took a double handful of ammo clips—then paused. He set them down and pocketed five. If they got into a firefight where he’d need that much firepower, their mission was over anyway. Everyone took similar equipment, with a few variations. Kelly selected a small computer pad with IR links. She also had their field medical kit. Fred packed a standard-issue lockbreaker. Linda selected three NAV marker transmitters, each the size of a tick. The trackers could be adhered to an object and would broadcast that object’s location to the Spartans’ heads-up displays. Sam hefted two medium-size backpacks—“damage packs.” They were filled with C-12, enough high explosives to blow through three meters of battleship armor plate. “You have enough of that stuff?” Kelly asked him wryly. “You think I should take more?” Sam replied, and smiled. “Nothing like a little fireworks to celebrate the end of a mission.” “Everyone ready?” John asked. Sam’s smile disappeared and he slapped an extended clip into his MA2B. “Ready!” Kelly gave him John a thumbs-up. Fred and Linda nodded. “Then let’s go to work.”"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_007.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel When Iffech felt the sea shudder, he knew. The wind had already fallen like a dead thing from the sky, gasping as it succumbed upon the iron swells, breathing its last to his mariner’s ears. The sky always knew first; the sea was slow—dreadful slow—to come around. The sea shook again—or, rather, seemed to drag beneath their keel. Up in the crow’s nest Keem screamed as he was tossed out like a kitten. Iffech watched him twist and almost impossibly catch the rigging with those Cathay Raht claws of his. “Stendarr!” Grayne swore, in her South Niben twang. “What was that? A tsunami?” Her feeble human gaze searched out through the dusk. “No,” Iffech murmured. “I was off the Summerset Isles when the sea tried to swallow them, and I felt one of those pass under us. And another, when I was younger, off the coast of Morrowind. In deep water you don’t feel much. This is deep water.” “Then what?” She brushed her silver and gray bangs off her useless eyes. Iffech twitched his shoulders in imitation of a human shrug and ran his claws through the patchy fur of his forearm. The still air smelled sweet, like rotting fruit. “See anything, Keem?” he called up. “My own death, nearly,” the Ne Quin-alian cat shouted back, his voice rasping hollow, as if the ship was in a box. He lithely hauled his sleek body back into the nest. “Nothing on the sea,” he continued after a moment. “Under it, then,” Grayne said nervously. Iffech shook his head. “The wind,” he said. And then he saw it, in the south, a sudden blackness, a crackle of green lightning, and then a form like a tall thunderhead billowed into being. “Hold on!” he shouted. And now came a clap like thunder but forty times louder, and a new fist of wind that snapped the mainmast, taking poor Keem to the death he had nearly seen. Then all was still again, except for the roaring in his damaged ears. “By the gods, what can it be?” he barely heard Grayne ask. “The sea doesn’t care,” Iffech said, watching the dark mass move toward them. He looked around his ship. All of the masts were broken, and it appeared that half the crew was already gone. “What?” “Not many Khajiit take to the sea,” he said. “They’ll bear it for trade, to move skooma around, but few there are who love her. But I’ve adored her since I could mewl. And I love her because she doesn’t care what the gods or daedra think. She’s another world, with her own rules.” “What are you going on about?” “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I feel it, I don’t think it. But don’t you think—doesn’t it feel like …” He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. Grayne stared out toward the thing. “I see it, now,” she said. “Yes.” “I saw an Oblivion gate open once,” she said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_007.txt", "text": "“When my father worked in Leyawiin. I saw things—it feels a little like that. But Martin’s sacrifice—they say it can’t happen again. And it doesn’t look like a gate.” It wasn’t shaped like a thunderhead, Iffech realized. More like a fat cone, point down. Another wind was starting up, and on it something unbelievably foul. “It doesn’t matter what it is,” he said. “Not to us.” And a few instants later it didn’t. Sul’s throat hurt, so he knew he had been screaming. He was soaked with sweat, his chest ached, and his limbs were trembling. He opened his eyes and forced his head up so he could see where he was. A man stood in the doorway with a drawn sword. His eyes were very wide and blue beneath a shock of curly, barley-colored hair. Swearing, Sul reached for his own weapon where it hung on the bedpost. “Just hold on there,” the fellow said, backing up. “It’s just you’ve been hollering so, I was worried something was happening to you.” The dreamlight was still fading, but his mind was starting to turn. If the fellow had wanted him dead, he probably would be. “Where am I?” he asked, taking a grip on his longsword, despite his reasoning. “In the Lank Fellow Inn,” the man replied. And then, after a pause, “In Chorrol.” Chorrol. Right. “Are you okay?” “I’m fine,” Sul said. “Nothing to concern you.” “Ah, yes.” The man looked uncomfortable, “Do you, umm, scream like that every—” “I won’t be here tonight,” Sul cut him off. “I’m moving on.” “I didn’t mean to offend.” “You didn’t,” Sul replied. “The breakfast is out, down there.” “Thank you. Please leave me.” The man closed the door. Sul sat there for a moment rubbing the lines in his forehead. “Azura,” he murmured. He always knew the prince’s touch, even when it was light. This had not been light. He closed his eyes and tried to feel the sea jump beneath him, to hear the old Khajiit captain’s words, see again through his eyes. That thing, appearing in the sky—everything about it stank of Oblivion. After spending twenty years there, he ought to know the smell. “Vuhon,” he sighed. “It must be you, Vuhon, I think. Why else would the prince send me such a vision? What else would matter to me?” No one answered, of course. He remembered a little more, after the Khajiit had died. He had seen Ilzheven as he last saw her, pale and lifeless, and the smoking shatterlands that had once been Morrowind. Those were always there in his dreams, whether Azura meddled with them or not. But there had been another face, a young man, Colovian probably, with a slight bend in his nose. He seemed familiar, as if they had met somewhere. “That’s all I get?” Sul asked. “I don’t even know which ocean to look in.” The question was directed at Azura, but he knew it was rhetorical."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_007.txt", "text": "He also knew he was lucky to get even that. He dragged his wiry gray body out of bed and went over to the washbasin to splash water in his face and blink red eyes at himself in the mirror. He started to turn away when he noticed, behind him in the reflection, a couple of books propped in an otherwise empty shelf. He turned, walked over, and lifted the first. TALES OF SOUTHERN WATERS, it announced. He nodded his head and opened the second. THE MOST CURRENT AND HIGH ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ATTREBUS, this one read. And there, on the frontispiece, was an engraving of a young man’s face with a slightly crooked nose. For the first time in years Sul uttered a hoarse laugh. “Well, there you go,” he said. “I’m sorry I doubted you, my Prince.” An hour later, armed and armored, he rode south and east, toward madness, retribution, and death. And though he had long ago forgotten what happiness was, he imagined it must have been a bit like what he felt now."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_009.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel A pale young woman with long ebon curls, and a male with muddy green scales and chocolate spines, crouched on the high rafters of a rotting villa in Lilmoth, known by some as the Festering Jewel of Black Marsh. “You’re finally going to kill me,” the reptile told the woman. His tone was thoughtful, his saurian features composed in the faint light bleeding down through the cracked slate roof. “Not so much kill you as get you killed,” she answered, pushing the tight rings of her hair off her face and pressing her slightly aquiline nose and gray-green gaze toward the vast open space beneath them. “It works out the same,” the other hissed. “Come on, Glim,” Annaïg said, tossing herself into her father’s huge leather chair and clasping her hands behind her neck. “We can’t pass this up.” “Oh, I think it can be safely said that we can,” Mere-Glim replied. He lounged on a low weavecane couch, one arm draped so as to suspend over a cypress end table whose surface was supported by the figure of a crouching Khajiit warrior. The Argonian was all silhouette, because behind him the white curtains that draped the massive bay windows of the study were soaked in sunlight. “Here are some things we could do instead.” He ticked one glossy black claw on the table. “Stay here in your father’s villa and drink his wine.” A second claw came down. “Take some of your father’s wine down to the docks and drink it there.” The third. “Drink some here and some down at the docks …” “Glim, how long has it been since we had an adventure?” His lazy lizard gaze traveled over her face. “If by adventure you mean some tiring or dangerous exercise, not that long. Not long enough anyway.” He wiggled the fingers of both hands as if trying to shake something sticky off them, a peculiarly Lilmothian expression of agitation. The membranes between his digits shone translucent green. “Have you been reading again?” He made it sound like an accusation, as if “reading” was another way of referring to, say, infanticide. “A bit,” she admitted. “What else am I to do? It’s so boring here. Nothing ever happens.” “Not for lack of your trying,” Mere-Glim replied. “We very nearly got arrested during your last little adventure.” “Yes, and didn’t you feel alive?” she said. “I don’t need to ‘feel’ alive,” the Argonian replied. “I am alive. Which state I would prefer to retain.” “You know what I mean.” “Hff. That’s a bold assertion,” he sniffed. “I’m a bold girl.” She sat forward. “Come on, Glim. He’s a were-crocodile. I’m certain of it. And we can get the proof.” “First of all,” Mere-Glim said, “there’s no such thing as a were-crocodile. Second, if there were, why on earth would we care to prove it?” “Because … well, because people would want to know. We’d be famous. And he’s dangerous."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_009.txt", "text": "People around there are always disappearing.” “In Pusbottom? Of course they are. It’s one of the dodgiest parts of town.” “Look,” she said. “They’ve found people bitten in half. What else could do that?” “A regular crocodile. Lots of things, really. With some effort, I might be able to do it, too.” He fidgeted again. “Look, if you’re so sure about this, get your father to talk Underwarden Ethten into sending some guards down there.” “Well, what if I’m wrong? Father would look stupid. That’s what I’m saying, Glim. I need to know for sure. I must find some sort of proof. I’ve been following him—” “You’ve what?” He gaped his mouth in incredulity. “He looks human, Glim, but he comes and goes out of the canal like an Argonian. That’s how I noticed him. And when I looked where he came out—I’m sure the first few steps were made by a crocodile, and after that by a man.” Glim closed his mouth and shook his head. “Or a man stepped in some crocodile tracks,” he said. “There are potions and amulets that let even you gaspers breathe underwater.” “But he does it all the time. Why would he do that? Help me be sure, Glim.” Her friend sibilated a long hiss. “Then can we drink your father’s wine?” “If he hasn’t drunk it all.” “Fine.” She clapped her hands in delight. “Excellent! I know his routine. He won’t be back in his lair until nightfall, so we should go now.” “Lair?” “Sure. That’s what it would be, wouldn’t it? A lair.” “Fine, a lair. Lead on.” And now here we are, Annaïg thought. They had made their way from the hills of the old Imperial quarter into the ancient, gangrenous heart of Lilmoth—Pusbottom. Imperials had dwelt here, too, in the early days when the Empire had first imposed its will and architecture on the lizard people of Black Marsh. Now only the desperate and sinister dwelt here, where patrols rarely came: the poorest of the poor, political enemies of the Argonian An-Xileel party that now dominated the city, criminals and monsters. They found the lair easily enough, which turned out to be a livable corner of a manse so ancient the first floor was entirely silted up. What remained was vastly cavernous and rickety and not that unusual in this part of town. What was odd was that it wasn’t full of squatters—there was just the one. He had furnished the place with mostly junk, but there were a few nice chairs and a decent bed. That’s about all they got to see before they heard the voices, coming in the same way they had—which was to say the only way. Annaïg and Glim were backed up in the corner, and here the walls were stone. The only way to go was up an old staircase and then even farther, using the ancient frame of the house as a ladder."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_009.txt", "text": "Annaïg wondered what sort of wood—if wood it was—could resist decomposition for so long. The wall-and floorboards here had been made of something else, and were almost like paper. So they had to take care to stay on the beams. Glim hushed himself; the figures in the group below were gazing up—not at them, but in their vague direction. Annaïg took a small vial from the left pocket of her double-breasted jacket and drank its contents. It tasted a bit like melon, but very bitter. She felt her lungs fill and empty, the elastic pull of her body around her bones. Her heart seemed to be vibrating instead of beating, and the oddest thing was, she couldn’t tell if this was fear. The faint noises below suddenly became much louder, as if she was standing among them. “Where is he?” one of the figures asked. They were hard to make out in the dim light, but this one looked darker than the rest, possibly a Dunmer. “He’ll be here,” another said. He—or maybe she—was obviously a Khajiit—everything about the way he moved was feline. “He will,” a third voice said. Annaïg watched as the man she had been following for the last few days approached the others. Like them, he was too far away to see, but she knew him by the hump of his back, and her memory filled in the details of his brutish face and long, unkempt hair. “Do you have it?” the Khajiit asked. “Just brought it in under the river.” “Seems like a lot of trouble,” the Khajiit said. “I’ve always wondered why you don’t use an Argonian for that.” “I don’t trust ’em. Besides, they have ripper eels trained to hunt Argonians trying to cross the outer canal. They’re not so good at spotting me, especially if I rub myself with eel-slime first.” “Disgusting. You can keep your end of the job.” “Just as long as I get paid for it.” He pulled off his shirt and removed his hump. “Have a look. Have a taste, if you want.” “Oh, daedra and Divines,” Annaïg swore, from the beam they crouched on. “He’s not a were-croc. He’s a skooma smuggler.” “You’re finally going to kill me,” Glim said. “Not so much kill you as get you killed.” “It works out the same.” And now Annaïg was quite sure that what she felt was fear. Bright, terrible, animal fear. “By the way,” the Khajiit below said, lowering his voice. “Who are those two in the rafters?” The man looked up. “Xhuth! if I know,” he said. “None of mine.” “I hope not. I sent Patch and Flichs up to kill them.” “Oh, kaoc’,” Annaïg hissed. “Come on, Glim.” As she stood, something wisped through the air near her, and a shriek tore out of her throat. “I knew it,” Glim snapped. “Just—come on, we have to get to the roof.” They ran across the beams, and someone behind her shouted."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_009.txt", "text": "She could hear their footfalls now—why hadn’t she before? An enchantment of some sort? “There.” Glim said. She saw it; part of the roof had caved in and was resting on the rafters, forming a ramp. They scrambled up it. Something hot and wet was trying to pull out of her chest, and she hysterically wondered if an arrow hadn’t hit her, if she wasn’t bleeding inside. But they made it to the roof. And a fifty-foot fall. She pulled out two vials and handed one to Mere-Glim. “Drink this and jump,” she said. “What? What is it?” “It’s—I’m not sure. It’s supposed to make us fly.” “Supposed to? Where did you get it?” “Why is that important?” “Oh, Thtal, you made it didn’t you? Without a formula. Remember that stuff that was supposed to make me invisible?” “It made you sort of invisible.” “It made my skin translucent. I looked like a bag of offal walking around.” She drank hers. “No time, Glim. It’s our only hope.” Their pursuers were coming up the ramp, so she jumped, wondering if she should flap her arms or … But what she did was fall, and shriek. But then she wasn’t falling so fast, and then she was sort of drifting, so the wind actually pushed her like a soap bubble. She heard the men hollering from the roof, and turned to see Glim floating just behind her. “See?” she said. “You need to have a little faith in me.” She barely got the sentence out before they were falling again. Later, battered, sore, and stinking of the trash pile that broke their final fall, they returned to her father’s villa. They found him passed out in the same chair Annaïg had been in earlier that morning. She stood looking at him for a moment, at his pale fingers clutched on a wine bottle, at his thinning gray hair. She was trying to remember the man he had been before her mother died, before the An-Xileel wrested Lilmoth from the Empire and looted their estates. She couldn’t see him. “Come on,” she told Glim. They took three bottles of wine from the cellar and wound their way up the spiral stair to the upper balcony. She lit a small paper lantern and in its light poured full two delicate crystal goblets. “To us,” she said. They drank. Old Imperial Lilmoth spread below them, crumbling hulks of villas festooned with vines and grounds overgrown with sleeping palms and bamboo, all dark now as if cut from black velvet, except where illumined by the pale phosphorescences of lucan mold or the wispy yellow airborne shines, harmless cousins of the deadly will-o’-wisps in the deep swamps. “There now,” she said, refilling her glass. “Don’t you feel more alive?” He blinked his eyes, very slowly. “Well, I certainly feel more aware of the contrast between life and death,” he replied. “That’s a start,” she said. A small moment passed. “We were lucky,” Glim said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_009.txt", "text": "“I know,” she replied. “But …” “What?” “Well, it’s no were-croc, but we can at least report the skooma dealers to the underwarden.” “They’ll have moved by then. And even if they catch them, that’s a drop of water in the ocean. There’s no stopping the skooma trade.” “There certainly isn’t if no one tries,” she replied. “No offense, Glim, but I wish we were still in the Empire.” “No doubt. Then your father would still be a wealthy man, and not a poorly paid advisor to the An-Xileel.” “It’s not that,” she said. “I just—there was justice under the Empire. There was honor.” “You weren’t even born.” “Yes, but I can read, Mere-Glim.” “But who wrote those books? Bretons. Imperials.” “And that’s An-Xileel propaganda. The Empire is rebuilding itself. Titus Mede started it, and now his son Attrebus is at his side. They’re bringing order back to the world, and we’re just—just dreaming ourselves away here, waiting for things to get better by themselves.” The Argonian gave his imitation shrug. “There are worse places than Lilmoth.” “There are better places, too. Places we could go, places where we could make a difference.” “Is this your Imperial City speech again? I like it here, Nn. It’s my home. We’ve known each other since we were hatchlings, yes, and if you didn’t already know you could talk me into almost anything, you do now. But leaving Black Marsh—that you won’t get me to do. Don’t even try.” “Don’t you want more out of life, Glim?” “Food, drink, good times—why should anyone want more than that? It’s people wanting to ‘make a difference’ causing all the troubles in the world. People who think they know what’s better for everyone else, people who believe they know what other people need but never bother to ask. That’s what your Titus Mede is spreading around—his version of how things ought to be, right?” “There is such a thing as right and wrong, Glim. Good and evil.” “If you say so.” “Prince Attrebus rescued an entire colony of your people from slavery. How do you think they feel about the Empire?” “My people knew slavery under the old Empire. We knew it pretty well.” “Yes, but that was ending when the Oblivion crisis happened. Look, even you have to admit that if Mehrunes Dagon had won, if Martin hadn’t beaten him—” “Martin and the Empire didn’t beat him in Black Marsh,” Glim said, his voice rising. “The An-Xileel did. When the gates opened, Argonians poured into Oblivion with such fury and might, Dagon’s lieutenants had to close them.” Annaïg realized that she was leaning away from her friend and that her pulse had picked up. She smelled something sharp and faintly sulfurous. Amazed, she regarded him for a moment. “Yes,” she finally said, when the scent diminished, “but without Martin’s sacrifice, Dagon would have eventually taken Black Marsh, too, and made this world his sportground.” Glim shifted and held out his glass to be refilled."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_009.txt", "text": "“I don’t want to argue about this,” he said. “I don’t see that it’s important.” “You sounded as if you thought so for a second there, old friend. I thought I heard a little passion in your voice. And you smelled like you were spoiling for a fight.” “It’s just the wine,” he muttered, waving it off. “And all of the excitement. For the rest of the night, can we just celebrate that your ‘flying’ potion wasn’t a complete failure?” She was starting to feel warm in her belly, the wine at its business. “Well, yes,” she said. “I suppose that’s worth a toast or two.” They drank those, and then Glim looked a little sidewise at her. “Anyway—” he began, then stopped. “What?” He grinned his lizard grin and shook his head. “You may not have to go looking for trouble. From what I heard, it might be coming for us.” “What’s this?” “The Wind Oracle put into port today.” “Your cousin Ixtah-Nasha’s boat.” “Yah. Says he saw something out on the deep, something coming this way.” “Something?” “That’s the crazy part. He said it looked like an island with a city on it.” “An uncharted island?” “An unmoored island. Floating in the air. Flying.” Annaïg frowned, set her glass down and wagged a finger at him. “That’s not funny, Glim. You’re teasing me.” “No, I wasn’t going to tell you. But the wine …” She sat up straighter in her chair. “You’re serious. Coming this way?” “’Swat he said.” “Huh,” she replied, taking up the wine again and sinking back into her chair. “I’ll have to think about that. A flying city. Sounds like something left over from the Merithic era. Or before.” She felt her ample mouth pull in a huge smile. “Exciting. I’d better go see Hecua tomorrow.” And so they finished that bottle, and opened another—an expensive one—and outside the rains came, as they always did, a moving curtain, glittering in the lamplight, clean and wet, washing away, for the moment, Lilmoth’s scent of mildew and decay."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_010.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel A boy was once born with a knife instead of a right hand, or so Colin had heard. Rape and attempted murder planted him in his mother, but she had lived and turned all of her thoughts toward vengeance. She laughed when he carved his way out of her and went gleefully into the world to slaughter all who had wronged her and many who had not. And when his victims were drowning in their own blood, they might ask, “Who are you?” and he would answer simply, “Dalk,” which in the northern tongue is an old word for knife. According to the legend, it happened in Skyrim, but assassins liked the story, and it wasn’t that uncommon for a brash young up-and-coming killer to take that alias and daydream of making that cryptic reply. The knife in Colin’s hand didn’t feel remotely a part of him. The handle was slick and clammy, and it made his arm feel huge and obvious, hanging by his side just under the edge of his cloak. Why hadn’t the man noticed him? He was just standing there, leaning against the banister of the bridge, staring off toward the lighthouse. He came here each Loredas, after visiting his horse at the stables. Often he met someone here; there was a brief conversation, and they would part. He never spoke to the same person twice. Colin continued toward him. There was traffic on the bridge—mostly folks from Weye going home for the night with their wagons and the things they hadn’t sold at market, lovers trying to find a nice place to be secret. But it was thinning out. They were almost alone. “There you are,” the man said. His face was hard to see, as it was cast in shadow by a watch-light a little farther up. Colin knew it well, though. It was long and bony. His hair was black with a little gray, his eyes startling blue. “Here I am,” Colin replied, his mouth feeling dry. “Come on over.” A few steps and Colin was standing next to him. A group of students from the College of Whispers were loudly approaching. “I like this place,” the man said. “I like to hear the bells of the ships and see the light. It reminds me of the sea. Do you know the sea?” Shut up! Colin thought. Please don’t talk to me. The students were dithering, pointing at something in the hills northwest. “I’m from Anvil,” Colin said, unable to think of anything but the truth. “Ah, nice town, Anvil. What’s that place, the one with the dark beer?” “The Undertow.” The man smiled. “Right. I like that place.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “What times, eh? I used to have a beautiful villa on the headland off Topal Bay. I had a little boat, two sails, just for plying near the coast."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_010.txt", "text": "Now …” He raised his hands and let them drop. “But you didn’t come here for any of that, did you?” The students were finally moving off, talking busily in what sounded like a made-up language. “I guess not,” Colin agreed. His arm felt larger than ever, the knife like a stone in his hand. “No. Well, it’s simple today. You can tell them there’s nothing new. And if anyone asks, tell them that no food, no wine, no lover’s kiss is as beautiful as a long, deep, breath.” “What?” “Astorie, book three. Chapter—What are you holding there?” Stupidly, Colin looked down at the knife, which had slipped from the folds of his cloak and gleamed in the lamplight. Their eyes met. “No!” the man shouted. So Colin stabbed him—or tried. The man’s palms came up and the knife cut into them. Colin reached with his left hand to try to slap them aside and thrust again, this time slicing deep into the forearm. “Just stop it!” the man gasped. “Wait a minute, talk—” The knife slipped past the thrashing limbs and sank into his solar plexus. His mouth still working, the fellow staggered back, staring at his hand and arm. “What are you doing?” he asked. Colin took a step toward the man, who slumped against the banister. “Don’t,” he wheezed. “I have to,” Colin whispered. He stooped down. The man’s arms came up, too weak now to stop Colin from cutting his throat. The corpse slipped to a sitting position. Colin slid down next to him and watched the students, distant now, entirely unaware of what had just happened. Unlike the two men coming from the city, who were walking purposefully toward him. Colin put his arms around the dead man’s shoulders, as if the fellow had passed out from drinking and he was keeping him warm. But there wasn’t any need for that. One of the pair was a tall bald man with angular features, the other an almost snoutless Khajiit. Arcus and Khasha. “Into the river with him now,” Arcus said. “Just catching my breath, sir.” “Yes, I saw. Quite a fracas, when all we asked you to do was slit his throat.” “He … he fought.” “You were careless.” “First time, Arcus,” Khasha said, smoothing his whiskers and twitching his tail impatiently. “How slick were you? Let’s get him in the river and be gone.” “Fine. Lift, Inspector.” When Colin didn’t move, Arcus snapped his fingers. “Sir? You meant me?” “I meant you. Sloppily done, but you did do it. You’re one of us now.” Colin took the dead man’s legs, and together they heaved him over. He hit the water and lay there, floating, staring up at Colin. Inspector. He’d been waiting three years to be called that. Now it sounded like just another word. “Put on this robe,” Khasha said. “Hide the blood until we get you cleaned up.” “Right,” Colin said dully."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_010.txt", "text": "He got his documents the next day, from Intendant Marall, a round-faced man with an odd ruff of beard beneath his chin. “You’ll lodge in the Telhall,” Marall told him. “I believe they already have a case for you.” He put down the pen and looked hard at Colin. “Are you well, son? You look haggard.” “Couldn’t sleep, sir.” The intendant nodded. “Who was he, sir?” Colin blurted out. “What did he do?” “You don’t want to know that, son,” Marall said. “I advise you not to try and find out.” ‘“But sir—” “What does it matter?” Marall said. “If I told you he was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of sixteen toddlers, would that make you happy?” “No, sir.” “What if I told you his crime was to make a treasonous joke about her majesty’s thighs?” Colin blinked. “I can’t imagine—” “You’re not supposed to imagine, son. Yours is not the power of life and death. That lies far above you. It comes, in essence, from the authority of the Emperor. There is always a reason, and it is always a good one, and it is not your business, do you understand? You do not imagine, you do not think. You do what you’re told.” “But I’ve been trained to think, sir. This office trained me to think.” “Yes, and you do it very well. All of your instructors agree on that. You’re a very bright young man, or the Penitus Oculatus would not have approached you in the first place, and you have done very well here. But any thinking you do, you see, is in service to your job. If you’re asked to find a spy in the Emperor’s guard, you must use every bit of logic at your disposal. If you’re asked to quietly discover which of Count Caro’s daughters has been poisoning his guests, again, use your forensic training. But if you’re given a clear order to steal, injure, poison, stab, or generally do murder, your brain is only to help you with the method and the execution. You are an instrument, a utensil of the Empire.” “I know that, sir.” “Not well enough, or you wouldn’t be asking these questions.” He stood up. “You’re from Anvil, I seem to remember. One of the city guardsmen recommended you for testing.” “Regin Oprenus, yes sir.” “Without his recommendation, what would you be doing right now?” “I don’t know, sir.” But he did, in a general way. His father was dead, his mother barely got by doing laundry for the better off. He’d managed to teach himself to read, but his education wouldn’t have gone much further than that, and if it had, it wouldn’t have been of any use to him. At best he might have worked in the shipyard or managed to hire onto a ship. The Imperial invitation had been a dream come true, offering him everything he’d wanted as a young boy. And that was still the case, despite … this."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_010.txt", "text": "And now he would draw a salary. He could send his mother some of that before she worked herself to death. “This is the test, isn’t it?” he said. “Not last night. Now.” The intendant ghosted a little smile. “Both were tests, son. And this isn’t the last, just the last official one. Every day on this job is a new challenge. If you’re not up to it, the time to say so is now, before you’re in over your head.” “I’m up to it, sir,” Colin said. “Very well, then, Inspector. Take the rest of the day off. Report for duty tomorrow.” Colin nodded and walked away, in search of his new lodgings."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_012.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel When Annaïg awoke, Mere-Glim was still sprawled on the floor, his breath rasping loudly. “Oh!” she muttered as she rose, pressing her throbbing temples, feeling her belly turn. How much wine had they drunk? She stumbled her way to the kitchen, winced at the sun as she unshuttered the windows. She built a fire in the stove, then opened the walk-in pantry in the diffuse light and considered the sausages hanging in bundles, the long blades of salted pogfish, barrels of flour, salt, sugar, rice, the pitiful basket of mostly wilted vegetables. There were eggs on the counter, still warm, so Tai-Tai must be up and doing his job, which wasn’t always the case. And there was her mother’s antique leather-bound spice case with its seventy-eight bottles of seeds and dried leaves. Everything she needed. Mere-Glim wandered in a few minutes after the garlic and chilies hit the oil and the air went sharp and pungent. “I’m too sick to eat,” he complained. “You’ll eat this,” Annaïg told him. “And you’ll like it. Old Tenny used to make this for Dad, before we couldn’t afford her anymore.” “If that’s so, why is it different every time you make it? Last time it had peanuts and pickled pork, not chilies and garlic.” “We don’t have any pork pickle,” she replied. “It’s not the specific ingredients that matter—it’s the principles of composition, the balance of essences, flavors, oils, and herbs.” Saying that, she emptied the spices she had ground a bit before with mortar and pestle, and the earthy scents of coriander, cardamom, lady’s mantel seeds, and ginger wafted about the kitchen. She added two handfuls of crushed rice, stirred that a bit, covered it with a finger of coconut milk, and set it to simmer with a lid on the pot. When the porridge was done, she ladled it into bowls and added slices of venison sausage, red ham, and pickled watermelon rind. “That looks disgusting,” Mere-Glim said. “Not done yet,” she said. She broke two eggs and dropped them, raw, into each bowl. Glim perked up and his tongue licked out. “Goose eggs?” “Uh-huh.” “Maybe I will try it.” She set a bowl in front of him, and after an experimental bite, he began downing it with gusto. Annaïg tucked into her own. “I already feel better,” Mere-Glim said. “See?” “Yes, yes.” She took another bite. “So tell me more about this ‘floating city,’” she said. “When is it supposed to be here?” “Ix said they outpaced it for three days and it never changed course before they finally got the wind they needed to really leave it behind. It was headed straight here, he said, and will arrive sometime early tomorrow at the pace it’s coming.” “So what did he figure it was?” “A big chunk of rock, shaped like a top. They could see buildings on the rim. The ship’s wind-caller didn’t like it."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_012.txt", "text": "Quit the minute they got into port and left town, fast, on a horse.” “What didn’t the wind-caller like?” “He kept saying it wasn’t right, that none of his magicks could tell him anything about it. Said it smelled like death.” “Did anyone take word to the Organism?” “I can never understand you two when you’re together,” a soft voice wisped. She turned her gaze to the door and found her father standing there. “That smells good,” he went on. “Is there any for me?” “Sure, Taig,” she said. “I made plenty.” She ladled him up a bowl and passed it. He took a spoonful and closed his eyes. “Better than Tenithar’s,” he said. “Always in the kitchen, weren’t you? You learned well.” “Do you know anything about this?” Annaïg said, a bit impatiently. It always bothered her, talking to her father, and she knew it shouldn’t, and that bothered her twice. But he sounded so soul-weak, as if most of his spirit had leaked out of him. “I wasn’t kidding,” he said. “You’ve been like this since you were children. I recognize a few words here and there …” Annaïg waved the old complaint aside. “This—flying city that’s supposed to be heading toward us. Do you know anything about that?” “I know the stories,” he sighed, picking at the stew. “It started with Urvwen—” Annaïg rolled her eyes. “Crazy old Psijic priest. Or whatever they call themselves.” “Said he felt something out in the deep water, a movement of some kind. So, yes, he’s crazy and the An-Xileel are irritated by him, especially Archwarden Qajalil, so he was dismissed. But then there were the reports from the sea, and the Organism sent out some exploratory ships.” “And?” “They’re still out there, looking for a phantom probably. After all, Urvwen has been spreading his message down at the docks. No wonder if sailors are seeing things.” “My cousin’s ship put to sea from Anvil three weeks ago,” Mere-Glim said. “He did not talk to Urvwen.” Her father’s face tightened oddly, the way it did when he was trying to hide something. “Taig!” she said. “Nothing,” he replied. “It’s nothing to worry about. If it’s dangerous the An-Xileel will meet it with the same might that drove the Empire out of Black Marsh and the Dunmer out of Morrowind. But what would a flying city want with Lil-moth?” “What do the Hist say?” Annaïg asked. The spoon hesitated halfway up to her father’s lips, then continued. He chewed and swallowed. “Taig!” “The city tree said it was nothing to worry about.” Mere-Glim made a high, scratchy humming sound and fluttered his eyes. “What do you mean? The ‘city’ tree?” He hesitated, as if he had said too much. “Lorkhan’s bits, Glim,” Annaïg said. “We’re not visitors here, you know.” He nodded. She hated how he was when he spoke straight Tamrielic. He didn’t sound like himself. “It’s just, the Hist, they are all—connected. Of the same mind."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_012.txt", "text": "So why mention the city tree in particular?” Her father’s eyes searched about a bit aimlessly, and he sighed again. “The An-Xileel in Lilmoth talk only to the city tree.” “What’s the difference?” Annaïg said. “Like Glim said, they’re all connected at the root, right? So what the city tree says is what they all say.” Glim’s face was like stone. “Maybe not,” he said. “What’s that mean?” “Annaïg—” her father started. His voice sounded strained. When he didn’t continue for a moment, she raised her hands. “What, Taig?” “Thistle, this might be a good time for you to visit your aunt in Leyawiin. I’ve been thinking you ought to anyway. I went so far as to set aside money for the voyage, and there is a ship leaving at dawn.” “That sounds worried to me, Taig. It sounds like you think something’s wrong.” “You’re all that’s left me that matters,” the old man said. “Even if the risk is small …” He opened his hands but would not meet her eye. Then his forehead smoothed and he stood. “I have to go. I am called to the Organism this morning. I will see you tonight, and we can discuss this further. Why don’t you pack, in case you decide to take the trip?” For a moment she saw farther; Leyawiin was an ocean voyage away, but from there she could reach the Imperial City, even if all she had were her own two feet. Maybe … “Can Glim go?” “I’m sorry, I’ve only money for one passage,” he replied. “I wouldn’t go anyway,” Glim said. “Right, then,” her father said. “I’ll be off. I’ll have dinner brought from the Coquina, Thistle. No need to cook tonight. And we’ll talk about this.” “Right, Taig,” she said. As soon as he was out of earshot, she leveled a finger at Mere-Glim. “You go down to the docks and see what that crazy priest has to say, and anything else you can find out. I’m going to Hecua’s.” “Why Hecua’s?” “I need to fine-tune my new invention.” “Your falling potion, you mean?” “It saved our lives,” she pointed out. “On a related note,” Glim said, “why, by the rotting wells, are you worried about flying at this time?” “How else are we going to get up on a flying island, by catapult?” “Ahh …” Mere-Glim sighed. “Ah, no.” “Look at me, Glim,” Annaïg said. Slowly, reluctantly, he did so. “I love you, and I’d love to have you along, but if you don’t want to go, no worries. I’m not going to give you a hard time. But I’m going, Xhu?” He held her gaze for a moment, and then his nostrils contracted. “Xhu,” he said. “Meet you here at noon.” As Mere-Glim followed Lilmoth’s long slump to the bay Imperials named Oliis, he felt the cloud-rippled sky gently pressing on him, on the trees, on the ancient ballast-stone paving."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_012.txt", "text": "He wondered, which is to say that he gave his mind its way, let it slip away from speech into the obscure nimbus of pure thinking. Words hammered thought into shape, put it in cages, bound it in chains. Jel—the tongue of his ancestors—was the closest speech to real thought, but even Annaïg—who knew as much Jel as anyone not of the root—her throat couldn’t make all the right sounds, couldn’t shade the meanings enough for him to really converse with her. He was four people, really. Mere-Glim the Argonian, when he spoke the language of the Empire, which cut his thoughts into human shapes. When he spoke to his mother or siblings he was Wuthilul the Saxhleel. When he spoke with a Saxhleel from the deep forest, or even with a member of the An-Xileel, he was a Lukiul, “assimilated,” because his family had been living under Imperial ways for so long. When he spoke with Annaïg he was something else, not between the two, but something very different from either. Glim. But even their shared language was far from true thought. True thought was close to the root. The Hist were many, and they were one. Their roots burrowed deep beneath the black soil and soft white stone of Black Marsh, connecting them all, and thus connecting all Saxhleel, all Argonians. The Hist gave his people life, form, purpose. It was the Hist who had seen through the shadows to the Oblivion crisis, who called all of the people back to the marsh, defeated the forces of Mehrunes Dagon, drove the Empire into the sea, and laid waste to their ancient enemies in Morrowind. The Hist were of one mind, but just as he was four beings, the mind of the Hist could sometimes escape itself. It had happened before. It had happened in Lilmoth. If the city tree had separated itself, and the An-Xileel with it, what did that mean? And why was he going to do what Annaïg had asked him to do rather than trying to discover what was happening to the tree whose sap had molded him? But he was, wasn’t he? He stopped and stared into the bulbous stone eyes of Xhon-Mehl the Fisher, once Ascendant Organ Lord of Lilmoth. Now all that was visible of him was his lower snout up to his head. The rest of him was sunken, like most of ancient Lilmoth, into the soft, shifting soil the city had been built on. If one could swim through mud and earth, there were many Lilmoths to discover beneath one’s webbed feet. An image arose behind his eyes; the great stepped pyramid of Ixtaxh-thtithil-meht. Only the topmost chamber still jutted above the silt, but the An-Xileel had excavated it, room by room, pumping it out and laying magicks to keep the water from returning. As if they wanted to go back, not forward."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_012.txt", "text": "As if something were pulling them back to that ancient Lilmoth … He stopped, realizing he was still walking without knowing exactly where he was going, but then he knew. The undertow of his thoughts had brought him here. To the tree. Or part of it. The city tree was said to be three hundred years old, and its roots and tendrils pushed and wound through most of lower Lilmoth, and here was a root the size of his thigh, twisting its way out of a stone wall. Everything else around him had become waterish, blurred, but as he laid his webbed hand on the rough surface, the colors sharpened and focused. He stood there, no longer seeing the crumbling, rotted Imperial warehouses, but instead a city of monstrous stone ziggurats and statues pushing up to the sky, a place of glory and madness. He felt it tremor around him, smelled anise and burning cinnamon, and heard chanting in antique tongues. His heart thumped oddly as he watched the two moons heave themselves through the low mist of smoke and fog that rolled through the streets, and the waters surged beneath them, around them, beyond the sky. His thoughts melted together. He wasn’t sure how long it was before his mind complicated itself again, but his hand was still on the root. He lifted it and backed away, and after a few long breaths he began walking, and in the thick night around him, the massive structures softened, thinned, and went mostly away, until he was once again in the Lilmoth where his body was born. Mostly away. But he felt it now, the call the An-Xileel felt, and he realized that a part of him had already known it. He knew something else, too. The tree had cut him off from the vision before it had run its course. That was troubling. Gulls swarmed the streets like rats near the waterfront, most of them too greedy or stupid to even move out of his way as he picked his way through fish offal, shattered crabs, jellyfish, and seaweed. Barnacles went halfway up the buildings here. This part of town had sunk so low that when a double tide came, it flooded deep. The docks themselves floated, attached to a massive long stone quay whose foundations were as ancient as time and whose upper layer of limestone had been added last year. He made his way up the central ramp to the top of it. Here was a city in itself; since the An-Xileel forbade all but licensed foreigners in the city, the markets had all crowded themselves here. Here, a fishmonger held a flounder up by the tail, selling from a single crate of silver-skinned harvest. There, a long line of sheds with the Colovian Traders banner hawked trinkets of silver and brass, cooking pots, cutlery, wine, cloth. He had worked here, for a while."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_012.txt", "text": "A group of his matriline cousins had set up a business selling Theilul, a liquor made of distilled sugarcane. They’d originally sold the cane, but since their fields were twenty miles from town, they’d found it easier to transport a few cases of bottles than many wagonloads of cane—and far more profitable. He knew where to find Urvwen; right in the thick of it all, where the great stone cross that was the waterfront joined. The Psijic wasn’t yelling, as usual. He was just sitting there, looking through the crowd and past the colorful masts of the ships to the south, toward where the bay came to the sea. His bone-colored skin seemed paler than usual, but when the silvery eyes found Mere-Glim approaching, they were full of life. “You want to know, don’t you?” he said. For a moment Mere-Glim had trouble responding, the experience with the tree had been so powerful. But he let words shape his thoughts again. “My cousin said he saw something out at sea.” “Yes, he did. It’s nearly here.” “What is nearly here?” The old priest shrugged. “Do you know anything about my order?” “Not much.” “Few do. We don’t teach our beliefs to outsiders. We counsel, we help.” “Help with what?” “Change.” Mere-Glim blinked, trying to find his answer there. “Change is inevitable,” Urvwen went on. “Indeed, change is sacred. But it is not to be unguided. I came here to guide; the An-Xileel—and the city council—the ‘Organism’ that they so thoroughly control—do not listen.” “They have a guide—the Hist.” “Yes. And their guide brings change, but not the sort that ought to be encouraged. But they do not listen to me. Truth be told, no one here listens to me, but I try. Every day I come here and try to have some effect.” “What’s coming?” Mere-Glim persisted. “Do you know of Arteum?” the old man asked. “The island you Psijics come from,” Glim answered him. “It was removed from the world once. Did you know that?” “I did not.” “Such things happen.” He nodded, more to himself, it seemed, than to Mere-Glim. “Has something been removed from the world?” he asked. “No,” Urvwen said, lowering his voice. “Something has been removed from another world. And it has come here.” “What will it do?” “I don’t know. But I think it will be very bad.” “Why?” “It’s too complicated to explain,” he sighed. “And even if you understood my explanation, it wouldn’t help. Mundus—the world—is a very delicate thing, you know. Only certain rules keep it from returning to the Is/Is Not.” “I don’t understand.” The Psijic waved his hands. “Those boats out there—to sail and not founder—the sails and the ropes that hoist them, control them—tension must be just so, they must adjust as the winds change, if a storm comes they may even have to be taken down …” He shook his head. “No, no—I feel the ropes of the world, and they have become too tight."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_012.txt", "text": "They pull in the wrong directions. And that is never good. That is what happened in the days before the Dragonfires first burned—” “Are you talking about Oblivion? I thought we can’t be invaded by Oblivion anymore. I thought Emperor Martin—” “Yes, yes. But nothing is so simple. There are always loopholes, you see.” “Even if there aren’t loops?” Urvwen grinned at that but didn’t reply. “So this—city,” Mere-Glim said. “It’s from Oblivion.” The priest shook his head, so violently Mere-Glim thought it might come off. “No, no, no—or yes. I can’t explain. I can’t—go away. Just go away.” Mere-Glim’s head was already hurting from the conversation. He didn’t need to be told twice, although technically he had been. He wandered off to find his cousins and procure a bottle of Theilul. Annaïg could wait a bit."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_013.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel Hecua’s single eye crawled its regard over Annaïg’s list of ingredients. Her wrinkled dark brow knotted in a little frown. “Last try didn’t work, did it?” Annaïg puffed her lips and lifted her shoulders. “It worked,” she said, “just not exactly the way I wanted it to.” The Redguard shook her head. “You’ve the knack, there’s no doubt about that. But I’ve never heard of any formula that can make a person fly—not from anywhere. And this list—this just looks like a mess waiting to happen.” “I’ve heard Lazarum of the Synod worked out a way to fly,” Annaïg said. “Hmm. And maybe if there was a Synod conclave within four hundred miles of here, you might have a chance of learning that, after a few years paying their dues. But that’s a spell, not a synthesis. A badly put-together spell likely won’t work at all—alchemy gone wrong can be poison.” “I know all of that,” Annaïg said. “I’m not afraid—nothing I’ve ever made turned out too bad.” “It took me a week to give Mere-Glim his skin back.” “He had his skin,” Annaïg pointed out. “It was just translucent, that’s all. It didn’t hurt him.” Hecua buzzed her lips together in disdain. “Well, there’s no talking to the young, is there?” She held up the list and began picking through the bottles, boxes, and canisters on the shelves that made up the walls of the place. While she did so, Annaïg wandered around the shelves, too, studying their contents. She knew she didn’t have everything she needed. It was like cooking; there was one more taste needed to pull everything together. She just didn’t have any idea what it was. Hecua’s place was huge. It had once been the local Mages’ Guild hall, and there were still three or four doddering practitioners who were in and out of the rooms upstairs. Hecua honored their memberships, even though there was no such organization as the Mages’ Guild anymore. No one much cared; the An-Xileel didn’t care, and neither the College of Whispers nor the Synod—the two Imperially recognized institutions of magic—had representatives in Lilmoth, so they hadn’t anything to say about it either. She opened bottles and sniffed the powders, distillations, and essences, but nothing spoke to her. Nothing, that is, until she lifted a small, fat bottle wrapped tightly in black paper. Touching it sent a faint tingle traveling up her arm, across her clavicle, and up into the back of her throat. “What is it?” Hecua asked, and Annaïg realized her gasp must have been audible. She held the container up. The old woman came and peered down her nose at it. “Oh, that,” she said. “I’m really not sure, to tell you the truth. It’s been there for ages.” “I’ve never seen it before.” “I pulled it from the back, while I was dusting.” “And you don’t know what it is?” She shrugged."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_013.txt", "text": "“A fellow came in here years ago, a few months after the Oblivion crisis. He was sick with something and needed some things, but he didn’t have money to pay. But he had that. He claimed he’d taken it from a fortress in Oblivion itself. There was a lot of that back then; we had a big influx of daedra hearts and void salts and the like.” “But he didn’t say what it was?” She shook her head. “I felt sorry for him, that’s all. I imagine it’s not much of anything.” “And you never opened it to find out?” Hecua paused. “Well, no, you can see the paper is intact.” “May I?” “I don’t see why not.” Annaïg broke the paper with her thumbnail, revealing the stopper beneath. It was tight, but a good twist brought it out. The feeling in the back of her throat intensified and became a taste, a smell, bright as sunlight but cold, like eucalyptus or mint. “That’s it,” she said, as she felt it all meld together. “What? You know what it is?” “No. But I want some.” “Annaïg—” “I’ll be careful, Aunt Hec. I’ll run some virtue tests on it.” “Those tests aren’t well proven yet. They miss things.” “I’ll be careful, I said.” “Hmf,” the old woman replied dubiously. The house, as usual, was empty, so she went to the small attic room where she had all of her alchemical gear and went to work. She did the virtue tests and found the primary virtue was restorative and the secondary was—more promisingly—one of alteration. The tertiary and quaternary virtues didn’t reveal themselves even so vaguely. But she knew, knew right to her bones, that this was right. And so she passed hours with her calcinator, and in the end she was turning a flask containing a pale amber fluid that bent light oddly, as if it were a half a mile of liquid instead of a few inches. “Well,” she said, sniffing it. Then she sighed. It felt right, smelled right—but Hecua’s warning was not to be taken lightly. This could be poison as easily as anything. Maybe if she just tasted a little … At that moment she heard a sound on the stairs. She stayed still, listening for it to repeat itself. “Annaïg?” She sighed in relief. It was only her father. She remembered he had been bringing food home, and a glance out her small window proved it was near dinnertime. “Coming, Taig,” she called, corking the potion and stuffing it in her right skirt pocket. She started up, then paused. Where was Glim? He’d been gone an awfully long time. She went to a polished cypress cabinet and withdrew two small objects wrapped in soft gecko skin. She unwrapped them carefully, revealing a locket on a chain and a life-sized likeness of a sparrow constructed of a fine metal the color of brass but as light as paper."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_013.txt", "text": "Each individual feather had been fashioned exquisitely and separately, and its eyes were garnets set in ovals of some darker metal. As her fingers touched it, it stirred, ruffling its metal wings. “Hey, Coo,” she whispered. She hesitated then. Coo was the only thing of value her mother had left her that hadn’t been stolen or sold. Sending her out was a risk she didn’t often take. But Glim had had more than enough time to get to the waterfront and back, hours and hours more. It was probably nothing—maybe he was drinking with his cousins or something—but she was eager to find out what the Psijic priest had to say. “Go find Glim,” she whispered to the bird, conjuring the image of her friend in her secret eye. “Speak only to him, hear only at his touch.” She purred, lifted her wings, and drifted more than flew out of the open window. “Annaïg?” Her father’s voice again, nearer. She went out, closing the door behind her. She met him near the top of the winding flight. He was red in the face from wine or exertion or probably both. “Why didn’t you just ring the bell, Taig?” she asked. “Sometimes you don’t come down right away,” he said, stepping aside. “After you.” “What’s the rush?” she asked, descending past him. “We were going to talk,” he said. “About the trip to Leyawiin?” “That, and other things,” he replied. The stair came to a landing, and then continued down. “What other things?” “I haven’t been a very good father, Thistle. I know that. Since your mother died—” There was that annoying tone again. “It’s been fine, Taig. I’ve got no complaints.” “Well, you should. I know that. I tell myself that I’ve been doing what’s needed to keep us alive, to keep this house …” He sighed. “And in the end, all meaningless.” They passed the next landing. “What do you mean, meaningless?” she asked. “I love this house.” “You think I don’t know anything about you,” he said. “I do. You pine to leave here, this place. You dream of the Imperial City, of studying there.” “I know we don’t have the money, Taig.” He nodded. “That’s been the problem, yes. But I’ve sold some things.” “Like what?” “The house, for one.” “What?” She stopped with her foot on the floor of the antechamber, just noticing the men there, four of them—an Imperial with a knobby nose, an orc with dark green hide and low, brushy brows, and two Bosmeri who might have been twins with their fine, narrow faces. She recognized the orc and the Imperial as members of the Thtachalxan, or “Drykillers,” the only non-Argonian guard unit in Lilmoth. “What’s going on, Taig?” she whispered. He rested his hand on her shoulder. “I wish I had more time, Thistle,” he murmured. “I wish I could go with you, but this is how it is. Your aunt will see you get to the Imperial City."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_013.txt", "text": "She has friends there.” “What’s happening, Taig? What do you know?” “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Best you not find out.” She brushed his hand from her shoulder. “I’m not going to Leyawiin,” she said. “Certainly not without a better explanation and certainly not without you—and Glim.” “Glim …” He exhaled, then his face changed into a visage utterly alien to her. “Don’t worry about Glim,” he said. “There’s nothing to be done there.” “What do you mean?” She could hear the panic building in her voice. It was as if it had pulled itself outside of her and become a thing of its own. “Tell me!” When he didn’t answer, she turned and strode for the door. The orc stepped in her way. “Don’t hurt her,” her father said. Annaïg turned and ran, ran as fast as she could toward the kitchen and other door, the one that led to the garden. She was only halfway there when hard, callused hands clamped on her arm. “I owe yer father,” the orc growled. “So you’ll be coming with me, girl.” She writhed in his grasp, but the others were all around her. Her father leaned in and kissed her forehead. He stank of black rice wine. “I love you,” he said. “Try to remember that, in the days and years to come. That in the end I did right by you.” With half a bottle of Theilul sloshing in his belly, Mere-Glim made his wobbly way back toward the old Imperial district. He knew Annaïg was going to be irritated with him for not returning sooner, but at the moment he didn’t care that much. Anyway, it wasn’t much fun watching her concoct her smelly compounds, which is what she had surely been doing all afternoon. He hadn’t spent much time with his cousins lately—or with anyone except Annaïg, really. If he had, he might have known he wasn’t alone in feeling a bit cut off from the tree, that only the An-Xileel and other, even wilder people from the deep swamps seemed to enjoy complete rapport with it. That was bothersome in a lot of ways, and perhaps most bothersome was that his mind—like many of his people—had a hard time believing in coincidence. If the tree was doing something strange at the same time a flying city appeared from nowhere, it seemed impossible that there wasn’t some connection. Maybe Annaïg’s father was right—after all, the old man did work with the An-Xileel. Maybe it was time to go, away from Lilmoth and its rogue tree. If it was rogue. If all the Hist weren’t involved. Because if they were, he would have to get out of Black Marsh entirely. A light rain began splattering the mud-covered path as he passed beneath the pocked, eroded limestone arch that had once marked the boundary of the Imperial quarter."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_013.txt", "text": "He whirl-jumped as a fluttering motion at the edge of his vision opened ancient templates—but what he saw there wasn’t a venin-bat or blood-moth. It took him a moment to sort out that it was Annaïg’s metal bird, Coo. She must really be irritated, he thought. She rarely used Coo for anything. He blew out some of the water that had collected in his nose and flipped open the little hatch that covered the mirror. He didn’t find Annaïg gazing back at him, though. It was dark, which meant the locket was closed. But it was emitting faint sounds. He pressed the bird nearer his ear. At first he didn’t hear much—breathing, the muffled voices of two men. But then suddenly a man was shouting, and a woman shrieked. He knew that shriek like he knew his own—it was Annaïg. “Back here, girl!” a hoarse voice growled. “Just tell my father you put me on the ship!” he heard Annaïg shout. “He’ll never know the difference.” “Maybe he wouldn’t,” Hoarse Voice grunted. “But I would, yeah? So on the boat you go.” Annaïg then vented a string of profanities, some of which she almost certainly had made up on the spot, because Mere-Glim hadn’t heard them before, and he had pretty much heard all of her arsenal of swear-words and phrases—or thought he had. With a grunt he turned around and started back down toward the docks. It seemed Annaïg’s father did know something, something so bad he’d had his own daughter kidnapped to get her out of town. Well, that was great. Now he felt worse about everything. He began to run."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_014.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel Annaïg thought she would have a chance to escape when they reached the ship, but her father’s thugs—and his money—seemed to convince the captain, an Argonian so old that patches of his scales had become translucent. She and her things were placed in a small stateroom—about the size of a closet, actually—and that was bolted from the outside, with the promise that she would be free to wander the ship once they were a few leagues from land. That didn’t stop her from trying to find a way out, of course. The small window was no help, since she couldn’t shape-shift into a cat or ferret. She tried screaming for help, but they were facing away from the docks, so there was no one to hear her above the general din. She couldn’t find a way through the door, and as it turned out, if someone had built any sort of secret doors or panels into the bulkhead, they were far too clever for her. That left crying, which she actually started before completing her search. Her tears were thoroughly mixed—anger, grief, and terror. Her father would never think of treating her like this unless he was certain that remaining meant death. So why had he decided to stay and die? Why did he get that choice and not her? Once she got past the noisy stage of crying and settled into more dignified, ladylike sniffling, she realized someone was saying her name. She looked at the door and window, but the sound was funny, very small … And then she remembered, and felt really stupid. She took off the locket and opened it up and there was Glim’s familiar face. His mouth was slightly open and his teeth were showing, indicating his agitation. “Glim!” she whispered. “Where are you?” he asked. “I’m on a ship—” “Did you get the name?” “The Tsonashap—‘Swimming Frog.’” The tiny figure of his head turned this way and that. “I see it,” he said at last. “It’s making ready.” “I’m in a small stateroom near the bow,” she told him. “There’s a short corridor—” She stopped and bit her lip. “Glim, don’t try it,” she said at last. “I think … I think something really awful is about to happen. Trying to get me out of here—you’ll only get caught. Get out of Lilmoth, as far and as fast as you can.” Glim blinked slowly. “I’m going to close the bird and put it away now,” he said. “Glim—” But the image vanished. Annaïg sighed, shut the locket and her eyes. She felt tired, hungry, worn-out. Glim was coming, wasn’t he? The first hour, she waited anxiously, preparing herself to spring into action. But then she felt the boat moving on the water. She looked out the window and saw the lanterns on the quay receding. “Xhuth!” she swore. “Waxhuthi! Kaoc’!” But the lights, uninterested in her expletives, continued to dim and dwindle."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_014.txt", "text": "She opened the locket, but no image greeted her. She held it up to her ear, but she didn’t hear anything, either. Had he heeded her advice, or had he been caught, injured, murdered? In her whirling thoughts he was all of them. Glim, missing an arm; Glim, headless; Glim bound in chains and about to be thrown overboard … Something rattled at her door, and her heart actually skipped a beat. She’d always thought that was just an expression. She stood, fingers knotted in fists she didn’t really know how to use, waiting. The door opened, a snout appeared, and large reptilian eyes that sagged deep in their wrinkled sockets. “Captain,” she said, making her voice as cold as possible. “We’re in deep water,” he grated. “Don’t be foolish and try to swim for it. You’ll not make it, not with the sea-drakes hereabouts.” He glanced down at her clenched hands and flashed his own claws, shaking his head. “Never think that,” he said. “I’d see you safe to your destination, but no one attacks a captain on his ship and doesn’t pay hard. It’s law.” “Law? Kidnapping is against the law!” “This isn’t kidnapping, it’s your father’s wish—and you aren’t old enough to go against his wish, at least not in this sort of matter. So best resign.” He hadn’t said anything about Glim, and she was afraid to ask. She loosened her fingers. “Very well. I’m free to move about the ship?” “Within reason.” “Right. Here’s me moving, then.” She pushed past him into the brief hall, up the steps, and onto the deck. Above her, sails billowed and snapped in the plentiful wind that always drove off the coast early in the night, and the bow cut a furrow through a sea lacquered in silver and bronze by the two great moons above. For a moment her fear and dismay were overcome by an unexpected rush of joy at the beauty of it, the adventure it seemed to promise. Across the sea to the Empire, and everything she’d always wanted. Her father’s last, best—almost only—gift to her. She went and stood with her hands braced on the bulward and looked out across the waters. They were sailing south, out of the bay, and then they would go west, along the mangroved coast of Black Marsh, until they reached the Topal Sea, and then they would turn north. Or she could throw herself in the water and swim what she guessed to be west, brave the sea-drakes, and with more luck than she deserved reach land. But by the time she made it back to Lil-moth, it would be too late. The city—or whatever it was—was supposed to arrive in the morning. Still … “Hold your breath,” someone whispered behind her, and then she was lifted and falling, and a blink afterward stunned and wet."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_014.txt", "text": "She gasped for air and clawed at her captor, trying to climb up on his head, but a strong hand clamped over her nose and mouth before she could so much as scream, and suddenly she was beneath, enclosed by the sea, moving though it in powerful pulses. She knew she shouldn’t breathe, but after a few moments she had to try, to suck in something, anything, to make the need stop. But she couldn’t do it, even when she wanted to. She woke with air whistling in and a voice behind her. “Keep quiet,” he said. “We’re behind them, but a keen eye will spot us.” “Glim?” “Yes.” “Are you rescuing me or trying to kill me?” “I’m not sure myself,” he said. “The captain said something about sea-drakes.” “A distinct possibility,” he said. “So here’s what we’ll do. You hang tight to my shoulders. Don’t kick or try to help—let me swim for both of us. Try to keep your head under if you can, but I’ll be shallow enough so you can lift it out for a few breaths when you need to. Right?” “Okay.” “Let’s go, then.” Glim began digging at the water then, and after finding his pace with a human clinging to his back, he settled into a powerful, almost gliding measure. On land, Glim was strong, but here he seemed really powerful—a crocodile, a dolphin. After a few panicked moments, she had her head bobbing in and out of the water in rhythm with him and was actually beginning to enjoy the ride. She had never been a good swimmer, and the sea always seemed somehow deeply unfriendly, but now she felt almost a part of it. It was just then, as the last of her fears melted away, that Glim rolled and turned so quickly that she nearly lost her grip. The cadence broken, she gulped water, only barely managing not to inhale. Then the water itself seemed to slap at them. Glim was going even faster now, weaving and rolling, not giving her any chance to breathe at all. Again, a vortex seemed to jerk at them, and as they spun she caught a glimpse of an immense dark shape against the moonlight glowing down through the water—something like a crocodile, but with paddles instead of legs. And much, much bigger. Glim dove deeper, and her lungs began to scream again, but just as suddenly, he turned back up and in an instant they broke free of the sea’s grasp, hurling into the air, where the black gas in her chest found its way out and one sweet sip of the good stuff got in before they struck once more down through the silvery surface. Agony ripped along her leg, and then Glim was doing his crazy dance again, and something scraped at her arm and she screamed bubbles into the water as her fingers began to lose their grip."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_014.txt", "text": "But then they stopped, and Glim was hauling her up out of the water. He sat her down on something hard, and she sagged there, gasping, tears of pain seeping from her eyes. “Are you okay?” Glim asked. She felt her leg. Her hand came away sticky. “I think it bit me,” she said. “No,” he said, squatting to examine her. “If it had, you wouldn’t have a leg. You must have scraped against the reef.” “Reef?” She brushed her eyes and looked around. They weren’t on land—at least, not the mainland. Instead they rested on a tiny island hardly more than a few inches above the water. Indeed, at high tide it would certainly be below water. “She’s too big to follow us in here,” he said. “Looks like the captain wasn’t kidding about sea-drakes.” “I guess not.” “Well, from here on out we only have sharks to worry about.” “Yes, well at least I’m bleeding,” Annaïg managed to quip. “Yah. So maybe the next half mile won’t be boring.” But if there were sharks around, they didn’t fancy the taste of Breton blood, because they made it to the shore without incident. If shore it could be called—it was actually a nearly impenetrable wall of mangroves, crouched in the water like thousands of giant spiders with their legs interlocked. Annaïg was pleased with the image until she remembered that it was from an Argonian folktale, one which claimed that’s exactly what mangroves had once been, before they earned the wrath of the Hist in some ancient altercation and were transformed. Somehow Glim found them a way through the mess, and finally to the sinking remnants of a raised road. “How far do you think we are from Lilmoth?” she asked. “Ten miles, maybe,” Glim replied. “But I’m not sure we’re well-advised to go back there.” “My father’s there, Glim. And your family, too.” “I don’t think there’s anything we can do for them.” “What’s happening? Do you know?” “I think the city tree has gone rogue, just as it did in ancient times. A lot of people say this one grew from a single fragment of the root that survived the elder’s killing, more than three hundred years ago.” “Rogue? How?” “It doesn’t talk to us anymore. Only to the An-Xileel and the Wild Ones. But I think it must be talking to this thing coming from the sea.” “That doesn’t make any sense.” “Only because we don’t know everything.” “So you think we should just abandon the town?” He did his imitation of a human shrug. “You know I can’t,” she said. “I know you want to be a hero like those people in your books. Like Attrebus Mede and Martin Septim. But look at us—we aren’t armed, even if we knew how to fight, which we don’t. We can’t handle this, Nn.” “We can warn people.” “How?"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_014.txt", "text": "If the predictions are true, the flying island will reach Lilmoth before we do, by hours.” She hung her head and nodded. “You’re right.” “I am.” She held the image of her father for a moment. “But we don’t know what’s going to happen. We still might be able to help.” “Nn—” “Wait a minute,” she said. “Wait. It’s coming from the south, right?” “Oh, no.” “We have to find high ground. We have to be able see where it is.” “No, really, we don’t.” She gave him the look, and he sighed. “I just rescued you. How determined are you to die, anyway?” “You know better than that.” “Fine. I think I know a place.” The place was an upthrust of rock that towered more than a hundred feet above the jungle floor. It seemed unclimbable, but that proved not to be a problem when Glim led her to a cave opening in the base of the soft limestone. It led steadily upward, and in some places stairs had been carved. Faded paintings that resembled coiled snakes, blooming flowers, and more often than not nothing recognizable at all decorated the climb, and an occasional side gallery held often bizarre stone carvings of half-tree, half-Argonian figures. “You’ve been here before, I take it?” she asked. “Yes,” he replied, and made no other comment, even when she began hinting that one ought to be forthcoming. Rose was blooming in the east by the time they scaled the last of the stairs and stood on the moss and low ferns on the flat summit of the tabletop. It was quiet, dreamlike, and everything suddenly seemed turned around and impossible. What was she doing here, chasing this fantasy? Nothing was happening, nothing ever happened … “Xhuth!” Glim breathed, just as the bright line of the sun lit the bay on fire. Her first impression was of a vast jellyfish, its massive dark body trailing hundreds of impossibly slender, glowing tentacles. But then she saw the solidity of it, the mountain ripped from its base and turned over. The mass of it, the terrifying size. She had been picturing a perfect cone, but this had crevasses and crags, crude, sharp, unweathered angles, as if it had just been torn from the ground the day before. The top seemed mostly as flat as the summit they stood upon, but there were shapes there, towers and arches—and most strangely, a long, drooping fringe depending from the upper edge like an immense lace collar, but twisted about by the wind and then frozen in its disheveled state. It was still south of them and a bit west, but its movement was clear enough. She watched it, frozen, unable to find a response. Something faint broke the silence, a sort of susurrus, a buzzing. She fumbled in the pockets of her dress, found the vial marked with an ear, and took a draft. The hum sharpened into not one voice, but many."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_014.txt", "text": "Vague, gibbering cries, unholy shrieks of agony and fear, babbling in languages she did not know. It sent scorpions down her back. “What …?” She strained at the jungle floor below the island, where the sounds seemed to be coming from, but couldn’t make anything out through morning haze, distance, and thick vegetation. She turned her attention back to the island, to the glowing strands it trailed. They might have been spider silk spun from lightning, some flashing briefly brighter than others. She realized they weren’t trailing, but dropping down from the center of the base, vanishing into the treetops, flashing white and then withdrawn into the island’s belly. As some came up, others descended, creating her original impression of a constant train of them. Amidst the bright strands, something darker moved. Swarms of something—they might have been hornets or bees, but given the distance, that would make them huge—emerged from the stone walls and hurtled toward the jungle below. But at some invisible line a few hundred feet below the island, they suddenly dissolved into streamers of black smoke, then vanished into the treetops. Unlike the threads, they did not reappear. “Glim—” she whispered. She turned and saw him going back down the steps. Only his head was visible. “No, Glim, I’ve changed my mind,” she said, trying to keep her voice low, despite the distance. “We’ll wait for it to pass. It’s doing something—” Glim’s head vanished from view. Seized with fresh terror, she bolted after him. He was easily caught—he wasn’t moving fast—but when she did catch him, his eyes were oddly blank. “Glim, what is it?” “Going back, back to start over,” he murmured vaguely. Or at least that’s what she thought he meant, because he was speaking in Jen, a deeply ambiguous tongue. He might have been saying, “Going back to be born,” or any of ten other things that made no sense. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “What is it?” “Back,” he replied. He kept walking. For another ten steps she watched him go, trying to understand, but then she knew she didn’t have time to understand, because the howling and screaming was beneath them now, echoing up through the caverns. Whatever they were, they were coming. She caught up with him and tickled him under the jaw. When his mouth gaped reflexively—she’d had a lot of fun with that when they were kids—she poured the contents of a vial into it. He closed his mouth and coughed. She drank her own dose. It felt like a cold iron rod was being pushed down her esophagus, and she coughed, violently. The world spun dizzily … No, it wasn’t the world. It was her. She and Glim were out of the cave and ten feet above the summit, then twenty, but spinning crazily. She thrashed, trying to catch his hand before they drifted too far apart, and finally got his wrist."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_014.txt", "text": "That stabilized them a bit, which was good, but now they were picking up speed, and they were aimed straight at the floating island. “Turn!” she shouted, but nothing happened. As the stone loomed nearer and nearer, she desperately tried to imagine another destination—her house, her father’s house back in Lilmoth. That worked, for they turned, slightly, then a bit more. But then Glim grunted, trying to shake himself free, and they were suddenly yanked back toward the thing. Annaïg felt her grip breaking, and knew even if she managed to turn, she was going to lose Glim. He wanted to go down, but more than that, he wanted to go to that thing. So she picked the deepest crevasse she could see and focused on it, and the wind became a thunder in her ears. Glim’s will appeared to relent, and they began to pick up speed. Something seemed to draw through her, as if she had somehow passed through a sieve and not been shredded, and then that, too, was past. Walls of black stone reached around her like an immense cloak, and then she felt weight return, and the sure grip of the world renew."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_015.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel Annaïg stirred and pushed up with aching limbs. Her arms seemed spindly and weak, her legs boneless. Her palms were pressed against thick-grained basalt, and she saw she rested at the base of the vertical crevasse she had aimed for; a sliver of light was visible, relatively narrow but rising hundreds of feet. It felt somehow as if she were in a temple, and the sky itself some holy image. Glim was a few yards away, thrashing feebly. “Glim,” she hissed. Echoes took up even that faint cry. “Nn?” His head twisted in her direction. He seemed to be back in his eyes. “You break anything?” she asked him. He rolled into a sitting position and shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Where are we?” “We’re on the thing. The flying island.” “How?” “You don’t remember anything, do you?” “No, I—I remember climbing the spur. And then …” His pupils rapidly dilated and shrank, as if he was trying to focus on something that wasn’t there. “The Hist,” he said. “The tree. It was talking to me, filling me up. I couldn’t hear anything else.” “You were pretty out of it,” she confirmed. “I’ve never felt like that,” he said. “There were a lot of us, all walking in the same direction, all with the same mind.” “Walking where?” “Toward something.” “This place, maybe?” “I don’t know.” “Well, we’re here now. What is the tree telling you now?” “Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing at all. I’ve never felt that, either. It’s always there, in the background, like the weather. Now …” He looked out at the light. “They say if you go far enough from Black Marsh, you can barely hear the Hist. But this—it’s like I’ve been cut away from the tree. There’s not even a whisper.” “Maybe it’s something about this place,” she said. “This place,” he repeated, as if he couldn’t imagine anything else to say. “We flew up here,” she said. “Your gunk worked.” “It did.” “Congratulations.” “That I’m not so sure about,” she murmured. “But this is what you wanted, yes, to be up here?” “I changed my mind,” she said. “In the end it was you who wanted to come here—only you wanted to go beneath, down to the ground. I wanted to go back to town. This was the compromise.” A sudden snap and flurry sounded behind them, and they turned just in time to see a handful of dark figures come hurtling out of some dark apertures in the stone wall. At first her only impression was of wings rushing by, but one of the things circled tight, came back, and beat around their heads before settling on long, insectile legs. It resembled a moth, albeit a moth nearly her size. Its wings were voluptuous, velvety, dark green and black. Its head was merely a black polished globe with a long, wickedly sharp needle projecting out like a nose."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_015.txt", "text": "Its six legs, ticking nervously beneath it, ended in similar points. It leaned toward her and seemed to sniff, making a low fluting noise. Then it smelled Glim. The moment stretched, and Annaïg tried to keep her panic in a little box, way in the back of her head. Nothing to see here, she thought at it. We’re not intruders, nothing of the kind. I was born right here, on this very spot … Its wings beat and it flew off with preternatural speed. Annaïg realized she had been holding her breath, and let it out. “What the Iyorth was that?” Glim snarled. “I’ve no idea,” she replied. She stood and limped toward the light, where the things had flown. Glim followed. A few steps brought them to the aperture, which turned out to be only about twelve feet wide. Below was a cliff that was more than sheer, it actually curved to vanish beneath them. “I reckon we’re somewhere on the bottom third of the cone,” she said. Farther below was jungle, and not much to see, but the space between the island and the treetops was pretty busy. Near the island, the air was full of the moth-things flying in baroque patterns, like some crazy aerial dance. As she watched, some peeled away and dove straight down, and as they passed a certain altitude they suddenly became vague and smokelike, and she now recognized them as the things she had seen from the spur. She saw, too, the bright threads, following the flying creatures down into the trees and then suddenly licking back up, vanishing somewhere beneath them. “What am I seeing?” she wondered aloud. “I think it’s what we’re not seeing,” he replied. “What’s down there beneath the trees.” “I fear you’re right.” The day waxed on. Now and then more fliers went past them, and occasionally they had a glimpse down through the canopy, where something was moving, but the opening was never enough to discern what. And then, inevitably, they reached the rice plantations south of Lilmoth, and finally they had a fuller picture. The distance fooled her, at first, and she thought she was seeing some sort of ant, or insect, as if maybe the fliers were transforming into a land-bound form. Then she adjusted scale and understood that they were mostly Argonians and humans, although there were a large number of crawling horrors that must have come out of the sea. She recognized some of them as Dreughs, from her books. Others resembled huge slugs and crabs with hundreds of tentacle-limbs, but for these she had no names. Many of them were marching all in the same direction, but others ran off in swarms. It was all very abstract and puzzling, until they reached a village Annaïg guessed to be Hereguard Plantation, one of the few farms still run mostly by Bretons. She could see a group of them, drawn up behind a barricade."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_015.txt", "text": "It wasn’t long before they were fighting, and Annaïg’s horror mounted. She wanted desperately to look away, but it was as if she no longer controlled her muscles. She saw a wave of Argonians and sea monsters wash over the barricade, and like arrows of mist, the moth-things plunged into the fray. Wherever they fell, a silvery thread followed, striking the body and reeling back up, brighter. The moths simply vanished. The wave passed, leaving the bodies of the dead Bretons behind, pushing on into the village. But then the dead stirred. They came to their feet and joined the march. Annaïg was sick then, and although there was little in her belly to lose, she bent double, retching. It spent her, and she lay trembling, unable to watch more. “So,” she heard Glim say after a moment. “So this is what the tree wanted.” She heard the pain in her friend’s voice, and despite how she felt, dragged herself back to the edge and opened her eyes. Again her first impression failed her. She imagined she was seeing an Argonian army, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to slay this foul enemy as they had the forces of Dagon in times past. But then she got it. “They’re just standing there. They aren’t fighting.” Glim nodded. “Yes.” The air was thick with fliers and threads. “I don’t understand,” Annaïg wailed. “Why does the tree want your people to die?” “Not all of us,” Glim whispered. “Just the Lukiul. The assimilated. The tainted. The An-Xileel, the Wild Ones—they’ve gone away. They’ll come back, after this is over, and every Imperial taint will be scoured.” “It’s mad,” she said. “We have to do something.” “What? In three hours every living thing in Lilmoth will be dead. Worse than dead.” “Look, we’re here. We’re the only ones who have any chance of doing anything. We have to try!” Glim watched the slaughter below for another few breaths, and in that moment she feared he was going to fling himself down to join his people. But then he let out the long, undulating hiss that signified resignation. “Okay,” he repeated in Tamrielic. “Let’s see what we can do.” They left the edge and walked back into the crack. The holes that the fliers had come through were high, and the climb looked difficult, but the split in the island continued back, gradually sloping down. Daylight was soon behind them, and while the ghost of it followed them for a while, eventually they were in near complete darkness. She wished she’d foreseen this—one of her earliest concoctions had been to help her see at night. But without any proper materials or equipment, there wasn’t any way to make one now. The going was easy enough, though—the walls remained about twice her shoulder-width apart, so it was easy enough to keep a hand on each rough surface. The floor was a little uneven, but after a few stumbles her feet grew cautious enough."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_015.txt", "text": "She could hear Glim breathing, but after they left the ledge, he hadn’t said anything, which was just as well, because not only would it be foolish to make any more noise than necessary, she didn’t feel like talking, either. She reckoned they had gone a few hundred yards when she saw light once again, at first just a veneer on the stone, but soon enough to see where they were stepping again. A good thing, too, because the path led them to another cliff. This one opened in the belly of the mountain, a vast, dome-shaped cavity open at the bottom so they could once more see the destruction of Lilmoth. They were already over the old Imperial quarter, where her house was. “Taig,” she whispered. “I’m sure he left,” Glim hissed. “The tree couldn’t affect him.” She just shook her head and turned her sight away, and through tear-gleamed eyes she saw masses of the threads shooting down—so many it looked almost like rain. She followed their course and saw them, thousands of them, in every nook and cranny of the stone. She couldn’t make out much; they, too, seemed vaguely insectile, but she saw the thin, stone-colored tubes the threads issued from, because the rest of whatever-they-were were concealed in circular masses of what appeared to be the same material. They looked a lot like spider egg sacs, but larger, much larger. “Here,” Glim murmured. She had almost forgotten him. She turned to follow his pointing knuckles and saw steps hewn into the stone, leading up. There wasn’t any other way to go except back, and so Annaïg started up, filled with a sudden, panicked determination. She had to do something, didn’t she? If she could get up there, cut those things loose, maybe the horror would end. The steps wound up a few feet and vanished back into another tunnel. This one was illuminated with a palpable phosphorescence. It twisted to curve steeply skyward, and Annaïg realized they were making their way up above the domed space. Almost immediately it began branching, but she kept to her left, and after several breathless moments they came to a silvery-white cable, emerging from the stone below them and vanishing into the ceiling. “It looks like the threads,” she whispered. “Only bigger.” “Not bigger,” Glim said. “More.” A little closer, she saw what he meant. The cable was composed of hundreds of threads wound together. She reached out to touch it. “Well, that’s not smart,” Glim said. “I know,” she replied, trying to sound brave. Closing her eyes, she touched the back of her hand to it. Something whirred about in her head and she felt a sudden giddy surge. She saw now that the hole was larger than the cable that came up through it and, lying flat she was able to make out the jungle floor again. Below her, the ropelike structure unwound itself, sending threads off in every direction."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_015.txt", "text": "She could see some of them vanishing into the web sacs. “If we cut this, we’ll get a lot of them,” she said. “What do you mean, ‘get’ them? What do you think will happen?” “They’re all connected here.” “Okay.” “Then if we cut it …” She flailed off, gesturing. “You think it will, what, shut this whole thing down? Destroy this island?” “It might. Glim, we have to do something.” “You keep saying that.” He sighed. “What will you cut it with?” “Try your claws.” He blinked, then stepped forward and experimentally raked his claws across the thing. He shivered and stepped back, then hit it again, with such force that the cord vibrated. It wasn’t scratched. “Any other ideas?” “Maybe if we can find a sharp rock—” She broke off. “Do you hear that?” Glim nodded. “Xhuth!” Because somewhere in the passages, she could hear voices shouting, several of them. “Come on,” she said, and started up another branch of the tunnel. They kept going, taking random branches, but the voices were gradually growing louder, and there was little doubt in her mind now that they were being pursued. Whenever they came to a turn that seemed to go down, she took it, reasoning that so far they hadn’t been bothered by anything from that direction, but inevitably the passages seemed to move them upward. She couldn’t have known, could she? How big this was all going to be, how utterly beyond her? It was ridiculous. As if the gods had decided to punctuate that thought, the tunnel suddenly debouched onto a steep ledge that vanished into the interior space of the island. She drew up short, panting, but Glim grabbed her arm and they were suddenly skittering down the tilted surface. Her surprise was so complete that all thought was pushed from her brain by white light, so when the Argonian caught a knob at the edge and swung them sharply down and under, she had nothing to be relieved about. She found herself on a rounded, springy surface. It was one of the web sacs. Glim pulled her up to where the thing was anchored to the stone, the sloping shelf now a ceiling above them, and they crouched there, trying to calm their breathing for many long moments. A voice suddenly spoke above them, in a tongue that sounded teasingly familiar. The voice might have been that of a man or mer. Another, stranger voice replied. This time she caught a few words; it was Merish dialect of some sort. She closed her eyes, focusing on the sounds. “—could be dead already,” she made out. “We can’t take that chance. He’ll have our heads if another vehrumas gets them.” “Who else is looking for them?” “Word gets around fast. Come on, let’s try this way.” The two continued talking, but the sounds grew gradually more distant until they faded away. As the voices diminished, she heard Mere-Glim resume breathing."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_015.txt", "text": "“I don’t suppose you understood any of that?” he asked. “Remember how you used to make fun of me for studying old Ehlnofex?” she asked. “A dead language? Yes.” His throat expanded and he huffed. “They were speaking Ehlnofex?” “No, but it was enough like it for me to understand it.” “And?” “Someone saw us fly up here. They’re searching for us.” “Who?” “Whoever lives here. There was a word I didn’t understand—vehrumas—but it sounds like there are more than one bunch trying to find us.” “Wonderful. So what do we do?” To her surprise, she suddenly knew. She fumbled in her jacket and pulled out Coo. “Go to the Imperial City,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “Find Crown Prince Attrebus. Speak only to him, hear only in his presence. He will help us.” She saw him in her mind’s eye, her own imagining based on the portraits she had seen. Coo clicked and tinged, and then flew off, dodging gracefully through the filaments, diminishing, a speck, gone. “How does that help us?” Glim asked. “Why should Attrebus care what happens to us?” “This thing isn’t stopping at Lilmoth,” she told him. “It’ll go on, through all of Tamriel. And you’re right, we can’t stop it, you and I. Most likely we’ll die or be captured. But if we can survive a little while, until Coo reaches Attrebus—” “Listen to yourself.” “—if Coo reaches him, and at least one of us survives, we can tell him what’s happening. Attrebus has armies, battlemages, the resources of an empire. What he doesn’t have is any information about this place.” “Neither do we. And it will be days, at least, before Coo reaches the Imperial City—if he does.” “Then we have to survive,” she said. “Survive and learn.” “Survive what? We don’t even know what we’re up against.” “Well, then let’s find out.” “I have a better idea,” Glim said, pointing to the oily black snout emerging from the cocoon. “Let’s grab onto one of those strands and ride it to the ground.” Annaïg frowned. “They’re moving too fast. Anyway, then we’d just be down there where everything is dying.” He paused, looked at her as if she was crazy, and then rolled his eyes. “You were kidding,” she said. “I was kidding,” he confirmed. The filaments that anchored the web sacs to the stone gave them purchase to climb down to the next ledge, where they found another tunnel. They went in quietly, mindful of what had happened before. As before, the way tended either upward and outward or back into the vault. After perhaps an hour they came across one of the now familiar cables. Less familiar was the person licking it. He hadn’t seen them yet. It was a man, naked from the waist up and clad in loose, dirty trousers rolled tight at his waist."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_015.txt", "text": "His shape and features were those of a human or mer, except that his eyes were a bit larger than normal and recessed more deeply into his face. His hair was unkempt, greasy, and dingy yellow. She motioned Glim back, but the fellow’s gaze snapped over to them, and he stopped licking the cable. “Lady!” he exclaimed, in the same dialect she’d heard before, bending his head and battering his forehead with his knuckles. “Lady, this isn’t at all what it looks like!” Annaïg just stared for a moment. “Lady?” the man repeated. She saw fear in his eyes, but puzzlement as well. Clearly he thought he knew who—or more likely, what—she was. The man’s eyes widened further and he stepped back as Glim emerged. “What is it, then?” Annaïg asked, trying to sound haughty. “What is it if it’s not what it looks like?” “Mistress,” the man replied. “I hope you understand what you saw just now was just appearances. I wouldn’t actually—” “Lick the cable? That’s exactly what it looked like you were doing.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a funny accent, lady. Some of the words are strange. I’ve never heard them. And your companion …” “Who are you?” Annaïg asked, feeling her feeble attempt at a bluff crumbling. “Wemreddle,” the man replied. “Wemreddle of the Bolster Midden, in fact, if you must know.” He lifted a finger and shook it. “You’re not supposed to be here either.” He waved violently at Glim. “And there’s no such thing as you, you know. No. No such thing as you. You’re the ones they’re talking about. The ones from outside. From down there.” “Look,” Annaïg said, “we don’t mean anyone any harm—” “No, listen,” Wemreddle said. “I’m of the Bolster Midden, didn’t I tell you? What business do I have with them upstairs? Sump take them and keep them. But come on now. I’ll get you safe and cozy. Come on with me.” “He’s not armed,” Glim lisped, in their private cant. “I can kill him.” “You’ve never killed anyone.” “I can do it.” There was a new hardness in his voice. Wemreddle stepped back. “I mean to help.” “Why?” “Because I hate all this,” he said. “I hate them at the top of the chutes. And you—you might be able to help with them.” “Why do you say that?” “This new place. You know things about it? The plants, the minerals, the ways of things. They say you flew here without wings.” “I know a little,” she said. “Yes. That’s powerful knowledge. Enough to change things. Will you come?” Annaïg looked sidewise at Glim, but his expression offered no opinion. “This might be what we’re looking for,” she told him. “I can’t follow him. What’s he saying?” “I think he’s with some disenchanted group, a resistance maybe. They want our help against another faction."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_015.txt", "text": "We can exploit this, as Irenbis did the various factions of Cheydinhal.” “Irenbis?” “Irenbis Songblade.” “That’s from a book, isn’t it?” “It’s a chance, Glim. You agreed we have to do something.” “Something it is, then,” he replied."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_017.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel “What is that?” Annaïg asked, trying not to gag at the stench. Her belly was already empty and her throat and chest ached. “That’s the Midden,” Wemreddle said. “Of the four lower Middens, Bolster has the richest scent.” “Rich?” Annaïg drew another breath, this one worse than the last. “I wouldn’t describe it as rich. How far away is it?” “We’ve still some way to go,” Wemreddle said. Then, defensively, “If you wouldn’t say rich, then what? Savor the layers of complexity, the contrast of ripe, rotten, and almost raw, the depth and diversity of it.” “I—” “No, no, wait. When we’re there you’ll understand better. Appreciation will come.” Annaïg somehow doubted that. It seemed more likely that her lungs would close themselves and suffocate her rather than take in any more of the waxing stench. As they progressed, the floor and walls of the tunnels became first slick and then coated in a dank, putrid sheen, and she began to picture herself climbing up through the bowels of some enormous beast. “What is this place?” she asked. “Where is it from?” “This place?” “The whole—island. Floating mountain, whatever you want to call it. “Oh. You mean Umbriel.” “Umbriel?” “Yes, Umbriel, it’s called.” “And why is it here?” Again he looked puzzled. “Here is here,” he said. “No, I mean why have you come to my world? Why are you attacking it?” “Well, I’m not, am I? I’m just in the Bolster Midden.” “Yes, but why has Umbriel come here?” she persisted. “I’ve no idea. Does it matter?” “People are dying down there. There must be a reason.” He stopped and scratched his head. “Well, yes, Umbriel needs souls. Lots and lots of souls—there’s no secret there. But he could get those plenty of places. If you’re asking why here in particular, I’m afraid I’ve no way of knowing that.” “You mean it’s just feeding?” Annaïg asked, incredulous. “Well, we’ve lots of mouths to feed, don’t we,” he replied with an air of diffidence. “Why do they become—if their souls are taken up here—why do their bodies keep going?” “Do I really have to explain this?” “If I’m going to help you, I think I deserve whatever explanation you can give me.” “Oh, very well. Look, something beneath us dies. The soul-spinners nick the soul with their lines, and then the larvae fly down and get all snug in the bodies—which then harvest more souls. You see?” “The larvae have wings and round heads?” “Yes. See, you do know this.” “I saw one of them,” she replied. “It seemed like it should have been perfectly capable of murder on its own.” “In Umbriel, sure. But they have to leave Umbriel to find souls, which means they lose their substance.” “So that’s what I saw,” Annaïg said. “But why?” “Why what?” “Why do they become ethereal?” “That’s a big word,” Wemreddle said. “Yes, but—” “I don’t know,” Wemreddle said. “I’ve never thought about it."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_017.txt", "text": "You fall in water, you get wet. Stray from Umbriel, you lose substance. It’s just how things are.” Annaïg digested that for a moment. “Very well. But how does it start? I mean, if larvae can’t kill anything unless they have a soulless body to steal, how do the first ones get bodies?” “I don’t know that either.” “And what becomes of the souls?” “Most go to the ingenium, which keeps Umbriel aloft and moving. Some go to the vehrumasas.” “I don’t know that word,” she said. “What does it mean?” “The place where they prepare food. Where the furnaces are.” “Kitchens? You people eat souls?” “Not all of us. I don’t—I’m not that elevated. But them at the top, and Umbriel himself, or course—well, they like their delicacies. We don’t see that in the Middens, do we?” “And yet you were licking the cable,” she said. He blushed. “It’s not against nature to want a taste, is it? Just a little taste?” Annaïg had a sudden, unpleasant thought. “Are the lords—are you—daedra?” “What’s a daedra?” Wemreddle asked. “You’ve never heard of daedra?” she asked. “But didn’t this city come from Oblivion?” Wemreddle just looked blankly at her. “There are sixteen daedric princes,” Annaïg explained. “Some are just—well, evil. Mehrunes Dagon, for instance—he tried to destroy our world, back before I was born. Others—like Azura—aren’t supposed to be so bad. Some people worship them, especially the Dunmer. But besides the princes, there are all sorts of minor daedra. Some people can conjure them and make them do their bidding.” “We do the bidding of the lords,” Wemreddle said. “If I were a daedra, would I know it?” “Maybe not,” Annaïg realized. “What is the name of your highest lord?” “Umbriel, of course.” “There’s no prince that goes by that name,” she mused, “although I suppose a daedric prince could be known by any number of names.” Wemreddle seemed entirely disinterested in the conversation, so she let it drop. She had so many new questions now, she didn’t know what to ask next, so instead of questioning him further, she filled Glim in on what Wemreddle had been telling her. “It’s horrible,” she said. “What if it’s really aimless? If our world is being destroyed just so this thing can keep in the air? What if there is no other agenda?” “There must be more to it than that,” Glim responded. “There has to be. Otherwise why would Umbriel ally with the city tree? Why would it spare anyone?” “Maybe it didn’t. If the tree is insane, as you think, it might have just imagined an alliance.” “It’s possible.” He snicked his teeth together. “You were right, in a way,” he said. “It sounds as if we were to stop the flow of souls to this ingenium of theirs, then this would turn into just another rock.” “Maybe. Could it be that simple?” “I doubt it will be simple,” the Argonian replied."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_017.txt", "text": "They walked in silence for a bit, while Annaïg turned it all over in her head. When they finally reached the Bolster Midden, she was sure of her earlier impression, for she could think of nothing to compare it to other than the gorged, bloated stomach of a giant. And the smell—well, it was bad. Glim’s nictating membranes kept shutting, and Glim could wade through the most noisome fen without really noticing. But this wasn’t a noisome fen, and she was, in fact, beginning to understand Wemreddle’s bizarre assertion. Animal was here, sweetly, sulfurously rotten, but there was also blood still so fresh she could taste the iron in the middle of her tongue. She made out rancid oil, buttery cream, old wine-braising liquid, fermenting again with strange yeasts and making pungent vinegars. Fresh herbs mingled with the cloying molder of tubers and onions gone to liquid. Best of all were the thousand things she didn’t recognize, some deeply revolting and some like a welcome home to a place she’d never been. Some smells were more than that, not only engaging the taste buds and nostrils, but sending weird tingles across her skin and shimmering colors when she closed her eyes. “You see?” She nodded dumbly and looked around more carefully. If this was the belly of a giant, he had many esophagi; more stuff fell periodically from five different openings in the vaulted stone ceiling. In places, the trash moved. “What’s that?” she asked. “The worms,” Wemreddle replied. “They keep the Midden turning, make it all pure to siphon into the Marrow Sump.” “Marrow Sump?” “It’s where everything goes, and where everything comes from.” That seemed like it would take a longer explanation, so she let it go for more immediate concerns. “What’s up there?” she asked, indicating the apertures above. “The kitchens, of course. What else?” He pointed at each of the holes in turn. “Aghey, Qijne, Lodenpie, and Fexxel.” “And what do you do down here?” “Hide. Try not to be noticed. They sent us down here a long time ago to tend the worms, but the worms pretty much tend themselves.” “So where is everyone else?” “In the rock. I’ll fetch them. But first let me find you a safe place, yes?” “That sounds good,” Annaïg said. A narrow ledge went around the Midden like a collar, albeit one whose dog had outgrown it a bit; here and there they found themselves trudging through offal and pools of putrescence. Light came dimly from no obvious source, but she didn’t try to make out what they were stepping through. At last they came to a small cave, rudely furnished with a sleeping mat and not much else. “You wait here,” he said. “Try not to make much sound.” And with that Wemreddle was gone. “I can’t breathe this forever,” Glim muttered. Their guide had been gone for a long time, although without the sun, moon, or stars, it was hard to tell exactly how long."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_017.txt", "text": "Annaïg figured it was hours, though. “At least we’re breathing,” she pointed out. “Well, as long as we’re settling for the least,” he replied. “Glim …” She put a hand on his shoulder. He snapped his teeth. “I need to eat something,” he said. “Me, too,” she said. The wait had given the shock and adrenaline time to wear off, and now she was ravenous. “I can go out there, see what I can sort out.” He shook his head. “That’s disgusting.” “Some of it is still food.” “Stay here. You’ve no idea what those worms might do, or what else might be out there.” “What, then?” “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Not your strong suit.” “Yes. But I’ve been doing it, nonetheless. Four kitchens above us, and four other Middens. Do you know how much refuse that suggests, if this is even close to typical?” “A lot.” “Yes. Which suggests that somewhere up there, a lot of people or—something—are doing a lot of eating.” “I did see what looked like a city along the rim.” “I think we’re still far below the rim,” he said. “Still, I’m thinking there must be thousands on this island, at least.” “Okay.” “And Wemreddle, the trash keeper, wants you to help with some sort of revolution. Against who knows what and who knows how many? There’s a daedra prince up there, for all we know. I’m not sure we want to be a part of this.” “So you think we should leave before he gets back.” “I think we should go looking for food. In the kitchens. See what we’re up against. We can always come back here if the trash-tender still seems like a good bet.” “How will we know that until we meet the rest of them?” “Of whom?” “Whoever he went to get. The underground. The resistance.” “You and your books,” Glim muttered. “Resistance.” “Look around you, Glim. When people are forced to live in places like this, there’s usually a resistance.” “Lots of people lived like this in Lilmoth,” Glim replied. “They didn’t resist anything.” “Well, maybe they should have,” she retorted. “Maybe then the An-Xileel couldn’t have—” “It was the tree, Nn, not the An-Xileel. The Hist decide.” “The city tree is psychotic.” “Maybe.” “You said it’s happened before, one Hist breaking with the others.” “You’re changing the subject.” “Fine. We might as well have some options. Do you know how to get to these kitchens?” “Of course not. But we know where they are.” He pointed up. “Fair enough,” she conceded. Her hand still on his shoulder, she pushed up to standing. Then she noticed some figures approaching along the path that had brought them there. “Oops. Too late. Wemreddle’s back.” “That’s not much of a resistance,” Glim noted. “Six besides him.” “At least they’re armed.” Like Wemreddle, they all appeared to be human or mer. They wore uniforms—yellow shirts, aprons, black pants—and they carried an assortment of large knives and cleavers."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_017.txt", "text": "The only one who was dressed differently was a fellow with thick, curly red hair and beard. His shirt was a black-and-yellow tartan pattern. Wemreddle was trailing the lot. The red-beard spoke. “It’s true, you’re really from the world beyond?” “Yes,” Annaïg said. “And you have knowledge of its plants, animals, herbs, minerals, essences, and so on?” “Some,” she replied. “I have studied the art of alchemy—” “Come with us, then.” “To where?” “To my kitchen. Fexxel’s kitchen.” “Wemreddle,” Annaïg exploded. “You piece of—” “They’ll let me come up,” the man simpered. “They’ll let me work up there. This is for the best. You’ll be protected. You need that.” “Protection from whom?” “Me, for one,” another voice shouted. A second group was approaching, twice as large as Fexxel’s, and just as heavily armed. Fexxel spun. “You worm,” he roared at Wemreddle. “I bargained in good faith with you!” “I didn’t tell her! I swear it!” Annaïg could make out the newcomer now. She wore a checked indigo-and-lapis shirt, apron, and indigo pants. Her face was angular, drawn, hard, and her teeth gleamed like opals in the dim light. “He didn’t, actually,” the woman said. “One of your own betrayed you. More’s the pity for the poor worm, because I don’t owe him anything.” Wemreddle began a sort of soft wailing. “I’ll have them, Fexxel.” “I have right, Qijne. I have claim.” “The Midden is neutral territory.” “I found them first.” “Well, you can take it up with someone next time you come out of the sump,” she replied. “Or you can walk back to your kitchen in the meat you’re wearing.” Annaïg could see Fexxel was trembling, whether with fear or fury, it was hard to say. “It might be worth it,” he said. “You outnumber us, but I’ll kill you before I go down.” “Ah, determination,” Qijne said, stepping forward, away from her companions. “Passion. Do you really have such passions, Fexxel? Or is this all superficial, like your cooking?” Her arm whipped out and a bright, bloody line appeared on Fexxel’s cheek. His eyes widened and his mouth worked, but for the moment no sound came out. Annaïg was still trying to understand what had happened. Qijne’s hand had been about a foot from Fexxel’s face, and she hadn’t seen a weapon in it. Nor did she now. Fexxel found his voice. “You crazy bitch!” he screeched, blood pouring through the fingers he had pressed to his face. “See?” Qijne said. “Just blood under there, nothing else. Go home, Fexxel, or I’ll make a pie of you.” Fexxel heaved several great breaths, but he didn’t say anything else. Instead he left, as instructed, and his followers went with him, glancing back often. Qijne turned her gaze on Annaïg. Her eyes were as black as holes in the night. “And you, my dear, are the cook?” “I—I can cook.” “And what is this?” she asked, stabbing a finger toward Glim. “Mere-Glim. He’s an Argonian."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_017.txt", "text": "He doesn’t speak Mer.” Qijne cocked her head. “Mer,” she said experimentally, then seemed to dismiss the word—and Glim—with a shake of her head. “Well,” she said. “Come, then. We’ll go to my kitchen.” Annaïg lifted her chin. “Why should I?” she asked. Qijne blinked again, then leaned in close and spoke in a casual, confidential manner. “I don’t need all of you, you know. Your legs, for instance—not very useful to me. More of a problem, really, if I imagined you were prone to running off.” Each word was like an icicle driven in her back. There was no doubt that the woman was serious. Qijne patted her on the shoulder. “Come along,” she said. And she came, telling herself that this was what she needed to be doing, trying to learn something about the enemy, trying to find out how to stop this unholy thing. But it was hard to keep that in her head, because she had never in her life been more afraid of anyone than she was of Qijne."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_019.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel “This isn’t a kitchen,” Annaïg whispered to Glim. “This is …” But she had no word for it. Her first impression was of a forge, or furnace, because enormous rectangular pits of almost white-hot stone lined up down the center of a vast chamber carved and polished from the living rock. Above the pits innumerable metal grates, boxes, cages, and baskets depended from chains, and vast sooty hoods sucked most of the heat and fumes up higher still into Umbriel. Left and right, red maws gaped from the walls—ovens, obviously, but really more like furnaces. Between them, beings strange and familiar crowded and hurried about long counters and cabinets, wielding knives, cleavers, pots, pans, saws, awls, and hundreds of unidentifiable implements. Though the smells here were generally cleaner than those of the Midden, they were just as varied, and decidedly more alien. So was the staff; many of them resembled the peoples she knew—there were in particular many who looked like mer; there were others for which—like the place itself—she had no name. She saw thick figures with brick-red skin, fierce faces, and small horns on their heads, working next to ghostly pale blue-haired beings, spherical mouselike creatures with stripes, and a veritable horde of monkeylike creatures with goblinesque faces. These last scrambled along the shelves and cabinets, tossing bottles and tins from shelves in the stone that rose sixty feet along the walls, although in most of the room the ceiling crushed down almost to the level of the tallest head. But Qijne led her through all of this, past searing chunks of meat, huge snakelike creatures battering against the bars of their cages as the heat killed them, cauldrons that smelled of leek and licorice, boiling blood, molasses. After a hundred paces the cooking pits were replaced by tables crowded with more delicate equipment of glass and bright metal. Some were clearly made for distillation, this made obvious by the coils that rose above; others resembled retorts, parsers, and fermentation vats. Along the walls were what amounted to vaster versions of these things, distilling, parsing, and fermenting tons of material. It was breathtaking, and for a moment Annaïg forgot her situation in wonder of it. But then something caught her eye that brought it all back: a cable, the thickest she had seen yet, pulsing with the pearly light of soul stuff and, more specifically, the life force of the people of Lil-moth. It passed through various glass collars filled with liquid and colored gases, and insectile filaments and extremely fine tubing coiled and wound into what might be condensation chambers. She felt tears forming, and trembled with the effort to keep them back. For the first time since entering the kitchens, Qijne spoke. “You like my kitchen,” she said. “I see it.” Her throat caught, but then breath came, and something seemed to rise up through her, inflating her. She focused her gaze on Qijne’s eyes. “It’s amazing,” she admitted."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_019.txt", "text": "“I don’t understand most of it.” “You really know nothing of Umbriel, do you?” “Only that it is murdering people.” “Murdering? That’s a strange word.” “It’s the right word. Why? Why is Umbriel doing this?” “What a meaningless question,” Qijne said. “And how unknowable.” She took Annaïg’s chin between thumb and forefinger. “I’ll let you know what questions are worth asking, little thing. Give me all the attention and love you possess, and you will thrive here. Otherwise, it’s the sump. Yes?” “Yes.” “Very well. My kitchen.” She opened her arms as if to take it all in. “There are many appetites in Umbriel. Some are coarse—meat and tubers, offal and grain. Other habitants have more spiritual appetites, subsisting on distilled essences, pure elements, tenebrous vapors. The loftiest of our lords require the most refined cuisine, that which has as its basis the very stuff of souls. And above all, they crave novelty. And that, my dear, is where you come in.” “So that’s why you want me? To help you invent new dishes?” “There are many sorts of dishes, dear. Umbriel needs more than raw energy to run. The sump needs tending; the Fringe Gyre needs feeding. Raw materials must be found or created. Poisons, balms, salves, entertainments, are all in great demand. Drugs to numb, to please, to bring fantastic visions. All of these things and more are done in the kitchens. And we must stay ahead of others, you see? Stay in favor. And that means new, better, more powerful, deadlier, more interesting.” Annaïg nodded. “And you believe I can help you.” “We’ve just passed through a void; we were nearing the end of our resources. Now this whole pantry is open to us, and you know more about it than I do. I can admit that, you see? In the end you have more to learn from me than I from you, but at this moment you are my teacher. And you will help me make my kitchen the strongest.” “What’s to stop the other kitchens from kidnapping their own help?” She shook her head. “Most of us cannot go far from Umbriel without losing our corpus. There are certain, specialized servants we use to collect things from below.” “The walking dead, you mean?” “Yes, the larvae. Once incorporated, they can be brought here with certain incantations, bearing raw materials, beasts, what have you. But intelligent beings with desirable souls—” “Are all already dead by the time your gatherers begin their work.” “Did you interrupt me? I’m sure you didn’t.” “I’m sorry.” “I’m sorry, Chef.” “I’m sorry, Chef.” Qijne nodded. “Yes, that’s how it is. And those of us in the kitchens don’t have the power to send them farther, or the incantations to bring them back here. Once the gatherers move very far from Umbriel, contact is lost.” This is good, Annaïg thought. I’m learning weaknesses already. Things that will help Attrebus. “So here we are,” she said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_019.txt", "text": "Annaïg looked at the table Qijne was indicating. It was littered with leaves, bark, half-eviscerated animals, roots, stones, and what have you. There was also a ledger, ink, and a pen. “I want to know about these things. I want you to list and describe every substance you know of that might be of use to me, and describe as well how to find them. You will do this for half of your work period. For the remainder of your shift you will cook—first you will learn how things are down here, then you will create original things. And they had better be original, do you understand?” “I don’t—it’s overwhelming, Chef.” “I will assign you a scamp and a hob and put a chef over you. That is far more than most that come here are given. Count your fortunes.” She waved at one of her gang, a woman with the gray skin and red eyes of a Dunmer. “Slyr. Take charge of this one.” Slyr lifted her knife. “Yes, Chef.” Qijne nodded, turned and strode off. “She’s right, you know,” Slyr said. “You don’t know how lucky you are.” Annaïg nodded, trying to read the other woman’s tone and expression, but neither told her anything. A moment later a yellowish, sharp-toothed biped with long pointy ears walked up. “This is your scamp,” she said. “We use the scamps for hot work. Fire doesn’t bother them very much.” “Hello,” Annaïg said. “They take orders,” Slyr said. “They don’t talk. You don’t really need it now, so you ought to send it back to the fires. Your hob—” She snapped her fingers impatiently. Something dropped through Annaïg’s peripheral vision and she started and found herself staring into a pair of large green eyes. It was one of the monkeylike creatures she’d seen on entering the kitchen. Closer up, she saw that, unlike a monkey, it was hairless. It did have long arms and legs, though, and its fingers were extraordinarily long, thin, and delicate. “Me!” it squeaked. “Name him,” Slyr said. “What?” “Give him a name to answer to.” The hob opened his mouth, which was both huge and toothless, so that for an instant it resembled an infant—and more specifically looked like her cousin Luc when he was a child. It capered on the table. “Luc,” she said. “You’ll be Luc.” “Luc, me,” it said. “I’ll be back to get you when it’s time to cook,” Slyr said. “This you’ll do on your own.” She glanced askance at Glim. “What about him?” “He knows as much about these things as I do,” Annaïg lied. “I need him.” “Very well.” And Slyr, too, walked off to some other task. Annaïg realized that she and Glim were alone with Luc the hob. “Now what?” Glim asked. “They want—” “I didn’t understand the words, but it’s pretty clear what they want you to do. But are you going to do it?” “I don’t see I have much choice,” she replied. “Sure."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_019.txt", "text": "No one is watching us at the moment. We could escape back to the Midden through the garbage chute and then …” “Right,” she said. “And then what?” “Okay,” he grumbled. “Use some of this stuff to make another bottle of flying stuff. Then down the chute, back away, gone.” “I thought we were agreed on this.” “But you’ll be helping them, don’t you see? Helping them destroy our world.” “Glim, I’m learning a lot, and quickly. Think about it—this is the perfect place for me. If I could have asked for a better chance to sabotage Umbriel, I couldn’t have thought of anything better. Given a little time, who knows what I can make here?” “Yes,” he said. “I see that. But what about me?” “Do as I do. Talk to me now and then as if you’re telling me something. Write down the things I tell you to.” “What about that?” he asked of the hob. She considered the thing. “Luc,” she said, “fetch me those whitish-green fronds at the far end of the table.” “Yes, Luc me,” the hob said, bounding away and back, bearing the leaves. “This,” Annaïg dictated, “is fennel fern. It soothes the stomach. It’s used in poultices for thick-eye …” She had almost forgotten where she was when Slyr returned, hours later. “Time to cook,” Slyr said. Annaïg rubbed her eyes and nodded. She gestured vaguely at some of the nearby equipment. “I’m really interested in distilling essences,” she began. “How does this—” Slyr coughed up an ugly little laugh. “Oh, no, love. You don’t start there. You start in the fire.” “But there isn’t any fire,” she complained minutes later as she turned the hot metal wheel. The grill before her rose incrementally. “More,” Slyr snapped. “This is boar, yes?” “It smells like it,” Annaïg replied. “And this goes to the grounds workers in Prixon Palace, and they don’t like it burnt, like they do in the Oroy Mansion, see. So higher, and then send your scamp on the walk up there to swing a cover over it.” Annaïg kept hauling on the wheel. Sweat was pouring from her now, and she was starting to feel herself moving past fatigue into some whole new state of being. “What did you mean, about there being no fire?” Slyr asked. “There’s not. It’s just rocks. Fire is when you burn something. Wood, paper, something.” Slyr frowned. “Yes, I guess fire can mean that, too—like when grease falls. Right. But why would we cook by burning wood? If we did, all of the trees in the Fringe Gyre would be gone in six days.” “Then what makes the rocks hot?” “They’re hot,” Slyr said. “They are, that’s all. Okay, send your scamp.” She pointed at the metal hemisphere suspended on a boom from the ceiling, and the scamp scrambled up into the metal beams and wires above the heat. He pushed the dome—which ought to have been searing—and positioned it over the smoking hog carcass."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_019.txt", "text": "Annaïg kept cranking until the grill came in contact with the dome. “There,” Slyr said. “We’re well above the flames. So what else can we put up there? What do we need to cook slowly?” “We could braise those red roots.” “The Helsh? Yes, we could.” She seemed surprised, for a moment, but covered it quickly. “These little birds—they would cook nicely up there.” “They would, but those are going to Oroy Mansion—” “—and they like everything burnt there.” “Yes.” Annaïg was sure Slyr almost smiled, but then she was directly back to business. “So get on with it,” she said. And so she burned, braised, roasted, and seared things for what felt like days, until at last Slyr led her to a dark dormitory with about twenty sleeping mats. A table supported a cauldron, bowls, and spoons. She stood in line, legs shaking with fatigue, helped herself, and then slid down against the wall near the pallet Slyr indicated was hers. The stew was hot and pungent, unfamiliar meat and odd, nutty grains, and at the moment it seemed like the best thing she had ever eaten. “When you finish that, I advise you to sleep,” Slyr told her. “In six hours you’re back to work.” Annaïg nodded, looking around for Glim. “They’ve taken your friend,” Slyr said. “What? To where?” “I don’t know. It was obvious he didn’t know much about cooking, and there’s curiosity about what he is exactly.” “Well, when will they bring him back?” Slyr’s face took on a faintly sympathetic cast. “Never, I should think,” she replied. She left, and Annaïg curled into a ball and wept quietly. She pulled out her pendant and opened it. “Find Attrebus,” she whispered. “Find him.” Mere-Glim wondered what would happen if he died. It was generally believed that Argonians had been given their souls by the Hist, and when one died, one’s soul returned to them, to be incarnated once more. That seemed reasonable enough, under ordinary circumstances. In the deepest parts of his dreams or profound thinking were images, scents, tastes that the part of him that was sentient could not remember experiencing. The concept the Imperials called “time” did not even have a word in his native language. In fact, the hardest part of learning the language of the Imperials was that they made their verbs different to indicate when something happened, as if the most important thing in the world was to establish a linear sequence of events, as if doing so somehow explained things better than holistic apprehension. But to his people—at least the most traditional ones—birth and death were the same moment. All of life—all of history—was one moment, and only by ignoring most of its content could one create the illusion of linear progression. The agreement to see things in this limited way was what other peoples called “time.” And yet how did this place, this Umbriel, fit into all of that? Because he was cut off from the Hist."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_019.txt", "text": "If he died here, where would his soul go? Would it be consumed by the ingenium Wemreddle had spoken of? And what of his people so consumed? Where they gone forever, wrenched from the eternal cycle of birth and death? Or was the cycle, the eternal moment, only the Argonian way of avoiding an even more comprehensive truth? He decided to stop thinking about it. This sort of thing made his head hurt. Concentrate on the practical and what he really knew; he knew that he’d been overpowered by creatures with massive, crablike arms, snatched away from Annaïg, and brought here. He didn’t know why. Fortunately, someone entered the room, rescuing him from any more attempts at reflection. The newcomer was a small wiry male and might well have been a Nord, with his fine white hair and ivory, vein-traced skin. And yet there was something about the sqaurish shape of his head and slump of his shoulders that made him seem somehow quite alien. He wore a sort of plain olive frock-coat over a black vest and trousers. He spoke a few words of gibberish. When Glim didn’t answer, he reached into the pocket of his coat and withdrew a small glass vial. He pantomimed drinking it and then handed it to Glim. Glim took it, wondering how it would feel to kill the man. He surely wouldn’t get far … But if they wanted to talk to him, they must want him alive. He drank the stuff, which tasted like burning orange peel. The fellow waited for a moment, then cleared his throat. “Can you understand me now?” “Yes,” Mere-Glim said. “I’ll get directly to the point,” the man said. “It has been noticed that you are of an unknown physical type, or at least one that hasn’t been seen in my memory, which is quite long.” “I’m an Argonian,” he said. “A word,” the man said. “Not a word that signifies to me.” “That is my race.” “Another word I do not know.” The little man cocked his head. “So it is true, then? You are from outside? From someplace other than Umbriel?” “I’m from here, from Tamriel.” “Exciting. Another meaningless word. This is Umbriel, and no place else.” “Your Umbriel is in my world, in my country, Black Marsh.” “Is it? I daresay it isn’t. But as interesting as this subject may be to you, it holds little appeal for me. What I’m interested in is what you are. What part of Umbriel you will become.” “I don’t understand.” “You aren’t the first newcomer here, but you may be the first with that sort of body. But Umbriel will remember your body, and others with similar corpora will come along in time—many or a few, depending on what use you are.” “What if I’m of no use at all?” “Then we can’t permit Umbriel to learn your form."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_019.txt", "text": "We must cut your body away from what inhabits it and send it back out into the void.” “Why not simply let me go? Return me to Tamriel? Why kill me?” “Ah, a soul is too precious for that. We could not think of letting one waste. Now, tell me about this form of yours.” “I am as you see me,” he replied. “Are you some sort of daedra?” Glim gaped his mouth. “You know what daedra are?” He asked. “The man we talked to below didn’t.” “Why should he?” the man said. “We have incorporated daedra in the past, but none exist here now. Are you daedra?” “No.” “Very well, good, that makes things less complicated. Those spines on your head. What is their function?” “They make me handsome, I suppose, to others of my race. More to some than to others. I try to take care of them.” “And that membrane between your fingers?” “For swimming.” “Swimming?” “Propelling oneself through water. My toes are webbed as well.” “You move through water?” The fellow blinked. “Often.” “Beneath the surface?” “Yes.” “How long can you remain beneath before having to surface for air?” “Indefinitely. I can breathe water.” The fellow smiled. “Well, you see, how interesting. What Umbriel lacks, it will seek out.” Glim shifted on his feet, but since he didn’t understand what the man was talking about, he didn’t answer. “The sump. Yes, I think you might do well in the sump. But let’s finish the interview, shall we? Now, your skin—those are scales, are they not?”"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_021.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel He saw the blow coming from the shift of the Redguard’s shoulder, but it was fast, so fast his dodge to the right almost didn’t succeed, and although the edge didn’t bite, the flat skimmed his bicep. He swung his sword at her ribs, but that same quickness danced her just beyond the reach of his blade. “Right idea, Attrebus,” he heard Gulan shout. She backed off a bit, her gaze fixed on his. “Yes,” she said. “Try that again.” “Got your breath yet?” “I’ll have yours in a minute,” she replied. She appeared to relax, but then suddenly blurred into motion. He backpedaled, but once again her speed surprised him. He caught her attack on the flat of his weapon and felt the weight of her steel smack against the guard. Then she was past, and he knew she would take a cut at his head from back there, so he dropped, rolled, and came back up. He saw it again, that slight slumping before she renewed her attack. Again he parried and broke the distance, but not quite so much. She circled, he waited. Her shoulders sagged, and he suddenly threw himself forward behind his blade, so that while she was starting to step and lift her weapon, his point hit her solar plexus and she went down, hard. He followed her and—as his people cheered—put the dull, rounded point in her face. “Yield?” She coughed and winced. “Yield,” she agreed. He offered her his hand and she took it. “Nice attack,” she said. “I’m glad we were at blunts.” “You’re very fast,” he said. “But you have a little tell.” “I do?” “Well, I’m not sure I want you to know,” he said. “Next time it might not be blunts.” She seemed to be favoring one foot, so he offered her his shoulder. He helped her limp over to the edge of the practice ground, where his comrades watched from their ale-benches. “Bring us each a beer, will you?” he called to Dario the pitcher-boy. “Aye, Prince,” he replied. He sat her down a bit apart from the others and watched as she unlaced her practice armor. “What was your name again?” he asked her. “Radhasa, Prince,” she replied. “And your father was Tralan the Two-Blade, from Cespar?” “Yes, Prince,” she replied. “He was a good man, one of my father’s most valued men.” “Thank you, highness. It’s nice to hear that.” He focused his regard on her more frankly as the armor came off. “He was not the handsomest of men. In that, you don’t resemble him much.” Her already dark face darkened a bit more, but her eyes stayed fixed boldly on his. “So, you … think I’m a handsome man?” “If you were a man you would be, but I don’t see much mannish about you either.” “I’ve heard the prince is a flatterer.” “Here’s our drink,” he said as Dario arrived with the beer."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_021.txt", "text": "Beer always tasted perfect after a fight, and this time was no different. “So why do you seek my service instead of my father’s?” he asked her. “I’m sure he would receive you well.” She shrugged. “Prince Attrebus, your father sits the throne as Emperor. In his service, I think I would see little in the way of action. With you, I expect rather the opposite.” “Yes,” he said, “that is true. The Empire is still reclaiming territory, both literally and figuratively. There are many battles yet to fight before our full glory is reclaimed. If you ride with me, death will always be near. It’s not always fun, you know, and it’s not a game.” “I don’t think that it is,” she said. “Very good,” he said. “I like your attitude.” “I hope to please you, Prince.” “You can start pleasing me by calling me simply Attrebus. I do not stand on ceremony with my personal guard.” Her eyes widened. “Does that mean …?” “Indeed. Finish this beer and then go see Gulan. He will see you equipped, horsed, and boarded. And then, perhaps, you and I shall speak again.” Annaïg saw the murder from the corner of her eye. She was preparing a sauce of clams, butter, and white wine to go on thin sheets of rice noodle. Of course, none of those things were exactly that; the clams were really something called “lampen,” but they tasted much like clams. The butter was actually the fat rendered from something which—given Slyr’s description—was some sort of pupa. The wine was wine, and it was white, but it wasn’t made from any grape she had ever tasted. The noodles were made from a grain a bit like barley and a bit like rice. She was just happy to be doing something more sophisticated than searing meat, and actually enjoying the alien tastes and textures. The possibilities were exciting. Qijne was at the corner of her vision, and she made a sort of gesture, a quick wave of her arm. But then something peculiar happened. Oorol, the under-chef whose territory was Ghol Manor, suddenly lost his head. Literally—it fell off, and blood jetted in spurts from the still-standing body. Qijne stepped away from the corpse as a hush fell over the kitchen. She watched what was left of Oorol fold down to the floor. “Not good,” Slyr murmured. Qijne’s voice rose up, a shriek that somehow still carried words in it. “Lord Ghol was bored by his prandium! For the fourth time in a row!” She stood there, staring around, her chest heaving and her eyes flickering murderously about the room. “And now we have a mess to clean up and an underchef to replace.” Her jittering gaze suddenly focused on Annaïg. “Oh, sumpslurry,” Slyr faintly breathed. “No.” “Slyr,” Qijne shouted. “Take this station. Bring her with you.” “Yes, Chef!” Slyr shouted back. She turned and began gathering her knives and gear. “Now we’re in it,” Slyr said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_021.txt", "text": "“Deep in it.” “She k-killed him,” Annaïg stuttered. “Yes, of course.” “What do you mean, ‘of course’?” “Look, we cook for three lords, right? Prixon, Oroy, and Ghol. Most of what we make is for their staff and slaves. That’s all you and I have been cooking—that’s all I’ve ever cooked. That’s not too dangerous. But feeding the lords themselves is—it’s not easy. It’s not only that they are feckless in their tastes, but they compete with one another constantly. Fashions in ingredients, flavor, presentation, color—all these can change very quickly. And now we’re cooking for Ghol, who doesn’t know what he likes. Oorol was pretty good—he managed to entertain Ghol for the better part of a year.” Annaïg tried to do the calculations in her head; from various conversations, she reckoned the Umbrielian year at just over half a year on Tamriel. “That’s not very long,” she said. “It’s not. Hurry, now, we’ve got to subdue his staff, find out what they know, and have an acceptable dinner for him.” “How did she—what did she kill him with?” “We call it her filet knife, but no one really knows. You can’t see it, can you? And at times it seems longer than others. We’re not quite sure how long it can get. Now come along, unless you have more useless questions to slow us down and speed us toward the sump.” “I do have a question. I don’t think it’s useless.” “What?” the chef snapped impatiently. “When you say we have to subdue his staff—” “We’ll see. It might mean a fight. Have a knife in your hand, but hold it discreetly.” Slyr’s previous staff had consisted of six cooks. Their new staff had eight—Annaïg and Slyr made ten. In this case, “subduing” them simply meant calming them down and getting them to work, which Slyr managed with a minimum of slapping around, so they were soon discussing the lord’s tastes, or at least what little seemed consistent about them. To make things even more fun, it turned out he was having another of the lords—one who used another kitchen entirely—over for dinner, and about him, they knew nothing. “What was the last thing he liked?” Slyr asked Minn, who had been Oorol’s second. “A broth suspire made from some sort of beast the taskers brought,” Minn said. “There was an herb, too.” “Ah. From outside.” “Can you describe them?” Annaïg asked. “The beast and the herb?” “I can show them to you,” Minn replied. They walked over to the cutting counter. “That’s a hedgehog,” Annaïg said. “The plant”—she crushed the pale green leaves between her fingers and smelled them—“eucalyptus.” “But we used both again today, and you saw the result.” “You reason from that that he’s tired of these things?” Slyr asked. “Were they prepared in the same way?” “Not at all. We toasted the bones to reveal the marrow and infused all with a vapor of the—ah—youcliptus?” “That doesn’t sound good at all,” Annaïg said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_021.txt", "text": "Slyr rolled her eyes. “Quickly now, I don’t need to say this again, so get it the first time. Some in Umbriel—us, the slaves, the laborers and tenders, farmers and harvesters, fishers and such—we eat things of gross substance. Meat, grain, vegetable matter. The greatest lords of this city dine only on infusions and distillations of spirituous substance. But between us and them there are the lower lords and ladies who still require matter to consume, but also have some degree of liquor spiritualis infused in their diet. But because they desire the highest status—which most will never achieve—they pretend to it, preferring to dine mostly on vapors, scents, gases. Of course, they must consume some amount of substance. They like broths, marrows, gelatins—” She sighed. “Enough. I will explain more later. For now we have to make something.” She turned to Minn. “What else can you tell me of his tastes?” In the end they made a dish of three things: a foam of the roe of an Umbrielian fish, delicate crystals like spherical snowflakes made of sugar and twelve other ingredients that would sublimate on touching the tongue, and a cold, thin broth of sixteen herbs—including the eucalyptus—which had the aroma of each ingredient but tasted like nothing at all. The servers took it away, leaving Slyr wringing her hands. With good cause, because as they were all turning in for the night, Qijne found Annaïg and Slyr. “It bored him,” she said. “Again, he’s bored. Make it right, will you?” And then she left. “We’re dead,” Slyr moaned. “Dead already.” Annaïg was light-headed, almost to the point of being sick. Her teeth felt on edge from the foreign, probably toxic elements she had been handling. When she closed her eyes, she kept seeing Oorol’s head come off, and the blood, and his strange, slow slump to the floor. In her third hour of sleeplessness, she felt her amulet wake against her skin. The slippery voice of a nightbird drew the sleep from Attrebus and delivered it to the moons. He rose, taking a moment to study Radhasa’s slumbering form. Then he went out on the balcony to gaze out at the darkened but still-wondrous city, at the White-Gold Tower rising to meet the stars. He’d chosen this villa for just this view. He loved looking at the palace—not so much being in it. A glance to the left showed him Gulan’s silhouette, at the far end of the balcony, which fronted several rooms. “Surely you aren’t on guard,” Attrebus said. “She’s new,” his friend answered, nodding his head toward Attrebus’s room. “Your father wouldn’t approve.” “My father believes that anything between a commander and one of his soldiers weakens his authority. I believe that friends fight better and more loyally than mere employees. I drink with my warriors, share their burdens. You and I are friends. Do you think I’m weak?” Gulan shook his head. “No, but we are not—ah—so intimate.” Attrebus snorted. “Intimate?"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_021.txt", "text": "You and I are far more intimate that Radhasa and me. Sex is sex, just another kind of fight. I love all of my people equally, you know, but not for all of the same qualities. Radhasa has qualities that inspire a particular kind of friendship.” “So do Corintha, Cellie, and Fury.” “Yes, and there is no jealousy there, no more than if I play cards with Lupo instead of Eiswulf.” He cocked his head. “Why bring this up now? Do you know something I don’t?” Gulan shook his head. “No,” he replied. “That’s just me, a worrier. You’re right, they all love you, and she’ll be no different.” “Still, it’s good you can tell me these worries,” Attrebus said. “I’m not afraid to hear what you’re thinking, not like my father, surrounded by his flunkies who tell him only what he wants to hear. I love him, Gulan, and I respect him for everything he’s done. But it’s the things he hasn’t done, won’t do …” He trailed off. “This is about Arenthia, isn’t it?” “We only need a small force,” Attrebus said. “A thousand, let’s say. The locals will rise and fight with us, I know they will—and then we gain a foothold in Valenwood.” “Give him time. He may yet come around.” “I’m restless, Gulan. We haven’t done anything worthy of us in months. And yet there’s so much to be done!” “Perhaps he has plans for you here, Treb.” “What sort of plans? What have you heard?” Gulan’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “What?” “Some say it’s time for you to marry.” “Marry? Why in the world would I want to do that? I’m only twenty-two, for pity’s sake.” “You’re the crown prince. You’re expected to produce an heir.” “Has my father talked to you about this? Behind my back? Did he tell you to put this in my ear?” Gulan drew back a bit. “No, of course not. But there are rumors in the court. I hear them.” “There are always rumors in the court. That’s why I hate it so.” “You’ll have to get used to it someday.” “Not anytime soon. Maybe never—maybe I’ll perish gloriously in battle before it comes to that.” “That’s not funny, Treb. You shouldn’t talk like that.” “I know,” he sighed. “I’ll go to court soon, see if he’s planning on saying anything to my face. And if he won’t give us the men to go to Arenthia, maybe he’ll let us go north to train. There are plenty of bandits up around Cheydinhal. It would be something.” Gulan nodded, and Attrebus clapped him on the shoulder. “I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything, old friend. It’s just that, when it comes to matters like this, I find myself unaccountably irritated.” “No harm,” Gulan said. “I think I’m okay here,” he said. “I’ve subdued her. Go to bed.” Gulan nodded and vanished into his room."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_021.txt", "text": "Attrebus stayed at the rail, contemplating the night sky and hoping Gulan was wrong. Marriage? It could be forced on him. Would his father do that? It didn’t really matter, he supposed. He wouldn’t let a wife keep him home, away from his proper business. If that was his father’s intention, he was going to be disappointed. A faint whir caught his attention, and he turned to find what at first seemed a large insect darting toward him. He leapt back, suppressing a cry, his hand going for a weapon that wasn’t there. But then it settled on the balustrade, and he saw that it was something much more curious—a bird made all of metal. It was exquisite, really. It sat there, staring at him with its artificial eyes. It seemed to be expecting something from him. He noticed that there was a little hinged door, like an oddly shaped locket. He reached, then hesitated. It could be some sort of bizarre assassin’s device—he might open it to find a poisoned needle pricking him, or some dire magic unleashed. But that seemed a little complicated. Why not put poison on the bird’s talon and have it scratch him? It could have done that if it had wanted to. Still … He went back into his room, found his dagger, and returning with it and standing to the side, flipped the locket open. The bird chirped a bright little tune, then fell silent. Otherwise, nothing happened. Inside was a dark, glassy surface. “What are you?” he wondered aloud. But it didn’t answer, so he decided to leave it where it was and have Yerva and Breslin examine it in the morning—they knew a lot more about this sort of thing than he did. As he turned to go, however, he heard a woman’s voice, so faint he couldn’t make it out. He thought for a moment it was Radhasa, waking, but it came again, and this time he was sure it was coming from behind him. From the bird. He went back and peered into the opening. “Hello?” the voice came. “Yes, hello,” he said. “Who is this?” “Oh, thank the Divines,” the woman said. “I had almost given up hope. It’s been so long.” “Are you—ah—Look, I feel silly talking to a bird. Can you get to that right off? And perhaps talk a bit louder?” “I’m sorry, I can’t talk louder. I don’t want to be discovered. That’s Coo you have there; she’s enchanted, and I have this locket with me, so we can speak to one another. If it were lighter, we could see each other as well. I can sort of make out your head.” “I don’t see anything.” “Yes, it’s pitch-dark here.” “Where? Where are you?” “We’re still over Black Marsh, I think. I’ve only had a few glimpses of the outside.” “Over Black Marsh?” “Yes. There’s a lot to explain, and it’s urgent. I sent Coo to find Prince Attrebus …” The voice faltered."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_021.txt", "text": "“Oh, my. You are the prince, aren’t you? Or else Coo wouldn’t have opened.” “Indeed, I am Prince Attrebus.” “Your highness, forgive me for addressing you in such a familiar manner.” “That’s no matter. And who might you be?” “My name is Annaïg—Annaïg Hoïnart.” “And you’re in some sort of captivity?” “Yes—yes, Prince Attrebus. But it’s not me I’m worried about. I have a lot to tell you and not much time before dawn. I believe our entire world is in terrible danger.” “I’m listening,” he replied. And he did listen as her husky lilt carried him through the night across the Cyrodiil and fetid Black Marsh, to a place beyond imagination and a terror the mind shuddered to grasp. And when at last she had to go, and the moons were wan ghosts in a milky sky, he straightened and looked off east. Then he went to his wardrobe-room, where Terz his dresser was just waking. “I’ll be going to court,” he told Terz. Titus Mede had been—and was—many things. A soldier in an outlaw army, a warlord in Colovia, a king in Cyrodiil, and Emperor. And to Attrebus, a father. They looked much alike, having the same lean face and strong chin, the same green eyes. He’d gotten his own slightly crooked nose and blond hair from his mother; his father’s hair was auburn, although now it was more than half silver. His father sat back in his armchair. He removed the circlet from his curly locks, rubbed his thickly lined forehead, and sighed. “Black Marsh?” “Black Marsh, Father, that’s what she said.” “Black Marsh,” he repeated, settling the crown back on his head. “Well, then?” “Well what, sire?” “Well, then, why are we discussing this?” He turned his head toward his minister, an odd, pudgy man with thick eyebrows and mild blue eyes. “Hierem, can you tell me why we’re discussing this?” Hierem sniffed. “I’ve no idea, majesty,” he said. “Black Marsh is rather a thorn in our side, isn’t it? The Argonians refuse our protection. Let them deal with their problems.” Something swept through Attrebus so strong he couldn’t identify it at first. But then he understood: certainty. Before there was a question about who Annaïg might actually be, what her motives were. She could easily have been some sort of sorceress, tricking him to his doom. He’d wanted to believe her—his every instinct told him she was genuine. Now he knew his instincts were dead-on, once again. “You already knew about this,” he accused. “We’ve heard things,” the minister replied. “Heard th …” He sputtered off. “Father—a flying city, an army of walking dead—this doesn’t concern you?” “You said they were moving north, toward Morrowind and at a snail’s pace. Our reports say the same. So no, I’m not concerned.” “Not even enough to send a reconnaissance?” “The Synod and College of Whispers have both been tasked to discover what they can,” Hierem said. “And of course some specialists are on their way."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_021.txt", "text": "But there is no need for a military expedition until they threaten our borders—certainly not one led by the crown prince.” “But Annaïg may not survive that long.” “So it’s the girl?” Hierem said. “That’s why you want to mount an expedition into Black Marsh? For the sake of a girl?” “Don’t speak to me like that, Hierem,” Attrebus warned. “I am your prince, after all. You seem to forget that.” “It’s not the girl,” his father snorted. “It’s the adventure. It’s the book they’ll write about it, the songs they will sing.” Attrebus felt his cheeks burn. “Father, that’s nonsense. You say it’s not our problem, but when it’s made everyone in Black Marsh and Morrowind into corpse-warriors, it will then turn on us. Every day we wait its army grows stronger. Why not fight a small battle now rather than a huge one later?” “Are you now lecturing me on strategy and tactics?” his father snapped. “I took this city with under a thousand men. I routed Eddar Olin’s northward thrust with barely twice that, and I hammered this empire back together with a handful of rivets. Do not dare to question that I have this situation in hand.” “Besides,” Hierem added, “you don’t know that it is coming here at all, Prince. It seems to have come from nowhere, probably it will return there.” “That’s a stupid assumption to make.” “If it comes for any part of the Empire, we will be ready for it,” the Emperor said. “You will not chase after this thing. That is my last word on the matter.” The tone was final. Attrebus glared at his father and the minister, then, after the most perfunctory of bows, he spun on his heel and left. He sat outside on the steps for a few moments, trying to cool off, get his thoughts together. He was almost ready to leave when he looked up at approaching footsteps. It was a young man with a thin ascetic face, freckles, and red hair. He wore an Imperial uniform. “Treb!” Attrebus stood and the two clapped each other in a hug. “You’re thin, Florius,” he said. “Your mother’s not feeding you anymore?” “Not so much. It’s mostly your father doing that now.” Treb stepped back and regarded his old friend. “You made captain! Congratulations.” “Thank you.” “I should never have let my father have you,” Attrebus said. “You should be riding with me.” “I should like that,” Florius said. “It’s been a long time since we had an adventure together. Do you remember that time we snuck off into the market district—” “I remember my father’s guards dragging us back by the ears,” Attrebus said. “But if you want to arrange a transfer …” “I’ve been assigned to command the garrison at Water’s Edge,” Florius said. “But maybe when that assignment’s done.” “I’ll come looking for you,” Attrebus said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_021.txt", "text": "“Divines, it’s good to see you Florius.” “Do you have time for a drink?” He paused, then shook his head. “No—I need to see to something right now. But I will see you in future.” “Right, then,” Florius said, and the two men parted company. Attrebus nodded to himself and went to meet Gulan. He found him near the gate. “How did it go?” Gulan asked. “Gather everyone at my house in Ione. We can supply there and be on our way by tomorrow. Be quiet about it.” “That well, eh?” He shifted. “You’re going against the Emperor’s wishes? Are you sure you want to do that?” “I’ve done it before.” “Which is why he’s likely to suspect, and have you watched.” “Which is why we’re being discreet. Disperse the guard as if I’ve given them a holiday, and have them come individually to Ione. You and I will take the way through the sewers.” Gulan looked doubtful but he nodded. Attrebus clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll see, old friend. This will be our greatest victory yet.”"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_022.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel “You’re the new skraw,” the man said. It wasn’t a question. Mere-Glim nodded, trying to size the fellow up. He looked more or less like one of Annaïg’s race, although with a noticeable yellowish cast to his skin and eyes. He had a long, doleful face and red hair. He was wearing the same black loincloth that Glim now wore. “My name is Mere-Glim,” he offered. “Yeah? You can call me Wert. And what are you, Mere-Glim? They say you don’t need the vapors.” They’d been walking through a stone corridor, but now they entered a modest cave. Water poured from an opening in the wall, ran in a stream across the floor, and vanished into a pool in the middle of the chamber. Several globes of light were fixed to the ceiling, nearly obscured by the ferns growing around them. The rest of the cave was felted in moss. Mere-Glim found it pleasant. “Eh?” Glim realized he’d been asked a question. “My people call ourselves Saxhleel,” he said. “Others call us Argonians. I’m not sure what you mean by vapors.” “You didn’t come out of the sump,” Wert said. “Nothing like you has ever come out of the sump. Which means you ain’t from Umbriel, ain’t that so?” “It is,” Glim replied. “So I reckon you’re one o’ them they was searching for, down below.” “They found us.” “Makes you—well, there ain’t no word for it, is there? A From-Somewhere-Elser. Well, then, welcome to the sump. Lovely place to work.” He chuckled, but that turned abruptly into a nasty cough. He covered his mouth with the back of his hand, and Glim noticed it came away bloody. “Vapors,” Wert explained. “What are they?” “Well, see, I’m told you can breathe down there. But none of us can, not without the vapors. We go to the yellow cave, and we breathe ’em in for a while, and then we can stay under until they wear off.” “How long is that?” “Depends. A few hours, usually. Long enough to get some work done.” “So what do we do?” “Well, I’m to show you, I am,” Wert said. “That’s where we’re on to right now. I’ll go take the vapors—I won’t be back here, because if I don’t get in the water right away, I’ll suffocate. So you just swim out and wait for me. Don’t wander by yourself. And please don’t try to run away. You won’t make it, and I’ll pay the price.” He watched Wert go, then walked over to the pool and lowered himself in, letting the mild current take him along. The pool bent into a tube, and he could see light ahead. A moment later he emerged in shallow water, just about as deep as he was tall. The sump spread out before him, a nearly perfectly circular lake in the bottom of a cone-shaped cavity. Umbriel City climbed up and away from him in all directions."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_022.txt", "text": "Some of it hung above him. He thought that if crows could build cities, they would look something like this—vain, shiny, lopsided, brash, and bragging. A few moments later Wert’s head appeared a few yards out. He gestured for Glim to follow. The shallows teemed with strange life: slender, swaying amber rods covered in cilia, swimmers that seemed like some strange cross of fish and butterfly, living nets composed of globes propelling themselves with water-jets and dragging fine webs between them, centipede-things as long as his arm and little shrimplike things no bigger than his thumb-claw. He stopped when he saw the body. At first he saw only a thick school of silver fish, but they parted at his approach. It had been a woman with dark skin and hair; now bones were showing in places and worms clustered on exposed organs. Shuddering, he turned away, but then he saw another, similar swarm of fish. And another to his right. He started at something in the edge of his vision, but it was only Wert. “They drop the bodies from above or send them down the slides. This is where they start.” His voice was weird, thick with the water in his lungs. “Why were they killed?” “What do you mean? Most just died of something or other. I suppose a few mighta been executed. But this is where we all end, ain’t it—in the sump.” He waved his hand vaguely. “We collect a lot of stuff for the kitchens here. Orchid shrimp, Rejjem sap, Inf fronds. Other things we fish for deeper, especially shear-teeth. You’ll learn about that, but mostly you’ll work in the deep sump. That’s perfect for you. So come on, let’s go to the Drop.” They swam on, with the water getting gradually deeper at first. He didn’t have to be told what the Drop was—he knew it when he saw it. The sump became a steeply curving cone that drove deep into the stone of Umbriel. And at the very bottom, in the narrowest place, an actinic light flashed, like a ball of lightning. “What’s that?” he asked. “That’s the conduit to the ingenium,” Wert said. “The sump takes care of our bodies—the ingenium takes care of our souls and keeps the world running. I’d stay well clear of the conduit, if I was you. Or me, now that I think of it.” Well, Glim thought. There’s something Annaïg would want to report to her prince. If only I had some way of talking to her. He glanced at Wert; he seemed not to be a bad fellow, but in the bigger picture—Annaïg’s picture—that wouldn’t matter. Though Wert could temporarily breathe underwater, his body was clumsy, not built for swimming. Glim knew he could easily escape him. If he killed him first, that would probably give him more time. But if he survived long enough to find Annaïg and give her this bit of news, then what?"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_022.txt", "text": "How could he hide when he was the only one of his kind on Umbriel? He couldn’t. Not for long. No, before he did something like that he’d need to have a lot more information to pass on. Could the ingenium be damaged from the sump? From anywhere? If so, how? They descended about two-thirds of the way down the sump, and Wert began moving toward what appeared to be translucent sacs stuck to the wall. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands, in all shapes and sizes. As he drew nearer, he could make out vague forms within the sacs. “These are being born,” Wert said. Curious, Glim moved closer, and to his astonishment found himself looking into a face. The eyes were closed, the features not fully formed, but it wasn’t a child’s face; it was that of an adult—just softer, flabbier than most. It was also hairless. “I don’t understand.” Wert grinned, plucked something from the water, and handed it to Glim. It was a sort of worm, very soft. It pulsed in and out, and with every contraction, a little jet of water squirted from one end of it. Other than that, it was featureless. “That’s a proform,” Wert said. “When someone dies, the ingenium calls one of these down to the conduit and gives it a soul. It comes back up here and attaches to the wall, and someone grows.” “That’s interesting,” Glim said. He looked at the proform. “You all start as this? No matter what you end up looking like? This is what you really are?” “You’ve got funny questions in your head,” Wert said. “We are what we are.” “And everyone is born like this?” “Everyone, from lord and lady to me and—well, not you. At least not yet.” “How are they born?” “Well, that’s one of your jobs—to recognize when one of these is about to start breathing. You can tell by the color of the sac—it gets a sheen, like this one. Then you swim that up to the birth pool—that’s another cave up in the shallows.” “What if you don’t do it in time?” “They die, of course. That’s why this job is the most important, really. And it’s why you’re so suited for it, see? Nah, they won’t waste you much on gathering. This is where you’ll be.” He doubled over suddenly, and Glim realized he was coughing. A dark stain spread from his mouth and nostrils. “Are you okay?” Wert gradually unfolded, then nodded. “Why do the vapors hurt you like that?” “Why is water wet? I don’t know. But I have to go up soon. Not lasting so long, this time. So let’s go see the birthing pool.” As they started back up, Glim glanced back down toward the light, but he didn’t see it. Instead he saw a maw full of teeth gaping at him. “Xhuth!” he gargled, jerking himself to the side and stroking hard to turn."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_022.txt", "text": "The fish turned, too, but not before he saw the thing was fifteen feet long, at least. Its tail was long, whiplike, and it had two great swimming fins set under it, like a whale. But those teeth would shame a shark to blush. “Sheartooth!” Wert shouted. “You’ve made it mad somehow.” Glim swam desperately, but the head kept right toward him, so he slashed at it with his claws. They caught but didn’t tear the creature’s tough hide. He let go, then struck again, this time at the back, behind the head, and there he dug in. It couldn’t bite him there. It could try, though. It thrashed like a snake in a hot skillet; he saw Wert stab at it with his spear, only to be struck by the tail. The skraw went limp in the water. Wonderful. He was starting to get dizzy and his arms and shoulders were aching. He’d have to do something soon. Here’s hoping your belly is softer, he thought. He let go with one set of claws and swung underneath. He was almost thrown clear, but one of the fins actually buffeted him back to the belly, and he slashed with all his might. Again his claws caught. He sank in the other hand. The sheartooth gyred into a loop, and the force was such that he knew he could only hold on for another few seconds. But the same force dragged Glim down the belly, opening it up like a gutting knife, and he was engulfed in a cloud of blood. He kicked hard and swam free of the still-twisting monster, but it had lost interest in him, focusing instead on its own demise. He realized suddenly that he’d forgotten Wert. He had drifted down fifty or sixty feet. His eyes were closed and his chest was moving oddly. Glim slung Wert over his back and kicked straight for the surface. He could feel the man quivering on his back. The light of the sun seemed a long way off. He burst into air and reversed his hold, keeping Wert’s head out of the sump as he vomited water from his lungs and began to struggle. His eyes opened, looking wild. He began to make a horrible sucking sound that wasn’t breathing. “Should I take you back under?” Glim asked. Wert shook his head violently, but Glim wasn’t sure if that meant yes or no. But then he seemed to draw a real breath, and then another. They reached the shallows, where Glim could stand and Wert could lean against him. “Shearteeth—usually not so vicious,” he said. “Usually don’t attack us. Something about you set it off. Maybe because the sump was still learning you. Thought you were—intruder.” He glanced at Glim. “Thanks, by the way. I wouldn’t have made it back up.” “I thought you were going to die anyway.” “It’s always bad between,” Wert explained."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_022.txt", "text": "“You don’t want to be underwater when you start breathing air again, but then again, you still can’t breathe air.” “That’s horrible,” Glim said. “There must be some better way to do this.” “Sometimes a lord or lady will come down for a swim, and they have other ways, not like the vapors. But the vapors are cheap, my friend. And so are we—always more of us being born. You’re different—for now.” “For now?” “Well, the sump knows you now. So does the ingenium. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more of your sort, pretty soon. And when there are enough of you—well, you’ll be cheap, too.”"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_024.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel When Attrebus, Gulan, and Radhasa arrived at Ione, dawn was just leaking into the sky. It was cool, and the breeze smelled of dew and green leaves. A rooster gave notice to the hens it was time to face the day. The town was waking, too—smoke from hearths coiled up through the light fog and people were already about in the streets. “It’s not much to look at, this town,” Radhasa noticed. Attrebus nodded. Ione wasn’t picturesque; a few of the houses were rickety wooden structures faded gray, but most were of stone or brick and simply built. Even the small chapel of Dibella was rather plain. “It’s not very old,” he said. “There wasn’t anything here at all fifty years ago. Then—well, do you know what that is?” They had reached the town square, and he didn’t have to point to indicate what he was asking about. The square was mostly stone, oddly cracked and melted as if from terrible heat or some stranger force. Two bent columns projected up in the middle, each about ten feet high, and together they resembled the truncated horns of an enormous steer. “Yes, I’ve seen them before—the ruins of an Oblivion gate.” “Right. Well, when this one opened, it opened right in the middle of a company of soldiers recalled from the south to fortify the Imperial City. More than half of them were killed, including the commander. They would have all died, but a captain named Tertius Ione managed to pull the survivors together and withdraw. But rather than retreat all the way to the Imperial City, he instead recruited farmers and hunters from the countryside and Pell’s Gate. Then he made them into something more than what they were. They returned and slaughtered the daedra here, and when they were done with that, he led them through the gate itself.” “Into Oblivion?” “Yes. He’d heard that the gate at Kvatch had been closed somehow by entering it. So Ione went in with about half of his troops and left the rest here, to guard against anything else coming out.” “It looks like he closed it.” “It closed, but Captain Ione was never seen again. One of his men—a Bosmer named Fenton—appeared weeks later, half dead and half mad. From what little he said that made sense, they reckoned Ione and the rest sacrificed themselves to give Fenton the chance to sabotage the portal. The Bosmer died the next day, raving. Anyway, Ione was gone for a long time before the gate exploded, and in the meantime his company built some fortifications and simple buildings. Once the gate was gone, it was a convenient and relatively safe place, so a lot of people stayed, and over time the town grew.” He turned about, spreading his arms. “That’s why I like this Ione. Because it’s new, because it speaks to the spirit of heroism that lies at the heart of each of us."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_024.txt", "text": "Yes, there are no quaint old buildings or First Era statues, but it’s an honest place built by brave people.” “And you have a house here?” Radhasa asked. “A hunting lodge, in the hills just across town.” “That’s quite a hunting lodge,” the Redguard said when they entered the gate. Something about the tone irked him, made him feel a bit defensive. It wasn’t that big. It was built on the plan of an ancient Nord longhouse, each beam and cornice festooned with carvings of dragons, bulls, boars, leering wild men, and dancing, longtressed women. “I suppose after the simplicity of Ione, it comes as a bit of a shock,” Attrebus admitted. “My uncle built it about fifteen years ago. He used to bring me down here, and left it to me when he died.” “No, I didn’t mean to criticize it.” And yet, he somehow felt she had been critical of something. He pushed past it. There were other matters at hand now. “They’re all here, Gulan?” he asked. “They are.” “And the provisions?” “You had plenty in your stores. More than we can carry.” “Well, I don’t see any reason to dally, then.” He raised his voice and spread his arms. “It’s good to have you with me, my brothers and sisters in arms,” he called out. “Give us a shout. The Empire!” “The Empire!” they erupted enthusiastically. “Today we ride to the unknown, fellows. Against something I believe to be as deadly and dangerous to our world as that Oblivion gate down there was when it opened—maybe more so. We’ve never done anything this dangerous; I’ll tell you that now.” “What is it, Treb?” That was Joun, an orc of prodigious size even for his race. He settled his hands on his hips and lifted his chin. Then he laid it out for them. When he was finished, the silence that followed had an odd, unfamiliar quality to it. “I know there are only fifty-two of us,” he said, “but just below us Captain Ione went into Oblivion with fewer than that and shut down that gate. The Empire expects no less from us—and we are better equipped in every way than he was. Even better, we have someone there, inside this monstrous thing—someone to lead us in, help us find the heart and rip it out. We can do this, friends.” “We’re with you, Treb!” Gulan shouted, and the rest of them joined him, but it seemed, somehow, that a note was still missing. Had he finally asked too much of them? No, they would follow him, and this would knit them all the more tightly as a band. “An hour, my friends, to settle yourselves for the ride. Then we begin.” But as they dispersed, there seemed to be much furtive whispering. The grass still sparkled with dew when they reached the Red Ring Road, the vast track that circumscribed Lake Rumare."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_024.txt", "text": "Across the morning gold of the lake stood the Imperial City itself, a god’s wagon-wheel laid down on an island in the center of the lake. The outer curve of the white wall was half in shadow, and he could make out three of what would—in any other city—be deemed truly spectacular guard towers. But those were dwarfed by the magnificent spoke of the wheel—the White-Gold Tower, thrusting up toward the unknowable heavens. He saw Radhasa also staring at the tower. “It was there before the city,” he told her. “Long before. It is very old, and no one is quite sure what it does.” “What do you mean, ‘what it does’?” “Well—understand first I’m not a scholar of the tower.” “Understood. But you must know more than I.” “Well, some think that the White-Gold Tower—and some other towers around Tamriel—help, well, hold the world up, or something like that. Others believe that before the Dragon broke, the tower helped protect us from invasion from Oblivion.” “It holds up the world?” “I’m not saying it right,” he replied, realizing he couldn’t actually remember the details of that tutorial. “They help keep Mundus—the World—from dissolving back into Oblivion. Or something like that. Anyway, everyone seems to agree it has power, but no one knows exactly what kind.” “Okay,” she replied, and shrugged. “So how do we get to Black Marsh?” “We’ll come to a bridge in a bit and cross the Upper Niben. From there we’ll take the Yellow Road southeast until we cross the Silverfish River. Then it’s overland—no roads after that except the ones we make.” He grinned at the thought of being in wild country again. “I wish I knew more about Cyrodiil.” “Well, you have an opportunity to learn now.” She was silent for a moment. “This person—the spy on the floating island—how do you speak to them?” “You don’t believe me?” “Of course I ‘believe’ you, my Pri—ah, Treb. I’m just curious. Do you have some sort of scrying ball, like in the old tales?” “Something like that,” he replied. “Very mysterious,” she answered. “Must keep a bit of mystery,” he replied. “We certainly must,” she said with a flirty grin. At noon they stopped to water the horses in the springs near the overgrown ruins of Sardarvar Leed, where the ancient Ayleid elves had once herded his ancestors, bred them for work and pleasure. Attrebus found a quiet spot and took the bird from his haversack. He saw Annaïg’s hands, working at some sort of dough, the cherry red fire pits beyond, and the hellish creatures that swarmed about the place. He dared not say anything now, but something in him needed to see what she saw, to make sure she was alive and well. His father and Hierem were right, in a way; this was in part about Annaïg."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_024.txt", "text": "She’d picked him to send Coo to because she believed in him, because she knew that he would answer her prayers and do this thing that needed doing, even if that meant opposing his own father. He had no intention of letting her down, and tonight, when they could whisper to each other across the leagues, he would give her the good news that he was on the way. He was still thinking about that an hour later when he heard a dull whump and half of his men caught fire. For a moment he could only stare, as if watching a theatric. He saw Eres and Klau staggering, beating their hands at the blue flames that engulfed them, their mouths working to produce sounds unrecognizable as human. There was Gulan, not burning but trying to beat the fire off of Pash, but then he suddenly had strange quills growing from his back. It finally settled through to his brain that they were ambushed, and he drew his sword, looking wildly for the enemy as arrows came whirring from every direction. Radhasa was still next to him, her own weapon drawn and an odd look of joy on her face. The last thing he saw was her blade swinging toward his head. He clambered up from black depths, but it was a slippery slope. He had little moments when he thought he was awake, but they were full of pain and strange movement, and in the end might have just been a dream within a dream, a little of the Dark Lady’s whimsy. A little hope before the nightmares had him again. Finally, though, he opened his eyes, and bright light filled them. His head throbbed furiously, and there was blood caked in his mouth and nostrils. He was facedown in the dirt and one eye was covered tightly by a cloth of some kind. He tried to push up, but his hands were behind him, and from the pain in his wrists he knew they must be bound. He tried to call out, but all that emerged was a croak. “There you are,” a feminine voice said. He flopped his head over and saw Radhasa, sitting against a tree, eating an apple. Her horse was behind her, and so was his, along with a Khajiit and a Bosmer he’d never seen before, speaking in low tones a few yards away. “You tried to kill me,” he said. “No, I didn’t. I hit you with the flat. Could just as easily have been the edge.” She smiled. “I was supposed to kill you, though.” “Why?” “If I told you that, then I would have to kill you,” she replied. “Don’t worry your pretty head about it, Treb.” “Where—what happened to the rest?” “Ah, well, there’s the pity. Some pretty good people just died for you.” He tried to understand that. “How many, traitor?"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_024.txt", "text": "How many of my people did you kill?” “Well, unless you still count me—I’m thinking you don’t—I would have to say everyone.” “Everyone?” “Yep. Even little Dario.” She licked juice from her fingers. “He’s just a boy!” “Not anymore. Graduated with the rest of them.” “Why?” he sobbed. His eyes stung with tears. “Again, not telling. A little mystery, remember? Like your bird here.” She smiled. “How does it work?” “I’m going to kill you!” he screamed. “You hear me?” He lifted his head to direct his shout to the strangers. “Did she tell you who I am? Do you know what you’ve done?” Incredibly, they laughed. “All right,” Radhasa said. “Break’s over. Get him horsed, fellows, and let’s move along.” He tried to fight, but his head was ringing and his limbs were sapped of energy, but most of all he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t get his mind to stand still. What was happening? This didn’t happen, not to him. How could all of his friends be dead? The horse started forward, and, slung over its back, he watched the wheel ruts in the road. She was lying, of course. Gulan and the rest were probably tracking them. Some of them probably were dead, but most of them must have made it. He’d never lost more than three of his personal guard in one battle anywhere, including the Battle of Blinker Creek. So she was lying, and they were coming. He just had to stay alive until they found him. How long had he been out? Where were they? The immediate answer to that last was that they were on a hunting trail of some sort, surrounded by massive oak and ash trees. The land rolled a bit, so it was a good guess they weren’t in the Niben Valley anymore, which meant that he must have been unconscious for at least a few days. His best guess was that they were somewhere in the West Weald, and by the sun, traveling mostly south. So where were they going? He looked to Radhasa, riding slightly ahead of him. “You said you were supposed to kill me,” he croaked. “Why didn’t you?” “Because I’m going to sell you,” she replied. “I know a certain very eccentric Khajiit who collects people like you. He’ll pay more than ten times what I was offered to kill you. So we’re off to Elsweyr. Think of it as a holiday. A really, really long holiday that will be no fun at all.” “Radhasa,” he said, “that’s insane. People know what I look like. Someone between here and there is going to recognize me.” “You haven’t seen your face since I whacked it,” she replied. “Looks a little different at the moment. And we’ll keep the bandages on. Once we get you where you’re going, there’s going to be a real limited selection of people you’re likely to meet, and it won’t matter to any of them who you are.” “My father,” he said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_024.txt", "text": "“He’d pay more yet to get me back. Have you thought of that?” “He might,” she agreed. “But I don’t think I would survive that. Too many resources at his disposal, too many ways to trap us.” “Those resources are bent on you already.” “No, not anytime soon, I think.” “When he finds the bodies—” “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “It’s covered.” She chuckled. “What are you laughing about?” “Good thing you don’t like being addressed as ‘Prince,’” she replied. “Because you’re never going to hear anyone call you that again.” She snapped her reins and broke into a trot. His horse, leaded to hers, followed suit."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_025.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel The day after talking with Attrebus, Annaïg felt energized, despite the lack of sleep. She went early to her work archiving the plants, animals, and minerals that appeared on her table every morning. She surveyed what was before her for a moment, then glanced up at the cabinets and drawers that climbed the wall to the ceiling. “Luc,” she said quietly. The hob peered out of the empty cabinet it habitually slept in. “Luc,” it echoed. “Luc, you know what’s in all of those cabinets up there?” “Luc knows.” “Do you find them by name?” “If Luc has name.” “And if you don’t have the name?” she pressed. “Then describe—color, taste, smell.” “I see.” She thought about that for a moment, and then got some of the eucalyptus distillation they had used before. “Smell this, Luc.” The creature wrinkled its wide nostrils at it. “I don’t know the name of what I’m looking for, but it is black and smells a bit like this. I want you to search the cabinets and bring me anything that fits that description, one container at a time.” “Yes, Luc find.” He bounded off, and Annaïg took a deep breath. She hadn’t dared instruct the beast to bring things only when she was alone; it could tell Qijne, and that would raise questions. Glim had been right about one thing—she needed to re-create the elixir that had allowed them to fly here. Once Attrebus was near, it might be the only way to reach him. In any case, she needed options. Being able to fly would be a big one. She set to work on what was before her—arrowroot, silk leeches, and cypress needles. Luc brought her a bottle. She sniffed it, and got an intensely stringent, herbal, minty smell. “Not that one,” she said. Luc bounded back off. She remembered the sound of the prince’s voice. He’d believed her, hadn’t he? A prince. And he had talked to her like she was important. She’d always known that was how it would be, if they met, but to have it actually happen … “You’re awfully cheerful for a dead woman,” Slyr commented from just behind her. Annaïg jumped about a foot, her heart racing. “It’s the lack of sleep,” she said. “Makes me giddy.” She lifted her pen and scribbled a few notes regarding the willow bark on the table in front of her. “I need you.” “That’s nice to hear,” Annaïg replied. “But this is my time for cataloging. Remember?” “Yes, well that was before we were put in charge if Lord Ghol’s victuals,” she snapped. Annaïg shrugged. “If you think you can talk Qijne into releasing me from this duty, I won’t argue.” “You’re only saying that because you know I wouldn’t dare.” “That’s true,” Annaïg replied. “On the other hand, Lord Ghol is bored, yes?"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_025.txt", "text": "We need something new, and that’s likely to come from these things.” “Yes, well, Oorol was using the ingredients you identified, and it didn’t help him.” “That’s because he didn’t understand them,” she said. “Any more than you do.” Slyr stiffened, and for a moment Annaïg thought she had gone too far, but then the other woman relaxed. “You’re right. That’s why I need you. How often are you going to make me repeat it?” “I’m in this, too.” “She won’t kill you,” Slyr replied. “She needs you.” “She’s insane,” Annaïg said. “You can’t use logic to predict Qijne.” Slyr chuckled bitterly. “You’ve a big mouth,” she said. “You may be right, but she’s not entirely unpredictable—if she hears you said anything like that—” “She won’t,” Annaïg said simply. Slyr stepped back. “Really, you looked beaten and ready for the sump last night. Now you’re full of sliwv. What happened last night? Did you cozy up to someone? Pafrex, maybe?” “Pafrex? The bumpy fellow with quills?” “Or maybe you’ve trained your hob … unconventionally?” “Okay, that’s disgusting,” Annaïg said. “Disgust,” Luc chimed in. “Disgust is what?” Annaïg felt a sudden flush. The hob was holding out a bottle of something black toward her. “Just put that down, Luc,” she said. “Forget that and fetch me that snake over there,” she said. “Luc!” the hob replied, bounding across the huge table to retrieve the viper she indicated. Slyr was frowning down at her. Annaïg couldn’t tell if it had anything to do with the bottle. “Look,” Annaïg said, “I am helping you. I’ve an idea.” “And what is that?” Slyr demanded. Annaïg lifted the serpent carefully, behind the head, even though it was as stiff as a rod. Most of the animals came like this—not dead, but sort of paralyzed, frozen even though they weren’t cold. Their hearts didn’t beat and they didn’t age. They had to be released from that state by a rod Qijne carried. Still, with something this deadly, it was hard for her to trust a spell she didn’t understand. “The Argonians call this a moon-adder,” Annaïg explained. “When it bites, it injects venom that—in most beings—is almost instantly fatal. Argonians, however, can survive it, and in fact sometimes seek the venom out.” “Why would they do that?” “It provides them daril, which means something like ‘seeing everything in ecstasy.’” “Ah. It is a drug, then. We have many of those, but they are not so much in fashion. Besides, we don’t want to poison Ghol.” “No, no. I’m sure that would be bad. The venom is just a starting point. From what Glim told me, daril unfolds in stages, no stage like the last, and it confuses the senses."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_025.txt", "text": "You see sounds, hear tastes, smell sights.” “Again, we have such drugs.” “The venom is transformed by a certain agent in Argonian blood—” “If this is another attempt to find out where your friend is, I can only reiterate that not even Qijne knows where he is—or even has the ability to discover it.” “I know,” Annaïg said, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat. “I don’t actually need Argonian blood. I’m just explaining. It comes down to this: I think I can make a metagastrologic.” “This is a nonsense word.” “No. It’s something I’ve read about, something the Ayleids—ancient people from my world—once used in their banquets.” “A drug.” “Yes, but the only sense that they affect is taste—nothing else. No general hallucination, no loss of clarity. Look, the essential flavors are sweet, sour, salty, and hot, right?” “Of course. And with the lower lords like Ghol you can add dead, quick, and ethereat, at the same level.” “Really? How interesting.” She wanted to know more about that, but didn’t want her idea to lose momentum. “Anyway,” she pushed on, “a good dish will still balance those essentials, yes?” “Yes. Or contrast them.” “So with a metagastrologic, the first taste of the dish will have a certain balance of flavors, but as it lingers on the tongue, they begin to change. Salty is confused for sweet, ah—ethereat for hot, and so forth. And it will keep happening, different each time.” Slyr just looked at her for a long moment. “You can do this?” she finally asked. “Yes.” “Such a dish would have to be carefully thought out, so that no matter what inversion of flavors occurred, most would be pleasurable.” “It would require a chef of some skill,” Annaïg agreed. “Well,” Slyr sighed, “it will not be boring, at least. I will go work on a foundation.” Annaïg tried not to watch her depart, but she finally stole a glance to make sure she was gone. Then she closed her eyes and thanked the gods, carefully opened the bottle, and smelled its contents. “That’s not it either, Luc,” she said. “Keep trying. But—um, I’ll ask you to see them, okay? I don’t want you interrupting my chain of thought. Just keep them in your cabinet.” “Luc do,” the hob said, and started toward the wall. “First go and find the chef and tell her we need this snake quickened.” “Luc do.” He bounded off. A few moments later he came back following Qijne’s hob, which had the baton. Annaïg placed the viper on the table, put the sharp edge of a cleaver on its neck, and touched it with the baton. When it twitched to life, it jerked back and nearly slipped free, but its head caught and she put all her weight on the cleaver so the edge bit, then followed the skull back to the neck, slicing cleanly through. The body fell away, twitching, which gave the hobs something to hoot about."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_025.txt", "text": "She expressed the venom into a glass vial and set to work. Hours passed, and so absorbed was she in the task that she hadn’t realized Qijne was watching her. “Chef?” “What’s your hob doing going through the cabinets? Everything up there is known to me already.” “But not to me,” Annaïg answered. “And if I’m to be a proper cook to Lord Ghol, I need to be familiar with all of it.” Qijne’s expression didn’t change, but her glaze flickered down to Annaïg’s work in progress. “Not really doing anything you’re supposed to do,” she observed. “This is for the meal,” she said. “An additive.” “Explain.” Annaïg went back over the general properties of the metagastrologic. The chef tilted her head slowly left, then right. “You’re cooking, in other words. When you’re supposed to be cataloging.” “I am, Chef.” “Which is not what I told you to do.” “No, Chef. But Slyr is worried—” “Slyr? Slyr put you up to this?” “No, Chef. It was my idea. We failed last night. I didn’t want us to fail again.” “No, no of course not,” Qijne said vaguely. Her eyes lost focus. “Carry on. Only know that if it does not please him, I will kill Slyr and cut off one of your feet, right?” “Right, Chef.” “That’s not a joke, if you think I’m joking.” “I don’t think you’re joking, Chef,” Annaïg said. After the meal went up, Slyr wandered off, her face pinched with fear. Annaïg slipped off, too, and had a look at her locket, but got nothing but darkness. She went back to the dormitory to wait for her meal. A bit later Slyr rushed into the room. “Come on,” she said. “Come with me.” She followed the chef through the winding corridors and great pantries of the kitchen and into what appeared to be a wine cellar—there were thousands of bottles of something, anyway, racked all around her. “Through here.” Slyr was indicating a sort of hole in the wall just barely wide enough to slip through. It led into a small chamber illuminated by faint light. Once in it, she could see the light came from the sky—the chamber was at the bottom of a high, narrow shaft. Slyr handed her a bottle and a basket of something that smelled really good. “He wasn’t bored,” she said. “In fact, he sent one of his servants to commend me.” She looked up shyly. “Us.” “That’s good news.” “News worth celebrating,” Slyr said. “Try the wine.” It was dry and delicious, with a fragrance she couldn’t quite place but that reminded her of anise. The basket was filled with pastry rolls stuffed with a sort of buttery meat. “What is it?” she asked, holding up the roll she was eating. “Orchid shrimp. They live in the sump.” “It’s delicious.” “It was supposed to go to the Prixon Palace servants for their night ration. I snatched a few.” “Thank you,” Annaïg said. “Yes, yes,” Slyr said. “Eat."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_025.txt", "text": "Drink.” “What about Qijne?” “She may be—ah, as you said. But when we succeed, so does she. Lord Ghol was on the verge of becoming the patron of another kitchen. When kitchens lose patrons, people start wondering whether the master chef ought to be replaced. We did well, so she’ll look the other way a bit if we take very discreet privileges.” “What sort of privileges?” “Well … this is about it. Having a little of the good stuff and not being watched too closely at night.” Annaïg felt her face burn a bit. “Ah, Slyr—” “Don’t flatter yourself,” the chef replied. “I just thought you would enjoy being here, where you can see the sky. And no noisy, smelly dormitory. I love being here, alone—I don’t think anyone else knows about it. I just don’t dare come here often.” “Well, then,” Annaïg said, “I am flattered, then.” Slyr became a little sloppy after the first bottle of wine. “I have heard something about your friend,” she confided. Annaïg nearly choked on her drink. “Really?” she gasped. “About Glim? He’s okay?” “He’s in the sump.” It jagged through her like lightning. “What?” she whispered. But Slyr smiled. “No, not like that,” she assured her. “He’s not dead. He’s working in the sump. The guy who brought the shrimp mentioned him. He can breathe underwater, did you know that? All of the sump tenders are talking about him.” “Of course he can breathe underwater,” she replied. “He’s an Argonian.” “Another of your nonsense words? There are more like him?’ She remembered the slaughter at Lilmoth. “I hope so,” she said. “Oh,” Slyr said. “They’re down there.” “Don’t you ever—” But she stopped herself. She couldn’t trust anyone here with thoughts of somehow stopping Umbriel. But Slyr was waiting for her to finish. “Have you ever been above?” she asked instead. “To the palaces? No. But it is my dream to.” She looked up and her forehead wrinkled. “What are those?” she asked. Annaïg followed her regard up to the small patch of night sky. “Stars,” she said. “Haven’t you ever seen stars before?” “No. What are they?” “Depends on who you ask or what books you read. Some say they are tiny holes in Mundus, the world, and the light we see is Aetherius beyond. Others believe they are fragments of Magnus, who made the world.” “They’re beautiful.” “Yes.” And so they ate, and drank, and talked, and for the first time in many, many days Annaïg felt like a real person again. When Slyr finally curled up to sleep with her blanket, she opened her locket again. There wasn’t anything there, which meant Coo wasn’t with Attrebus. She waited, hoping he would answer, but after an hour or so she fell asleep, and her dreams were troubled."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_026.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel To Colin, the corpses looked like broken dolls flung down by a child in a tantrum. He couldn’t imagine any of them ever having been alive, breathing, talking, feeling. He couldn’t find any empathy even for the worst of the lot—those burnt to char—and he knew he ought to. He should at least feel sick or repelled, filled with the fear of such a thing happening to him, but he just couldn’t find anything like that in him. Well, Prince, he thought, congratulations. Well done. “Stay away from the bodies,” he told the royal guardsmen. He didn’t have to tell his own people; they were professionals. “Put sentinels on the road and in the woods. Stop any wagons and route foot and horse traffic well around this. Tell them a bunch of ogres have set up camp and we have to clear ’em out. “Gerring, you start the search for witnesses. Every house, every shack in the area. Hand, you go to Ione and Pell’s Gate. Guilliam—you take Sweetwater and Eastbridge. Be discreet. See who’s saying what in the taverns. You know what to do.” He nodded at a flurry of “Yes, inspector” but kept his gaze on the scene. Most had been struck by arrows and had either died of that or of having their throats very professionally slit later. A sizable fraction had been immolated, presumably by sorcery. The attackers, interestingly, either hadn’t had any casualties or—if they had—didn’t leave them behind. The arrows he recognized as belonging to an insurgent faction from County Skingrad that called themselves the “Natives.” A number of the bodies had been beheaded, a practice also in keeping with that same nasty bunch of thugs. He stopped in front of one body that was burnt but not incinerated. Bits of clothing and jewelry still clung to it and a notably large ring. The head was missing. “Too convenient,” he murmured as he took a closer look at the ring. As he suspected, it was the signet ring of Crown Prince Attrebus. Of course, if it had been the Natives, they would certainly have singled out Attrebus’s head as the best trophy. But then, why leave the ring? “Oh, sweet gods,” someone gasped. “It’s the prince.” Irritated, Colin turned to find Captain Pundus dismounted and standing a few feet away. “Captain, I asked you to stay clear of the bodies.” Pundus reddened. “See here, I’m the leader of this expedition. Who do you imagine you are, shouting orders at me and my men?” “You were the leader of this expedition until we found this,” Colin said, parting his hands. “Now I am in charge.” “On whose authority?” Colin removed a scroll from his haversack and handed it to the captain. “You know the Emperor’s signature, I assume?” Pundus’s eyes were trying to pop out of his head. He nodded rapidly. “Good."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_026.txt", "text": "Then set your men to divert traffic, as I requested, and advise them not to speak of anything they’ve seen here. I advise you the same.” “Yes, sir,” the captain said. “After I’m done, we’ll need wagons, enough to hold the bodies. We’ll want them covered, as well. See if you can locate some in the nearby towns. And again, not a word.” “Sir.” The captain nodded, remounted, and rode off. He looked around a few more moments, then took a deep breath. He found the spark in himself that belonged not to the world, but to Aetherius, to the realm of pure and complete possibility. He was lucky—this was easy for him. If he’d needed to start a fire or walk on water, it would require training, a mental sequence worked out by someone else to convince him that such things could be done. But for what he was doing, he need only focus and pay attention, look beneath the rock that everyone else didn’t notice. The scene darkened and blurred, and for a moment he thought there was nothing left, but then he saw two spectral forms. One, a woman, was staring down at her body. The other, a man, was crouched into the roots of a large tree. The man was closer, so he took the few steps necessary. He was already starting to feel himself weakening, the spark fading, so he knew he should hurry. “You,” he said. “Listen to me.” Vacant eyes turned to him. “Help me,” the ghost said. “I’m hurt.” “Help is on the way,” Colin lied. “You need to tell me what happened here.” “It hurts,” the specter said. “Please.” “You came here with Prince Attrebus,” Colin pursued. The man laughed harshly. “Help me up. I just want to go home. If I can get home, I’ll be fine.” “Who hurt you? Tell me!” “Gods!” He breathed raggedly, then stopped. His head dropped against the tree. A moment later it rose again. “Help me,” he said. “I’m hurt.” Colin felt a sudden surge of anger at the pitiful thing. “You’re dead,” he snapped. “Have some dignity about it.” Almost shaking with fury, he went over to the other spirit. “What about you?” he asked. “Anything left of you?” “What you see,” the woman murmured. “Your accent—you’re Colovian, like me.” “Yes,” he replied. “Where are you from?” “I was born near Mortal, down on the river.” “That’s a nice place,” he said, feeling his anger leave him. “Peaceful, with all of those willows.” “There were willows all around my house,” she replied. “I won’t see them again.” “No,” he said softly. “I’m sorry, you won’t.” She nodded. “Listen,” Colin said, “I need your help.” “If I can.” “Do you remember what happened here? Who attacked you? Anything?” She closed her eyes. “I do,” she said. “We were with the prince, off following some half-cocked scheme of his. Headed for Black Marsh, of all places. We were ambushed.” She sighed. “Attrebus."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_026.txt", "text": "I knew he would get me killed someday. Is he dead, too?” “I don’t know. I was hoping you did.” “I didn’t see. First there was fire, and then something hit me, hard. I didn’t even get to fight.” “Why were you going to Black Marsh?” “Something about a flying city and an army of undead. I didn’t listen that closely. His quests were usually pretty safe, well in hand before we even arrived, if you know what I mean.” “The Emperor forbade him to go. He disobeyed.” “We weren’t sure what to believe,” she said. “Might’ve been part of the game. There were other times like that.” She shook her head. “I wish I could help you more.” “I think you’ve helped me quite a lot,” Colin said. He looked around at the carnage. “Are you staying here, do you think?” “I don’t know much about being dead,” she said, “but it doesn’t feel that way. I feel something tugging at me, and it’s stronger all the time.” She smiled. “Maybe I only stayed to talk to you.” “Are you afraid?” “No,” she said. “It doesn’t feel bad.” She cocked her head. “You, though—something wrong with you, countryman.” “I’m fine.” “You’re far from fine,” she said. “You take care of yourself. Maybe next time you see a willow, think of me.” “I will.” She smiled again. He pulled back into himself and the sun returned. They were all just broken dolls again. He thought his head was ringing, but then he understood that it was just birds singing. He was starving. Unsteadily, he went to find something to eat, and to hear the reports."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_027.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel “Draeg’s late,” Tsani told Radhasa, her golden tail twitching in agitation. “Really late.” Attrebus, nearly asleep in the saddle, tried to appear actually asleep, in hopes they might let something useful drop if they thought he couldn’t hear them. It had taken him two days to figure out there were eight of them, because no more than four were riding guard on him at any given time. The others, he guessed, were scouts—one in front, one in back, one on each flank, and probably pretty far out. Radhasa was a constant, but he was just too out of it at first to realize the other faces were rotating. Now, after a week, he knew all of their names. Tsani, one of four Khajiit in the group, the others being Ma-fwath, J’yas, and Sharwa. Besides Radhasa, there was a flaxen-haired Breton woman named Amelia, a one-handed orc named—not too surprisingly—Urmuk One Hand. He’d had an iron ball fixed to his stump. The missing Draeg was the Bosmer he’d seen earlier, on awakening. Radhasa didn’t say anything, just tugged at her mount’s reins to guide him down the steep path through increasingly more arid country. In the last few days the land had risen, and the thick forest and lush meadows of the West Weald had devolved into scrubby oaks and tall grass. Now, on the southern side of the hills, trees were more like big bushes, except when they came to a stream or pool, and tall grass prevailed in clearings. His spirits had been sinking with the altitude, because he was certain they were already in Elsweyr. It would be more difficult for his friends to find him here; few of them had ever been south of the border, and the cats were less than friendly with the Empire they had once been a part of. Any force that tried to retrieve him might be seen as an invasion. But then he saw a glimmer of hope in the situation. By the time they were camping for the night, it was clear to everyone Draeg was probably more than delayed. The glimmer brightened. “Trolls, probably,” Radhasa opined. “The hills stink with them.” “I can’t imagine Draeg having trouble with a troll—or much else for that matter,” Sharwa said. “More likely he just decided this deal was too dangerous.” “We were supposed to kill him,” Tsani said. “That’s what we were paid to do. Now we potentially have two powerful enemies—the Emperor and our employer.” “He will be thought dead,” Radhasa replied. “There’s nothing to worry about.” “I’m not—at least not enough to scratch at the money. But Draeg—he’s a worrier.” “Well, more for us, then,” Radhasa said. “Tsani, you go back and take his position.” “Fine. Are we going into Riverhold?” “Are you crazy? It’s swarming with Imperial agents. We’d have to keep his highness gagged, and that might attract attention."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_027.txt", "text": "No, there’s a little market town a few miles west of there, Sheeraln. Ma-fwath and J’yas will go in and trade our horses for slarjei and water.” They came to the crest of the last of the hills before sundown, and the plains of Anequina stretched out to the horizon. He’d always imagined Elsweyr as an unrelieved desert, but here it was green. The tall grass of the upland prairies had been replaced by a short stubble, but that still seemed a far cry from the naked sand he’d been expecting. Streams were visible by the swaying palms, light-skinned cottonwood, and delicate tamarisk that lined them. A herd of red cattle grazed in the near distance. Riverhold was visible a bit east, sprung up at the convergence of three dusty-looking roads. The walls were saffron, irregular, and not particularly high. Behind them, domes and towers of faded azure and cream, vermilion and chocolate, gold and jet, crowded together like a gaggle of overdressed courtiers waiting in the foyer of the throne room. It was a city that seemed at once tired and exuberant. He wished they were going there. But instead they did as Radhasa planned—they followed a goat trail into a copse of trees along a meandering stream, where he was forced to dismount. Then Ma-fwath and J’yas took the horses. “Bathe,” Radhasa told him. “You’re starting to smell.” “Hard to do with these bands on.” “You promise to be good?” His heart sped a bit. “Yes,” he said. “Swear it on your honor that you won’t try to run.” “On my honor,” he replied. She shrugged, came up behind him, and untied the ropes. “There,” she said. “Go, then, bathe.” He stripped off his stinking clothes, feeling watched and somehow ashamed. Radhasa had seen him undressed before—had helped undress him, in fact. He hadn’t felt in the least uncomfortable then. Now he hurried into the water and submerged himself as quickly as possible. The water was cool, and felt unbelievably good. He let it wash over him, closing his eyes and trying to concentrate only on the sensation. It might have been a half an hour before he opened them. When he did, he saw that Radhasa was the only one besides himself in the camp. She was sitting with her back to a tree, not quite facing him. She seemed deep in thought. Between him and her lay a pile of gear, and protruding from it was the hilt of his sword, Flashing. He didn’t hesitate, but launched himself out of the water toward the weapon. Radhasa saw him, but even then didn’t seem to understand the situation until he actually had the weapon in his hand. Then she came slowly to her feet. “You promised,” she accused. “On your honor.” “I promised not to run,” he corrected. She drew her sword. “Ah,” she said. “I see.” He circled her, waiting. She wasn’t in armor, so there was no advantage there."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_027.txt", "text": "And he’d fought her before, knew her signals. He feinted, but she didn’t twitch. He cut deeper, and she evaded with a quick sidestep. Then she did what he knew she would; her whole body sagged, the tell that she was about to make a hard attack. She started forward; he threw up his parry and stepped to meet her … Except that her attack was suddenly short, and he was blocking nothing but air. Then she was in motion again, cutting at his exposed legs. He tried to jump back, but he had too much momentum, and so dropped his blade to parry. But that was also a feint, and in an instant she was inside, right on him, and her off-weapon hand wrenched at his grip in a strange, painful manner, and then he was facedown on the ground. Flashing thumped to earth a few feet away. Radhasa stepped back. “Want to try again?” Growling, he once more took up the blade and came at her with his famous six-edge attack, but halfway through it her point was at his throat. “Again?” she asked. Enraged, he flew at her with everything, but almost without seeming to work at it she had him disarmed and on the ground once more. “You—You lost on purpose, when you were applying,” he said. “You think?” He climbed back to his feet. “You’ll have to kill me,” he said. “No I won’t. I’ll just knock you out again.” “Why did you do this? For entertainment?” Her usually beautiful face twisted into something rather ugly. “I wanted you to know,” she said. “I hate losing, and I hate pretending to lose.” “Then why did you? Back at my villa?” “Orders, Prince.” “From your employer? To get me to let my guard down?” She rolled her eyes. “From Gulan, you idiot. Don’t you understand yet? You’re a worse than mediocre fighter. You’ve never fought a fair fight in your life. You’ve never been in a battle that wasn’t a rigged, foregone conclusion. Until now.” Attrebus suddenly realized he’d missed something about Radhasa; she wasn’t merely deceptive, treacherous, and greedy—she was completely insane. “Sure,” he said. “Whatever you say. Clearly you hate me, although I don’t know why. I was nice to you, took you into my guard.” “I don’t hate you as such,” she said, “I just hate what you are. It’s not your fault really—this was done to you. Yet I can’t help feeling that if you’d ever used your brain just once, if you had the slightest ability to step outside of your narcissistic little world—” “You’ve been with me two days. What do you know about me?” “Everyone interviewed for your guard is told, Attrebus. And they all talk, don’t they? How could they not? The way you blustered about as if they were your friends, the casual, everyday condescension—I don’t see how any of them stood it for more than two days."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_027.txt", "text": "I mean, yes, the pay is good, and in general you’re assured fairly safe situations, but Boethiah’s ass, it’s annoying.” A slow, gentle cold was working its way up from his belly. “This isn’t true,” he said. “My men loved me.” “They mocked you behind your back. The least of them was worth three of you. Did you really think you’re the hero in the songs, in the books? Were the odds really ten-to-one at Dogtrot Ford?” “Some authors tend to exaggerate, but it’s all basically true. I can’t help the mistakes some bard in Cheydinhal makes. But I did those things.” “At Dogtrot Ford you faced half your number, and they weren’t insurgents, they were condemned criminals told that if they survived, they would be freed.” “That’s a lie.” He felt dizzy, very dizzy. He leaned against a tree. “You’re starting to see it, aren’t you? Because somewhere in that skull of yours you have at least half of your father’s brain.” “Just shut up,” he said. “I’ve no idea why you’re saying this, but I won’t listen to it anymore. Kill me, tie me back up, but just shut up, for the love of the Divines.” She wrinkled her brow and leaned on her sword. “Are you really that dense?” He charged at her, howling. A moment later he was on the ground again. “If it’s any consolation,” she said, placing her foot on his throat, “even if by some fluke you managed to kill me, Urmuk and Sharwa have been watching the whole time.” As she said it, he saw the orc and the Khajiit appear from behind a copse of bamboo. The boot came off of his neck. He turned his head and saw someone else—a lean, hawk-nosed man with charcoal skin and molten red eyes striding purposefully into the clearing. Had he missed someone? “You there!” Sharwa shouted. “What do you—” The man kept coming, but he thrust out his arm, and his hand flashed white-hot. Sharwa’s hideous yowl was like nothing Attrebus had ever heard before. Radhasa kicked him in the head, and he rolled, groaning, sparks flashing behind his eyes. Sobbing in pain, he came to his feet and rubbed the tears from his eyes. He was just in time to see the orc lose his other hand, making him—presumably—Urmuk the Handless. The newcomer’s long, copper-colored blade pulled right through his wrist, then angled up to deflect a murderous head blow from Radhasa. Urmuk stumbled back and tripped over Sharwa, who seemed to be trying to stand, despite the smoke rising from her chest. Radhasa jumped back and continued to retreat. Attrebus didn’t blame her. This wasn’t a man—this was some daedra summoned from the darkness beyond the world, a fiend. “What do you want?” Radhasa screamed. “You’ve no business with us.” The fiend didn’t say anything. He just picked up the pace, half running toward Radhasa, and then suddenly bounding forward."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_027.txt", "text": "She planted herself and then danced nimbly aside as his blade soughed by her, and her own weapon came down two-handed toward the juncture of his neck and shoulder. He caught her blade with his off-weapon hand. Attrebus saw Radhasa close her eyes, and then his blade went in through the pit of her left arm so deeply the point came out through her ribs on the other side. He withdrew the weapon and stalked toward Urmuk, who was holding the bleeding stump of his wrist. Whatever Urmuk was, he wasn’t a coward, and he hurled the massive weight of his body at his attacker, clubbing at him with the iron ball he had fixed to his left hand. Sharwa was crawling away on her belly. Urmuk fell and the fiend turned on Sharwa. “You can’t,” Attrebus managed. “She’s injured—” But her head was off by then. And now the fiend turned on him. Attrebus snapped out of his paralysis and ran toward his sword, but when he had it, he saw the killer was merely watching him. Attrebus brought his weapon to guard. “I killed a Bosmer back in the hills and a Breton on the ridge back there,” the man said. His voice was hard and scratchy. “I make there are two more—Khajiit. Where are they?” “They went to some village,” he replied. “To change the horses for slarjei, whatever they are.” “Slarjei are better in the desert than horses,” the man said. “How long have they been gone?” “An hour, maybe.” “Well, Prince Attrebus, we ought to be going, then.” “Who are you? How do you know who I am?” “My name is Sul.” “Did my father send you?” “He did not,” Sul replied. Now that he was closer and not in constant motion, Attrebus had a better look at him. He was old, his dark skin pulled in tightly against his bones. His hair was black and gray and cropped nearly to his skull. “Who, then?” “My reasons are my own,” he replied. “Would you rather I hadn’t come?” “I don’t know the answer to that yet, do I?” Attrebus said. “I’m not here to kill you,” Sul assured him. “I’m not here to hurt you. We have a common destiny, you and I. We both seek the island that flies.” Attrebus blinked. He felt as if the earth kept shifting beneath his feet. “You know of it?” “I just said so.” “And what is your concern with it?” “I will destroy it or send it back to Oblivion. Isn’t that what you want?” “I … yes.” What was happening? “Then we are together, yes?” Sul said. “Now, should we go or wait around so that I have to fight the other two as well?” “You didn’t have much trouble with these,” Attrebus noticed. “Most men die surprised,” Sul said. “One of those two might have a surprise for me. I don’t fight anyone without a reason."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_027.txt", "text": "I have you, and I don’t want slarjei unless we need to go south into the desert. Do we need to go south?” “No.” “Well, pick the direction, and let’s be off.” Attrebus stared at him, teasing that out. Then he understood. “You don’t know where Umbriel is.” Sul barked out something that might have been a laugh. “Umbriel. Of course. Vuhon …” He trailed off. “No, I don’t know where it is.” “How do I know you won’t kill me as soon as I tell you?” “Because I need you,” Sul said. “Why?” “I’m not sure. But I know I do.” Attrebus considered his reply for a long moment. But really, what did he have to lose? “East,” he said. “It’s over Black Marsh now, heading north.” “North toward Morrowind,” Sul sighed. “Of course.” “Does that mean something to you?” “Nothing that matters right now. Very well. East we go, then.” “Let me get my things,” Attrebus said. “Hurry, then.” Attrebus was glad Coo was in Radhasa’s haversack and not on her body. The idea of approaching her, seeing what Sul made of her, made him sick. True, she was a lying traitor, but she had been warm in the bed with him not long ago. Alive and beautiful, sweaty, enthusiastic—or so she had seemed. Of all of the women he’d been with, she was the first to be—well, dead. At least so far as he knew. It was upsetting. Sul gathered a few things from the bodies, then led him upstream among the trees for some distance until they finally came to three horses—two roan geldings that looked as though they were from the same mother and a brown mare. One of the roans was packed up, the other two horses were saddled. “Ride the gelding,” Sul said. Attrebus sighed, feeling that was somehow fitting. A few moments later he was riding east with the man who had saved his life, wondering what would happen if he tried to run north, to Cyrodiil, to home. And he had to admit that at the moment he didn’t have the courage or the confidence to find out."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_029.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel Colin curbed the impulse to pace, but although he had walked into the room of his own free will—and there was no evidence that he couldn’t leave it—he felt caged somehow. But his mind had been spinning for two days now, and the thread it turned out was beginning to look more like a garrote. The vanishment of Prince Attrebus wasn’t his first case—it was his third. The first had been simple enough; he’d planted spurious intelligence in the minister of war’s office and waited for it to come out somewhere. When one of their agents in a local Thalmor nest reported it, he easily backtracked the leak to a mid-level official who was apparently hemorrhaging information to a mistress who was—as it turned out—a Thalmor sympathizer. It was simple, clean. No arrests and no bodies. Once the leak was known, it was more useful to leave it in place. His second assignment had been to discover the whereabouts of a certain sorcerer named Laeva Cuontus. He’d found her without ever knowing why he was looking for her. He didn’t know what happened to her after he reported her location, and he didn’t want to know. When he’d been sent out with the patrol to locate Prince Attrebus, it hadn’t seemed that odd. Apparently the prince often had to be shadowed, and it didn’t require a particularly senior member of the organization to do the job of what amounted to a bit of tracking, questioning, and bribing. But now he was in the middle of something pretty bad, and a sensation between his sternum and his pelvis told him that it hadn’t been an accident that such a junior inspector had been sent to discover such nasty business. He didn’t have any proof of that, of course. Just that feeling, and the certainty that he was missing some piece of the puzzle. And now he was in a well-furnished room on the second floor of the ministry, which was apparently the office of no one. He turned as Intendant Marall entered the room, followed by two other men. One was Remar Vel, administrator of the Penitus Oculatus. The other … “Your majesty,” he blurted, taking a knee. He felt suddenly in awe, an emotion he hadn’t experience in a while. As a child he’d worshipped this man. Apparently some part of him still did. “Rise up,” the Emperor said. “Yes, highness.” The Emperor just stood there for a moment, hands clasped behind his back. “You were there,” he finally said. “Is my son dead?” Colin considered his answer for a moment. If anyone else had asked him … But this wasn’t anyone else. “Sire,” he said, “I do not believe so.” Titus Mede’s eyes widened slightly and his brow relaxed, but that was his only reaction. “And yet his body was recovered,” Administrator Vel said drily. “A body, sir,” Colin said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_029.txt", "text": "“A headless body.” “It’s said that the rebels in that area take heads,” the Emperor said. “Other heads were taken.” “I don’t believe the Natives were responsible, majesty.” “Why not? They’re vicious enough, and we have information, do we not, that they are supplied and funded by our ‘quiet enemies’?” “You mean the Thalmor, majesty.” “They are in everything, these days.” “And yet I don’t see how killing your son advances their aims.” “Who are you to say what their aims are?” Vel snapped. “You’ve only been an inspector for a month.” “Yes, sir, that’s true. But my training focus was the Thalmor.” “Which does not include—by any means—everything we know about them. Their aims are obscure.” “I respectfully disagree, sir. I may well not be privy to many details, but their goal is clear—the pacification and purification of all of Tamriel—to bring about a new Merithic era.” “We have an inkling of their long-term goals, Inspector, but their intermediate plans are less scrutable.” “Begging your pardon, sir, but not always. When they took Valenwood, that was pretty straightforward, and quite logical—they put the old Aldmeri Dominion back together, which makes perfect sense in terms of their ideology. Their harassment of refugees from the Summerset Isles and Valenwood also fits their broader pattern, as does what little we know of their activities in Elsweyr. But the murder of a prince—I’ve tried many ways of looking at that, and it doesn’t make sense.” Vel started to retort to that, but the Emperor shook his head and held up his hand. Then he spoke again to Colin. “What is your opinion? If my son is not dead, do you believe him kidnapped? And if so, by whom, and for what purpose? And why leave this trail that seems to lead to the Thalmor?” Colin took a another deep breath, and began to lie. “If we assume that much of the ‘evidence’ left for us was false,” he began, “then I might suggest it’s someone interested in drawing our attention to the Thalmor. A distraction to keep our eyes turned, perhaps even coax us into a fight.” “Leyawiin?” the Emperor muttered. “They are still restless under our rule.” “Maybe it’s not someone restless under your rule, majesty. Maybe it’s someone who would prefer someone else inherit the throne.” “My brother?” He massaged his head. “It’s not impossible. I do not like to think it.” “Sire,” Vel said, “your brother did not hatch this plot. He is more than adequately surveiled.” “He is perhaps more clever than you think,” Mede replied. “But lay that aside. If we find my son, we find our enemy. So I want him found.” He frowned and stroked his upper lip. “Captain Gulan was among the dead?” “He was,” Vel replied. “Is there any question regarding his identity?” “No, sire,” Vel said. “He was killed by arrowshot, and his head was not taken."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_029.txt", "text": "Sire, I know it isn’t easy to accept, but we must consider the possibility that the body we have is that of the prince, the inspector’s opinion notwithstanding. It is the right size and shape—” “My son had a birthmark on his right side, just where the ribs end. I have seen the corpse; that portion of it is charred while other parts are not. Like the inspector, I find that too convenient. And it does not feel like Attrebus. So—I believe him alive. Someone has him. I want him found. Inspector, is there any indication of where the attackers went?” “They broke into smaller parties and left in different directions. But I would look south for Attrebus, your highness.” “And why is that, Inspector?” “Because it is the only direction in which there were no tracks whatsoever, sire.” The Emperor grunted and nodded. “Inspector, Intendant, Administrator,” he said, addressing the three, and left. Vel waited a moment and followed him, shooting Colin an unpleasant look. “That wasn’t the brightest thing you could have done,” Marall said. “The Emperor asked my opinion,” Colin said. “Isn’t it my duty to give it?” Marall sighed. “The Emperor doesn’t care if you get assigned to sewer cases for the rest of your life—or worse, sent to spy on Nords. It’s better if these things go up the chain of command. Now, Vel appears to be less well-informed than his most junior inspector.” “I fully intended to follow that chain,” Colin said. “I came here believing Administrator Vel was going to hear my report. It isn’t my fault that the Emperor was present.” Marall nodded. “You’re right, of course. It’s just your inexperience showing. You shouldn’t have so bluntly disagreed with a superior. There are more subtle ways to go about things.” How subtle is a knife? Colin angrily thought, but then pushed that away. “I’m still learning, sir.” “If Attrebus is alive, and they find him on your counsel, you will gain the Emperor’s favor, and that will be a good thing for you. But if they do not find him, or if that body is him, then the Emperor will not think of you again. I advise you to keep as quiet as possible now, and find some way to come to Vel’s attention in a more positive way.” “In that case,” Colin said, “I wonder if I could be reassigned?” “Oh, I can guarantee that,” the intendant said. “Vel will put you under a rock. The only question is for how long.” When he emerged from the palace, night had fallen and the sky blazed down upon the Imperial City. He was tired, but he wanted a walk and a pint. He needed to think. He was missing something. He had an idea what it might be, and that went well with the stroll and the ale."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_029.txt", "text": "In Anvil, where he was born, darkness brought quiet to the city; people went home or to the pubs and taverns, but the streets were pretty empty. Not so here, at least not in the Market District, which was his destination. The streets were crowded with trinket vendors and soothsayers, self-styled prophets of any daedra or Divine imaginable. Women, mostly comely ones, stood outside of alehouses, flirting to attract business, and there were others of both genders and all races flirting to sell somewhat different wares. Beggars choked the edges of walkways, and little stalls were turning out the enticing smell of roasted oysters, fried cheese, bread, skewered meats, and burnt sugarcane. People wandered in crowds, as if afraid the city would swallow them up if they found themselves alone for long. The Crown’s Hammer was off the main thoroughfare, around a corner and almost hidden in an alley. It was a half-timbered building, very old. He pushed his way in the front door. The barkeep was a withered old fellow who favored Colin with a nod. “You’re having?” he asked as he cleaned a mug with a rag that looked slightly dirtier than the container it was wiping out. “Ale,” Colin said. The man nodded, held the glass under the tap of a wooden keg and filled it with a rich, dark red liquid. Colin paid for the drink and then found a table in a corner. He took a seat where he could see the door, and sipped at the ale. It was strong, sweet, and had just a taste of juniper, a Colovian Highland style now popular throughout western Cyrodiil, but hard to find here in the East. The place was nearly empty when he came in, but it was starting to fill up now, because the patrol and the soldiers were changing shifts. The Hammer catered to Colovians, and Colovians in this part of the world were mostly military. So he wasn’t surprised when Nial Sextius walked in, noticed him, and grinned. “Colin, lad,” he said. “It’s been an age.” “It’s good to see you, Nial,” he replied. “I was hoping you would be in tonight. Have a seat—let me buy you a drink.” “Well, fine, if I can have the next round.” When they were both looking over foam, Nial cracked his knuckles and settled his elbows on the table. He was a big man, thick in every dimension, with a ruddy, wind-worn complexion that made him look older, although he and Colin were of an age. “Where’ve you been?” he asked. “It’s almost two years. I thought you’d left town.” “No, just very busy,” Colin said. Nial wagged a finger at him. “Come to think of it, you were a little thin on why you’re all the way over here last time we talked. Distracted me with that story about my sister.” “Yah,” Colin said, taking a drink. “I—ah, work in the palace.” Nial’s eyes widened. “And don’t I, too?” he asked."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_029.txt", "text": "“So why haven’t I seen trace of you?” “I’m in a different part of the palace, I guess. In the tower.” “Doing what? Making ladies’ dresses?” “Studying,” he said. “In school, as it were.” “In school? But that—” He stopped, rolled his eyes and took a drink. Then he lowered his voice. “Ah, Colin, you’re one of them—you’re a specter, aren’t you?” “I serve the Empire, same as you,” Colin said. “Not the same as me,” Nial disagreed. “Col, why?” “They offered me a way up, Nial. A way so my mam doesn’t have to work herself to death. I’m sorry if that doesn’t make sense to you.” “Now, don’t get your back up, scruff,” Nial said. “I’m just surprised, is all. I don’t fancy most of your fellows, but I’ll make an exception for you.” “I don’t fancy some of my fellows,” Colin said. “But I don’t fancy being judged either. If the Emperor didn’t think we mattered, we wouldn’t exist.” “Fine, like I said,” Nial said. His voice dropped even lower. “So, see here,” he said. “Maybe you’d know, then. Is all this true about Prince Attrebus?” “I don’t know what you’ve heard.” “Heard he finally got himself—and all of his guard—murdered.” “It looks like that,” Colin said. “Did you know any of them?” “Yeah, a few. I thought about applying a few years back, but I didn’t think I could handle it, you know?” “The danger, you mean?” Nial grunted out a laugh. “That’s funny,” he said. “What do you mean?” “You mean you’re a specter, and you don’t know about the prince?” “Not my field of expertise,” Colin said. “Well, he was just for show, you know. Only he didn’t know it.” Colin nodded. That fit with the picture forming in his head. So why hadn’t he been briefed about that before being sent to fetch the prince back? “Well, he walked into a bit of danger this time,” Colin said. “Yeah.” “I wonder how? I mean, he must have been watched, if what you say is true.” Nial thumped his glass on the table. “You’re prying me, aren’t you? In specting.” Colin sighed. “It’s this, Nial,” he said. “I’m new to all of this. I think there’s something strange going on, and I’m not sure who to trust. Except you. I believe I can trust you.” Nial stared at him for several long moments, then took his mug back up. “What, then?” “The Emperor asked about a man named Gulan, specifically. He wanted to know if his body was found.” “Was it?” “Yeah.” Nial nodded. “Gulan was Attrebus’s right hand. He kept him out of trouble. Whenever the prince would try and go be a hero in the wrong place, Gulan would bring it to the attention of the Emperor, and something would happen to stop it.” “Well, he didn’t this time, it seems. He didn’t report directly to the Emperor, did he?” “No, he’d go through the prime minister’s office.” Colin nodded."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_029.txt", "text": "Now he was sure about what he was missing. “Thanks, Nial,” he said. “You look tired, boy,” Nial said. “Are you all right?” “I’m fine. I have some trouble sleeping, that’s all.” “You used to sleep so sound thunder wouldn’t wake you,” Nial said. “Things change,” Colin said. He studied the table for a moment, before looking back up at his friend. “Look, try to forget we had this conversation. Don’t ask any questions, just leave it be.” “I might be able to help,” Nial said. “You’ve helped me more than enough. Now, come on. Let’s talk about something else.” “Yeah, like what?” “Like what a slut your sister is, for instance.” “If it weren’t true, I’d thwack you for that. Maybe I should thwack you anyway. Let’s have another round while I think it over.” “That’s good for me,” Colin replied. He finished the ale and watched Nial walk off to fetch two more. There wasn’t anything else to do tonight, and it felt good to talk to a friend. It had been a long time since he’d done that. And it might well be the last."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_031.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel Qijne glared down at the trays and the food they contained. “Explain,” she snapped. “Start with the fish.” “Annaïg calls it ‘catfish,’” Slyr said. “The taskers bring us quite a lot of them.” “I’m aware of that,” Qijne said. “We’ve burned hundreds for the Oroy mansion workers. What I want to know is, why are you sending a complete fish to Lord Ghol? It’s far too coarse for his palate.” Why question us? Annaïg wondered. Except for that first time, we’ve done nothing but succeed. Can’t you just trust us? She could not, of course, say that out loud. “That’s true, Chef,” she said instead. “He will be surprised by it, I believe.” “Not pleasantly, I should imagine by looking at it.” “Ah, yes, but when he touches or breathes on it, it will deliquesce. That will release a series of odors viandic; the fish will liquefy and mingle with the void and fire salts there around the fish, which will then release their essences. That will lead nicely into the second course, here, a cold broth of tadpole bones garnished with live frog eggs. Finally, the white froth of Terriswort will cause his palate to vividly recall each aroma and taste—but in reverse order.” “Another of your metagastrologics?” “Yes, Chef.” “These are tricks, stunts,” Qijne complained. “You hazard boring him.” “I think he will be pleased,” Slyr said. “But if you have any suggestions, I would be most happy to hear them, Chef.” Qijne narrowed her eyes, clearly trying to decide if she should feel insulted. Annaïg had to stop herself from holding her breath. The moment passed, ending when Qijne simply walked off. “That’s it, then,” Slyr said. “Let’s send it up.” The news from above was good that evening. She and Slyr hadn’t been back to the little room with its view of the night sky in days, but that night they celebrated there again. Slyr brought baubles as well as food this time—little coils of glass that glowed like small suns. And after Slyr was asleep, Annaïg felt her amulet wake. “Thank Dibella,” she murmured. She lifted a coil, rose and tiptoed out of the room into the cellar, and only then did she open the locket. And there was Prince Attrebus, looking back at her. The light seemed to be firelight, for shadows flickered about him, but his face was bruised and battered. His eyes were full of concern, but now his features relaxed in relief. “There you are,” he said. “I was worried about you.” “And I about you, your highness. It’s been days. I’ve tried to contact you—” He nodded. “I’ve been unable to respond,” he said. “I …” He trailed off. He seemed different—not the assertive, confident man she remembered from their earlier conversation. “I understand, Prince Attrebus,” she said. “You’re a busy man.” He nodded. “I want you to know,” he said, “that I am coming, as I promised."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_031.txt", "text": "But it may be that …” Again he didn’t finish. He seemed very vulnerable. But then something seemed to strengthen him and his tone became firmer, more familiar. “Have you discovered anything new?” “Yes. I’ve found a place where I can see the sky—a way in and out. And I’m trying to re-create the tonic that Glim and I used to reach this place.” “That’s good,” he said. “Perhaps I can find something like that on my way there. We should pass through Rimmen in a few days, and then Leyawiin.” That sounded a little odd, as if he didn’t have his mages with him, but maybe he preferred to handle certain things himself. “I’ve always wanted to see Rimmen,” she told him. “They say the Akaviri built a magnificent shrine there, the Tonenaka. They say it houses ten thousand statues. And the canals are said to be amazing.” “Well, I’ve never been there either,” Attrebus said. “But I’ll tell you about it next time we speak.” “That would be wonderful, Prince.” “I shan’t be dawdling there, though,” he went on. “Time is of the essence. But I’m sure I’ll see something worth mentioning.” He paused. “I find titles cumbersome in conversation. I would prefer you did not use them.” “What should I call you, your highness?” “Attrebus will do, or ‘Treb.’ It will save time when we talk.” “I’ll try,” she said. “It seems strange to be so familiar with you.” “Try it, for my sake.” There was that troubled look again. “Are you—well, Attrebus? Is something wrong?” “There have been some setbacks here,” he said. “I won’t bore you with the details.” “It wouldn’t be boring,” she said. “Well, then I’d rather not talk about it,” he modified. She realized then that his eyes were glistening a bit. “I must go now,” he said. “Keep yourself safe, above all. Will you do that?” “I will,” she said. He nodded, and then his image vanished behind Coo’s door. She stood there for a moment, a bit breathless, then snuck back into the shaft-room. Slyr didn’t look as if she had stirred. Annaïg sat with her back against the wall. Something was wrong with the prince. That didn’t bode well, did it? But at the moment there wasn’t much she could do but continue to stay alive, try to get in touch with Glim, rediscover the secret of flying … Actually, that was quite a lot, wasn’t it? Her hands were full. So she needed her rest. No use to worry about things that were, at the moment, beyond her. But she hoped Attrebus—he’d asked her to call him Attrebus!—she hoped he was all right. Attrebus closed the little door on the bird. This was the first time he’d seen her face; her green eyes and generous, sensual lips, a nose that some might consider a bit large, but belonged perfectly on her face. Hair like dark twists of black silk. The face of the woman he’d failed."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_031.txt", "text": "“Well, she, at least, is alive,” he told Sul, who sat on the other side of the small fire they’d built. “So I gather,” Sul said. “Interesting, that bird. The dwemer used to make similar toys, before the world swallowed them up. Do you know where it’s from?” “She said it came from her mother, and I gather her mother was middling nobility from Highrock.” “Well, things move around,” Sul grunted. “Let me see it.” “See here—” Attrebus began, but the look in the Dunmer’s eyes stopped him. He stood and extended Coo. Sul took her, examined her a bit. The little door wouldn’t unclasp for him. “Smart,” Sul said. “Only opens for who it was sent to.” “I believe so,” Attrebus replied. “Radhasa couldn’t make it work.” “Why didn’t you tell her?” Sul asked, prodding the fire, snapping a swarm of sparks toward the sky. “This Annaïg. Why didn’t you tell her you’ve lost all of your guard?” “I don’t want to discourage her.” “You’d rather give her false hope?” “I don’t intend to give up.” “That’s good,” Sul said. “It’s better that way.” “As opposed to what?” Sul didn’t answer right away, but instead drew his sword and examined the edge a bit before resheathing it. Finally he looked up at Attrebus. “Here’s my worry,” Sul said. “I’ll make it plain right away, so it’s not between us from here on out. Let’s start with this: I’m going to find Umbriel. When I do, there’s going to be slaughter, pure and simple. I’m going to bring it down. It’s been suggested to me that you can help me, and that’s why I followed you, that’s why I killed your captors. But I saw your fight with the Redguard—I was waiting to be sure of where the others were before I made my move, and it was clear she had no intention of killing you. I heard the conversation.” “She was lying,” Attrebus said. “She wasn’t,” Sul replied. “You’re telling yourself that now because you’re too weak to face it. But like she said, you’re not fundamentally stupid. The branch already has too much weight on it—it’s starting to creak. You barely managed to get through your talk with the Breton girl without getting weepy—” “My friends have just been killed!” Attrebus heard himself shout. “Friends, lovers, companions, all dead. Of course I’m not myself!” Sul waited for him to finish, then started again. “In days or weeks that branch will crack, and down you’ll come. You’ll realize how right she was, and the world will turn over, and my worry is, will you be any use to me then? Will any of these principles you think you adhere to—honor, courage, honesty—survive it? Or are you just a child, playing at these things, as you played at being a warrior and commander?” “You’re wrong about this,” Attrebus snapped. “Based on one conversation you overheard, you conclude she was right?"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_031.txt", "text": "Granted, she could outfight me—” “A child with palsy could outfight you.” “I’d been wounded, tied to a horse for days—” “This isn’t an argument, Prince Attrebus.” “Look, I’ll swear it even now. I will stop Umbriel, or I will die trying.” “You’re not listening to me,” Sul said. “I’m trying to help you.” “By telling me that everything I believe about myself is a lie?” Sul’s eyes were fragments of the fire, lifting up to burn him. And yet when he spoke, it wasn’t to Attrebus, and it wasn’t in Tamrielic. The only part of it the prince caught was the name “Azura”—one of the daedric princes. Then the Dunmer sighed harshly. “Everyone faces that, you spoiled child. Most simply turn away and continue with their delusions—only a few are forced to accept the truth.” “Not everyone, not like this,” Attrebus said. “I’m a prince—I’m supposed to be Emperor one day. If what Radhasa says is true, I’ve been mocked my whole life without ever knowing it.” “Your ‘whole life’ is a heartbeat,” Sul said. “Maybe to you. But if people have been laughing at me—” “Enough,” Sul snarled. “Enough. I’ve done far more for you than I should. I’ve tried to warn you, but instead I’m just going to have to wait and see what the baby does. How’s this, then? With or without you, I’ll do what I’ve set out to do. If it comes to it, I’ll cut off your head and revive it now and then to talk to the bird. Would that be a fair price for you breaking that vow you pledged so earnestly just now?” Attrebus couldn’t meet those eyes anymore, and turned instead to the living heart of the fire, which was certainly cooler. “Yes,” he mumbled. But now he was afraid. What did this man really want? What did Sul really need from him? Was it even true they had the same goal? But then he suddenly understood that didn’t matter. Every single thing Sul had told him could be true, but that still wouldn’t put Sul on the right side of things. Maybe he was planning something even worse than whatever the master of Umbriel was up to. In the end, they might be enemies—that would certainly explain this attempt to undermine him even more than Radhasa had. Maybe he and Radhasa had been working together and then had a falling-out. Maybe Sul was the man she had been planning to sell him to, and this was all part of some elaborate game of his, breaking the will of a prince, reducing him to believing he was nothing … He felt like screaming. He wanted to be alone, to think, to be free of fear long enough to sort through the confusion. He had a horse now … But then again, running might be exactly what Sul wanted."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_031.txt", "text": "Sure, he could keep his vow and go after Annaïg and Umbriel himself, but Sul would be at his back the whole time. Hadn’t his father always said it was better to have your enemies where you could see them? For now, that was probably his only choice. He had to keep his wits about him, think for himself, and not let Sul toy with him. He would work with the Dunmer as long as their goals appeared to be the same, and be ready the moment they weren’t. He was a Mede, after all. A Mede. Annaïg thought that the first explosion was a vat shattering; it had happened before, especially at the Oroy station. But the second was much louder, while sounding somehow farther away. And then the screaming began. Some of it sounded like warlike howls, some like shrieks of terror and pain, but everything in Umbriel was still frightfully strange, and none of it gave her any purchase on what was happening. Luc hopped down from the shelves and crouched behind her. For her part, Annaïg climbed up onto the table to get a better view, but the wavering air above the fire pits obscured the far end of the kitchens. Still, the scamps were all swarming in that direction, leaping through the wires, grills, and racks above the pits. Beyond, a black curtain of flame and smoke occluded what the shimmering air did not. Only in the central aisle could she see anyone, and there the cooks and their helpers were black silhouettes, crowded shoulder-to-shoulder. “You,” Qijne snapped, from off to her left. “What are you standing about for?” “What’s happening?” Slyr was with her, and the rest of the staff from Ghol’s station, along with a motley collection of the largest and most dangerous-looking cooks in the kitchen, including Dest, a hulking ogrelike fellow with black and yellow fur. They were all armed to the teeth with butchering knives and cleavers. “Don’t ask stupid questions,” Qijne snapped. “Come, now.” The closed around her, moving at a trot, through the huge boilers, parsers, and stills, the pulsing soul-cable, and into territory Annaïg had never seen—high-chambered rooms filled with long, watery trenches in which she caught glimpses of serpentine movement. As they went along, chefs darted out and made adjustments to the equipment, until at last they came to a stair leading up. “All of it, now,” Qijne said. “But they’re coming,” Slyr protested. “Look, you can see them.” She pointed back the way they had come, and Annaïg made out, darting in and amidst the strange machinery, a handful of chefs, cooks, and tenders. “They let them live, in hopes we would delay,” Qijne said. “We won’t. Do it. Send your hob.” “Yes, Chef.” They continued up the stairs, but a moment later a vast rumble began. Annaïg found herself pushed up against Slyr. “What’s happening?” she asked. “Qijne’s purging the kitchens,” she said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_031.txt", "text": "“Purging them?” “We’re invaded, Annaïg.” “Invaded?” She had a surge of sudden wild hope. “By another kitchen. It hasn’t happened in years.” They had reached the top of the stairs now, and emerged through a massive iron valve into a cavernous room. Dest closed and sealed it. Then the chefs began laying various odd-looking packages about in front of it. Slyr was still hustling her back, toward the far end of the cavern. “What now?” Annaïg asked. “We wait. The kitchens are full of fire and thirty kinds of toxins. If anyone survives that, we’ll fight them here.” “I don’t understand. Why would another kitchen invade?” Slyr blinked and looked at her as if she were stupid. “To get you,” she said. “How—How do you know that?” “From what I saw, it has to be one of the upper kitchens, the ones that serve the greater lords. They could have attacked as we defended, with venomous gases. Instead they sent cooks. That tells me they want someone alive, and that must be you.” “So everyone we left down there—” “Not just dead, dissolved,” Slyr replied. “Then—” But a hollow boom filled the chamber, and another. Then a silence settled. “Be ready,” Qijne said. “They were prepared.” “Ah, sumpslurry,” Slyr moaned. “How could anything survive all that?” “That’s a rhetorical question, I take it,” Annaïg said, trying hard not to shake. The door glowed white-hot for an instant, then turned into a drifting vapor. “Ready!” Qijne repeated. For a few heartbeats nothing happened. Then a monster leapt through the door. Annaïg’s first impression was of a bull-sized lion with a thousand eyes set on squirming stalks. She had no second impression, for the packages Qijne’s people had scattered in front of the door suddenly revealed their natures and became variously fire, force, cold, and vitriol. The monster, whatever it was, was disintegrated. But behind it, through the newly formed fog, poured hordes of cooks. In appearance they were the same mixture of physical types that Annaïg was becoming used to in the kitchens. They wore gold and black. Qijne screamed like some sort of bird of prey and ran at the attackers, her staff behind her. In only seconds they were enveloped, and although Slyr kept trying to push Annaïg back, after a moment the fighting was all around her. Blood spurted up her chest and face as a cleaver chopped someone’s arm off; she slipped and fell, blinded by the blood in her eyes. When she managed to wipe it out, she saw Minn staggering by, clutching her bleeding gut, her face dissolving into yellow worms. She tried to scream, and might have, but if so, her voice was lost in the din. All of a sudden Qijne was there, pulling her up from another fall. One of her ears was missing and much of her left arm had turned a strange gray color. Qijne pulled her close. “He won’t have you,” she shouted in Annaïg’s ear."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_031.txt", "text": "Then she pulled back, and Annaïg saw her arm come up, and as blood sprayed from nearby, she saw it outline a long, wickedly curved nothing protruding from the chef’s finger. She stared at it, unable to move, knowing what came next. But then Slyr buried her cleaver in Qijne’s neck, and the chef’s eyes fluttered. Annaïg felt something tug at her neck and thought her throat had been cut before realizing the invisible blade had sliced through her locket chain. Slyr hacked again, and then Qijne staggered back, swiping her hand at Slyr, but the slate-skinned woman, trying to step back, slipped over a body. Then Qijne toppled, knocking Annaïg over yet once again. They landed face-to-face. Qijne still wasn’t dead. She was trying to get her hand back up. Annaïg grabbed her wrist. The blade was invisible again, but Annaïg felt something at her forehead, and a lock of hair fell past her nose. She shrieked and pushed the hand back. For a long moment Qijne resisted, but then the spurting from her neck slowed to a trickle and her eyes went dull. Annaïg lay there, panting, oblivious to the chaos still reigning around her. She kept hold of the hand and saw—inside the sleeve—a sort of tightness on Qijne’s arm, as if it were constricted by an unseen band. She tugged at it, but couldn’t find any sort of catch, buckle, or tie. She was just in the process of carefully laying the arm aside when something brushed her wrist and then, to her horror, cinched around it. Reflexively she grabbed at it with her other hand, but all she could feel was a sort of gummy torus, encircling her wrist. There was no blade. She realized that it was almost silent now. She began to turn, but someone grabbed her up by the back of her jacket, and a moment later she was standing unsteadily on her feet again. Corpses were sprawled all around her. Slyr was a few feet away, held by two unfamiliar men. Everyone else she knew from the kitchen was dead. From the press of black and gold before her, a man emerged. He might have been a Breton, with his high, delicate cheekbones and sensuous lips. He put a finger to his chin, and she saw it was long, slim, manicured. He wore the clothing of a chef, but it was as black as his hair. He turned sky blue eyes first on Slyr, then on Annaïg. “So,” he murmured in a silky voice. “You two are responsible for Lord Ghol’s last several meals?” Slyr lifted her chin. “We are,” she said. “Very well, then. You have nothing to fear. I am Chef Toel. You belong to me now.” He touched his finger to her lips, and everything faded to black."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_032.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel “Something’s moving up there,” Attrebus said. Sul nodded. “I know,” he replied. Of course you do, Attrebus thought sullenly. Earlier that day the short-grass prairie had abruptly dropped off into one of the strangest landscapes Attrebus had ever seen. It looked as if a massive flood had stripped everything away but the dirt, and then cut that up into a labyrinth of arroyos and gullies. It was beautiful, in a way, because the vibrant rust, umber, olive, and yellow strata of the soil were exposed, like one of those thirty-layer cakes that Cheydinhal was famous for. From above, it was fine to look on. But once in the maze, Attrebus felt mostly claustrophobic. And now someone or something was stalking them, up on those crumbly ridges. “What if they attack us?” “If they wanted to do that, we’d already have arrows in us,” Sul grated. “They’ll let us know what they want soon enough.” That didn’t make Attrebus feel any more comfortable. Not that he’d been at ease before—not just because of the terrain, but because he found himself obsessively combing back through the events of his life. It wasn’t that he fully believed Radhasa and Sul—but he conceded that there might be some element of truth to their rantings, an element they were exaggerating. Sul, annoyingly enough, proved correct about those spying on them. The trail they were following bottled tighter, until it was only a few yards wide, and as they turned a corner, they found themselves facing four Khajiit. Attrebus had known many Khajiit, of course. Some of his guard had been of the cat-people, and they were common enough in the Empire. But he had never seen any quite like this. What struck his eye first were their mounts—monstrous cats that stood as high as a large horse at the shoulder. Their forelimbs were as thick as columns and half again as long as their rears, giving them an apelike appearance. Their coats were tawny, ribboned with stripes the color of dried blood, and their feral yellow eyes seemed to promise evisceration—and that was only to start with. Two of the riders seemed hardly less bestial, although they wore shirts that covered their torsos, and cravats around their necks. Where their fur was visible, it was pale yellowish-green spotted with black. Their faces were altogether more catlike than any Khajiit he’d ever met, and they slouched forward on their mounts. The third rider was more like what Attrebus was used to, with features that were more manlike, although still unmistakably feline. And the final rider had such fine, delicate features, she might easily have been of merish blood, had her face not been splotched with irregular black rings. “Well, there,” the woman said in a beautiful, lilting voice. “Who do we have here traveling on our road?” Attrebus cleared his throat, but Sul spoke more quickly. “No one of consequence,” he said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_032.txt", "text": "“Just two wayfarers going east.” Attrebus realized that—out of sheer habit—he’d been about to tell them exactly who he was. Sul had known that, too, hadn’t he? “East, you say?” the woman said. “East is good. The moons come from there. We’re in favor of east. We’re going there. But east for you—not so good, I think. East is not so friendly to men and mer, except, you know, in Rimmen. But how could you get there? And on our road?” Attrebus heard a shuffle behind him, and a glance showed him what he should have known—there were two more riders behind him. “We’ve no need to go to Rimmen,” Sul replied. “Rude,” the woman said. “Where are my manners? Would you ride with us? Accept our protection?” “We would be honored,” Sul replied. “Now wait a moment—” Attrebus began. “The whelp is speaking out of turn,” Sul cut in. “We would be honored. I had no idea the East was so fretful. And of course, we offer Je’m’ath in return for your kindness.” “Ah,” the woman said. “You also have manners, outlander. Very well. Travel with my brothers and cousins and me. We are happy to share what we have.” And with that, they turned their mounts and rode east. The trail soon debouched into a broad wash, a stream only inches deep but several yards across. Olive, tamarisk, and palm traced its outline, and beyond it three large tents had been pitched. The air buzzed with metallic-looking dragonflies. They’ve been waiting here, Attrebus thought. For us, or someone like us. To him, that didn’t bode well, but Sul seemed pretty relaxed about the whole situation. Did he imagine he could kill all of the Khajiit, if it came down to it? It seemed possible. He remembered Sul’s philosophy about fighting. Maybe he was just biding his time. “Come,” the woman said. “Let’s have cake.” The tents were set up facing a small circle of stones within which ashes faintly smoked. They were ushered to sit, and when they complied, all of the Khajiit that accompanied them joined them. Even the tigerlike mounts folded themselves down next to their riders. From the tents, Attrebus heard excited mewing and talking, and several very small kittenish faces poked out of one of the flaps and were just as quickly drawn back in. After a moment what seemed to Attrebus to be a very old female came out, bearing a tray of small, round cakes, a bowl, and a narrow-necked bottle of rose-colored glass. She knelt in front of Sul, placed a small cloth on the ground, then a cake on the cloth. With a precise movement of her hand, she pinched some sort of powder from a small bowl in the tray and sprinkled it on the cake. Then she took the bottle and let exactly four drops of golden liquid drip on it."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_032.txt", "text": "She moved to him, and then each of the Khajiit in turn, repeating the ritual gesture for gesture. “Now we’ll tell our names,” the merish-looking woman said. This near, she seemed even more beautiful and exotic than she had at a distance, and he noticed with a bit of surprise that the marks on her face were tattoos, rather than natural. Maybe she wasn’t a cat after all. “I am Lesspa,” she said. “Our clan is F’aashe.” She motioned with her knuckles toward the Khajiit to her left. “She is M’kai, my sister. There is Taaj, my maternal cousin. There is Sha’jal, my brother …” Attrebus blinked. She seemed to be indicating one of the mounts. He remembered something now, from his lessons as a boy—or was it the story his nurse had told him, about the four Khajiit and the riding kite? He didn’t know anything about these people at all, did he? She finished naming everyone. Then he and Sul gave their names—he called himself simply “Treb”—and they all lifted the cakes. “Touch it to your mouth, but do not eat,” Sul said as Attrebus opened his mouth. “That will satisfy the spirit of the ceremony. Khajiit food can be dangerous for us.” Lesspa nodded knowingly, but did not add anything. So Attrebus watched the Khajiit first lick and then devour the sweets, while his belly growled. After that, the rest of the camp turned out—another eight adults and about twelve children of various ages. They quickened the fire and set about making a stew of some sort. “Can I eat that?” he asked Sul. “If you want. I’m pretty sure it’s honey and date soup. The cakes had moon-sugar in them. It’s a drug, the same stuff they make skooma out of.” “They don’t seem to be feeling any ill effects,” Attrebus said. “Because they’re Khajiit—they eat the stuff every day, in one form or the other—and they’re more naturally tolerant of it. Built different from you. Doesn’t help them with skooma, though—there are plenty of Khajiit addicts.” “Lesspa doesn’t look like she’s all that different from us.” Sul snorted. “Some used to think that the Khajiit were another variety of mer. But it’s the moons—the phases they’re in when the kits are born determines how they turn out.” “So the mount—that really is her brother? They had the same parents?” “Yes. But I’d stay away from that subject, if I were you. It’s too easy to say the wrong thing.” Attrebus nodded, feeling stupid. Sul seemed to know everything, and he was starting to feel as if he knew very little. Whenever he went someplace he hadn’t been, he always received a briefing about it. That had always been enough—it hadn’t occurred to him to learn much about any place he had no business with. It made him wonder what important things he didn’t know about Black Marsh. But what really nagged him was that he had known Khajiit, been practically brothers with them."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_032.txt", "text": "And yet he hadn’t been aware of the most fundamental facts of their existence. He tried to remember conversations he might have had with the cats in his guard, and realized he couldn’t remember any that went on for more than a few sentences. So maybe they hadn’t been his friends. Maybe he really hadn’t known most of his guard that well. Which led him back to the festering question: Was Sul right about everything? This depressing train of thought was interrupted by Lesspa returning her attention to them. She folded lithely down into a squat that looked as if it ought to hurt but clearly didn’t. “Now,” she said, “we discuss Je’m’ath.” “Very well,” Sul replied. “How can we help you?” “Moon-sugar is scarce here, but plentiful in Rimmen. But the new potentate there forbids our clans inside the walls, and will not sell us sugar. You’re not Khajiit. You go into Rimmen, get the sugar.” “Why won’t he sell you sugar?” “Doesn’t like the free clans. He’s outlawed us on our own land. Khajiit that work in the walls have all they want, but we won’t live like that, yes? We won’t.” “That sounds reasonable,” Sul said. “But our path takes us beyond Rimmen, to the border.” “Ours turns back from here.” Sul nodded thoughtfully. “Very well.” “Wait a minute,” Attrebus said. “No,” Sul said. “You don’t understand this.” “I’m starting to. You promise not to kill us if we help you get moon-sugar?” “We protect you,” Lesspa said. “Yes, you protect us from you.” “You meet us first,” Lesspa said. “That’s good for you. There is no order in the North. Bandits, killers, prey even on weak Khajiit, and your kind is very unpopular on these plains. Miles to Rimmen. Many more to the border. We help you survive, you help us.” “What if we say no? You’ll kill us?” “No. We ate cake with you. Maybe kill you next time, but not now. Still, you’ll die soon enough without us.” Attrebus looked at Sul. “Is she right?” “Probably. The last time I was here, this was all still in the Empire and pacified. Things have changed.” “Pacified,” Lesspa said. “Yes. Not now. All is wild. The mane was assassinated, you know? There is war in the South. Here, just chaos and potentate.” “Look,” Attrebus said, trying to force a little gravity into his voice. “What Sul and I are doing is very important. Something very, very bad is happening in Black Marsh, something that could destroy us all. You should be proud to help us. There would be much honor in that.” “We will help you. And you will give us Je’m’ath. Then you will go find this bad thing, and we will go west.” “Agreed,” Sul snapped before Attrebus could say anything else. Annaïg didn’t reply that night, but he didn’t let it concern him. Likely she was just asleep or busy."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_032.txt", "text": "He went to sleep still sour over the bargain Sul had made and annoyed that Lesspa naturally assumed the Dunmer was the leader. The next day he had to grudgingly admit things might have worked out for the best. Twice before noon they met other bands of Khajiit who plainly wanted to kill Sul and him. The first bunch offered to buy them, and the second actually had to be backed down by a show of force. They left the badlands and entered a ragged steppe of thorn-scrub. It lifted and rolled in long undulations. Two days on that and finally, over a distant hill they could see a golden gleam. “Rimmen,” Lesspa said. “We dare go no nearer.” “That’s still a long way,” Sul said. “What’s between here and there?” “Rimmen’s patrols. Traders. Not so dangerous for you in there, but dangerous for us.” She handed him a plain leather bag. “Get a good deal.” And so they left Lesspa and her clan and continued on toward Rimmen. “This is a waste of time,” Attrebus complained. “We’re going to lose a day.” “No we aren’t,” Sul said. “We’re just going to ride on to the border. We’ve no business in Rimmen.” At first Attrebus wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “But you took their oath,” he protested when it sank in. “Bound us to do it. We have their money!” “Which I’m sure will be of use to us.” “But they kept their end of the bargain,” Attrebus said. “We can’t—” “We can,” Sul replied. “I’ve broken much deeper oaths than this. I survived it. This is not only a waste of time, it’s dangerous. We’ll be breaking the law, supplying them with contraband.” “The law doesn’t sound fair,” Attrebus said. “Fair? What do you even mean by that? No law is fair to everyone. A law against stealing is unfair to thieves. The thing to think about is whether you’ll be able to save your precious Annaïg if you’re clapped in a dungeon or beheaded.” And something burst in Attrebus. “What can I do anyway?” he shouted. “You say I’m not a tenth the man I think I am, right? So what are we going to do, the two of us, against this thing? With me being so useless and all?” To his horror, he heard his voice crack and realized he was starting to cry. “Here we go,” Sul said. “What do you care anyway? I can’t imagine you care if Umbriel kills everyone.” “That’s right, I don’t,” Sul admitted. “But—then why? Why are you bothering, if you don’t care?” Sul glared at him, and Attrebus suddenly saw something in those terrible eyes he hadn’t seen before: pain. “I loved someone,” Sul snarled. “She was murdered. My homeland was destroyed, my people decimated and scattered to the winds. I lost everything. Those responsible for that must pay, and one of them is on Umbriel. Is that simple enough for you?” His speech struck Attrebus dumb for a moment."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_032.txt", "text": "Not so much the words as the tone, the sheer tortured flatness of Sul’s voice. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “Just ride,” Sul snapped. But he couldn’t let it go. “You mean to say that you were there when the Red Mountain exploded? You know what happened?” Sul didn’t answer. “It must be terrible. I can’t imagine—” “Please, for the favor of Mephala don’t tell me what you can and can’t imagine. Just do what I say.” His tone was still odd, and Attrebus still didn’t exactly trust the man. But he was starting to believe him, at least as far as Umbriel was concerned. And in other things. He took a deep breath. “It’s true, isn’t it? What Radhasa said about me?” “Oh, thank the gods,” Sul intoned, “we’re back to you again. Are you still worried about the shame? About everyone knowing but you?” “Wouldn’t you be?” “But they don’t,” Sul said, his voice softening a bit. “Most people in the world don’t know you’re a fraud.” “My father, my mother, most of the court—they all must have been sniggering behind my back.” “So what? More people believe in you than don’t.” “They believe in a lie. You just said it.” “Then become the truth, you idiot. Become what they think you are.” Attrebus let that sink in for a moment. “You think that’s possible?” “I don’t know. But we can find out.” “You’ll help me?” “I suppose I must,” Sul sighed. “Why?” “You said it yourself—it’s just the two of us. We have to get to Morrowind, and we have to get there before Umbriel.” “Why? What’s in Morrowind? How do you know Umbriel is going there?” “It is, just trust me. And we’ll never beat it on foot or horseback. I think I might know the way, but we’ll need to make it to the Niben Valley first. And it would be helpful to have allies. The legendary Prince Attrebus ought to be able to drum up a few.” Attrebus thought that over and found that it made some sense. “Thank you,” he finally said. Sul nodded reluctantly. “But here’s the thing …” Attrebus continued. “What now?” “Prince Attrebus wouldn’t take Lesspa’s money and betray his oath. He’d get the moon-sugar and bring it back to her.” For a long moment Sul didn’t say anything, but then his shoulders seemed to relax slightly. “Right,” he said. Rimmen had elegant bones of ivory-colored stone with few towers but many domes. Soldiers—human soldiers—met them at the gate, searched them, questioned them, and eventually passed them through. For another hundred yards they snaked through the twists and turns of an entry overlooked by platforms for archers, mages, and siege weapons. That brought them to the market, a bustling, colorful plaza empty in the middle but girdled by tents and stalls and bounded by canals."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_032.txt", "text": "A broad avenue flanked by even more expansive waterways continued on to what was clearly the palace, an ancient-looking structure raised up on a high, tiered stone substructure. The tiers held some buildings, and apparently earth, because he could see trees growing there. Surmounting that was a cylindrical building with a large golden dome. Water cascaded down the sides of the palace, feeding the pool that encircled it. Attrebus wondered where all of the water came from. Off to the eastern side of the palace, he could see the odd curly-edged roof of what had to be the Akaviri temple Annaïg had mentioned. The only place he’d ever seen with similar architecture was Cloud Ruler Temple, which he had viewed from a distance when he was ten, hunting with his father’s traveling court in the mountains north of Bruma. He remembered that trip with fondness—he’d killed his first bear. Or maybe he hadn’t, now that he thought of it. It had been moving a little strangely when he saw it, hadn’t it? Had it already been wounded? Poisoned? Ensorcelled? Why would his father have done that? Why all of this? He pushed that down, trying to focus. He’d promised Annaïg a description of Rimmen. He was surprised that fewer than half of the people he saw were Khajiit, and many of those lolled about with wild or vacant eyes, skooma pipes clutched in their hands. It was a strange sight to see in an open, public square. He began to understand Lesspa and her people better. They left the plaza, crossing a canal on a footbridge and thence down a narrow street where gently chiming bells were depended between the flat roofs of the buildings and viridian moths flittered in the shadows. The addicts were even thicker here, a few watching them and holding out their hands for money; but most were shivering, lost in their visions. They arrived at their destination, a smaller square with a fortified building surrounded by guards in purple surcoats and red sashes. A sign proclaimed the place to be KINGDOM OF RIMMEN STATE STORE. Once again they were searched, questioned, and then passed into a low-ceilinged room where twenty or so people stood on line at a counter. Only one person, an Altmer, seemed to be dealing with the customers, but others worked behind him, wrapping paper packages into even larger paper packages. “This was your idea,” Sul pointed out. He handed him the bag of coins. “What do I do?” Attrebus asked. “You’ve never stood on line, have you?” “No.” “Well, embrace the experience. I’m going to sit down. When you get to the man at the counter, I’ll come back.” As bored as the man at the counter seemed from a distance, he somehow seemed even less enthusiastic when Attrebus and Sul reached him an hour later. He took the gold, looked it over, and then weighed it. “What do you want? He asked. “Moon-sugar.” “Forty pounds, then,” he said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_032.txt", "text": "“Sixty,” Attrebus challenged. He’d bargained before, for fun. “There’s no negotiation,” the mer said wearily. “Outlanders! Look, the price is fixed by the office of the potentate. Take it or leave it, I really don’t care.” “We’ll take it,” Sul said. “It is my mandatory duty to warn you that if you sell or attempt to sell moon-sugar in the Kingdom of Rimmen,” the man said, “you will be subject to a fine of triple the worth of the sugar. If you sell or attempt to sell more than two pounds, you will be subject to execution. Do you understand these terms?” “Yes,” Sul said. Attrebus just nodded, feeling his face warm. “Very well. Your name here, please.” He shoved a ledger at Attrebus. He hesitated, then signed it Uriel Tripitus. The rest was easy. They packed the stuff on their horses, rode out of Rimmen, and headed west. They reached Lesspa’s camp near sundown. She was there, along with the others, crouched around the fire. She watched them come, her expression odd but unreadable. Her mouth moved, though, as if she was trying to say something. Sul stopped. “This isn’t right,” he said. “Something isn’t right.” “Dismount!” someone shouted. “This is Captain Evernal of the Kingdom of Rimmen regulators. Remove your weapons and make your beasts available for search.” Beyond the fire, Attrebus could now make out figures, moving from cover. A lot of them."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_034.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel Mere-Glim swam through a forest of sessile crabs. Their squat, thorny bodies attached to the floor of the sump were barely noticeable, but their tiny, venomous claws were set on the ends of twenty-foot-long yellow and viridian tentacles that groped lazily after him. The quick silver blades of nickfish whipped about him, dodging among the crabs. He saw one that didn’t dodge fast enough; it struggled only an instant before the toxin killed it and it was dragged slowly downward. Glim missed Annaïg. He missed Black Marsh, and hoped desperately that something was left of it. But he liked the sump. It was strange and beautiful and mostly quiet. And since he did his jobs well—or at least they thought he did—he was mostly left alone. When he was with the other skraws, he took care not to show exactly how fast he could swim. That way—on days like this—he had a little time to explore. He moved into deeper water, searching for the opening he’d seen a few days before. So far none of the passages he’d found went anywhere interesting, but he continued to hope. This one he’d noticed because of the efflorescence of life around it, as if the water coming down was more nourishing somehow. He found it, a rather low-ceilinged passage, and began swimming up it. It wasn’t long before he emerged from the water, but as he’d hoped, the tunnel continued at a steepening angle, so he began to climb. Not much later he began to hear a peculiar sound, an inconstant musical note, a very low whistle, and as he ascended, it grew louder. He could see light before he recognized it as the wind blowing over the hole he now saw above. Excited, he quickened his pace. When he got there, he knew it had been worth the climb. He stood between forest and void. Below the ledge he stood on was a fall of a few thousand feet to the verdant green canopy and meandering black rivers of his homeland. That took his breath, but the trees nearly kept it. At his back a massive trunk as big around as a gate tower sprouted from the stone, its roots dug into the cliff over hundreds of feet like the tentacles of some huge octopus. It split into four enormous limbs, one of which passed just over his head and out, like a ceiling above him, twisting gradually left as it did so, and dropping down to eventually obscure some of the landscape below. This was the lowest limb visible; but above him they were so thick he couldn’t see the sky. He stood there for a long moment, letting language leave him, letting it all fill him as shapes, colors, smells. He had a profound feeling of familiarity and peace."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_034.txt", "text": "And sound—the musical piping of thirty kinds of strange birds, a distant voice singing in words he couldn’t make out—and the wind, soughing through the branches as Umbriel slowly rotated. And very faintly, the screams from below. In that long moment, he felt something. A sort of hum in the air, or beneath it. Or in his head. And after a moment he realized it was coming from the trees. He walked over and put his hand against the bark, and it grew louder, a sort of murmuring. The bark, the leaves … And then he understood; they resembled the Hist. They weren’t; the leaves were too oblate, the bark less fretted, the smell a bit off. But it could be a cousin to them, as red oaks and white oaks were cousins. Intrigued, he climbed up the leaning back of the tree and out onto one of the branches, following along its very gentle upward and outward slope. A troop of monkeylike creatures went by on another branch, each of them bearing a net-sack held on by a tumpline across their foreheads. The sacks were full of fruit, the kind the skraws called bloodball. A little later he saw some blood-ball himself, growing on vines that wound in and out of the branches. More curiously, as the branch got higher and he could see the sun, he found fruit and peculiar masses of grass heavy with seed growing directly out of the trunk tree itself, as if planted there. He was examining it when he heard a little gasp. He turned to find a young woman with the coloring of a Dunmer staring at him in apparent horror. She wore a broad-brimmed hat, knee-length pants, and a loose shirt. Her feet were bare. She took a step back. “I mean you no harm,” Mere-Glim said in his softest voice. “I was just exploring the tree.” “You surprised me,” the woman said. “I’ve never seen anyone who looks like you.” “I work in the sump,” he said. “Oh. That explains it. I’ve never met anyone from there.” She paused. “Do you like it, the sump?” “I do,” Glim replied. “I like the water and the things that live in it. And it’s interesting, helping people be born.” He glanced around. “But this—this is beautiful, too. You must like it here.” “It’s funny you should ask that,” she said. “Because I never thought about that until—well, until all of that appeared below us.” She gestured toward Black Marsh. “What was there before?” “Well—nothing. The elder tree-tenders say that there was a time before when there was a sky, and land beneath—some even say that long ago Umbriel didn’t fly, that it was planted like those moss-oats there. Isn’t that a funny notion? To live planted?” “It’s how I’ve always lived until lately,” Glim told her. “What do you mean?” “I’m from down there,” he said, gesturing at Black Marsh."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_034.txt", "text": "As the words left his mouth, he wished he could suck them back in. If she told anyone, word would get around that he’d been here. He hadn’t exactly been forbidden to come here, but lack of explicit permission to do something usually amounted to forbid-dance on Umbriel. “Down there?” she said. “That’s amazing. What’s it like? How did you get here?” “I flew here,” he said. “I thought everyone on Umbriel must know about that. Everyone in the kitchens seemed to.” “You were in the kitchens?” A little tremor ran through her. “Yes. Why?” “Was it horrible? I’ve heard terrible things. My friend Kalmo takes grain to five of them, and he said—” “Do you know how to reach the kitchens from here?” he interrupted. “No, but I can always ask Kalmo.” “Could you do that?” “Now? I’m not sure where he is.” “No, just ask him next time you see him. I have a friend that works there I’d like to talk to.” “But then how will I tell you?” “I’ll come back,” he said. “You can tell me when you’re usually here, and I’ll meet you.” “Okay,” she said. “But—you have to do something for me.” “What’s that?” “Orchid shrimp. We almost never get to have them—our kitchen doesn’t use them much. Please?” “I can do that,” he assured her. “And you have to tell me about down there.” “Next time,” he promised. “Right now I need to go.” “Next time, then,” she said. “You can find me here every day about this time.” “Good.” He paused uncomfortably. “And would you mind, ah, not mentioning me to anyone? I’m not sure I’m supposed to be up here.” “Who would I mention? You haven’t told me your name.” “Mere-Glim.” “That’s a strange name. But then it would be, wouldn’t it? My name is Fhena.” Glim nodded, not knowing what else to say, so he turned and reluctantly retraced his steps back down the tree, through the tunnel, and into the sump again. But now he had a way out. If he could find Annaïg, if she had reproduced her flying potion. There were still many ifs. He went back down the Drop, but none of the sacs had changed color in the few hours he’d been gone, so he went quickly back to the shallows, because Wert had asked him to collect a few singe anemones—Wert was really supposed to do it, but the stingers couldn’t get through Glim’s scales, so the skraw had asked him to do it. He went to the place in the shallows where they grew thickest, and found that area particularly messy with bodies. He tried to ignore them, as he usually did, but a familiar face caught his eye. It was the woman from the kitchen, the one who had Annaïg. Qijne. Even in death her gaze was terrifying. Suddenly frantic, he began searching through the corpses. They all wore the tattered remnants of the same uniform."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_034.txt", "text": "What happened to kill them all? Some sort of accident? A mass execution? He continued, each time fearing the next lifeless face would be Annaïg’s, but even after he went over them twice, she wasn’t there. But that didn’t mean anything. A carrion scorp or any of several large bottom feeders could have dragged her off. He was about to begin a third search when a gleam caught his eyes, something in the sand. He reached down and pulled it up—Annaïg’s magic locket. He felt like something hot was vibrating in him when he got back to the skraw warrens. When he took Wert the anemones, he found him with Eryob, their overseer. “You’re late,” Eryob said. His gaze moved to the anemones. Then to Wert. “Did you send him to do your work?” “Wert does his job, and more,” Mere-Glim bristled. “I was just helping him out. Everything got done.” Eryob’s bushy red eyebrows sank so low they nearly covered his eyes. “That’s not the point, skraw.” “Well, enlighten me,” Glim snapped. “What is the point? And who are you to make it? You don’t inhale the vapors. You don’t pick around corpses or bring anyone up to be born. What does the sump need with you? Just leave us alone and everything will get done. In fact—” He didn’t get to finish. Eryob lifted his fist and uncurled it, and black pain exploded in Glim’s head. His limbs spasmed and he toppled to the floor. It went on for a long time."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_035.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel Heat woke her, suffocating heat wrapped around her body, burned into her lungs. She gasped and flailed; the air seemed incredibly heavy and murky. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling only slick, wet skin. She heard a whimper and then a strangled shriek. She made out a silhouette a few feet from her, revealed in the dim illumination from four fuzzy-looking globes of a dark amber color, one in each direction, all above her. “Slyr?” “Yes,” the frantic voice answered. “What’s happening? We’re being burned alive!” Annaïg swung her feet down and found the floor, wincing at the heat of the stone against her soles. The air hurt to move through, too, especially when she found the vent in the floor it was coming out of. She jumped back with a shriek. “It’s steam,” she said. “Why? What are they doing to us?” Annaïg recalled the battle, and Toel’s blue eyes. Then he had touched her lips. That was all she remembered. She found a wall and began working down it and soon discovered a seam that might be a door. Slyr had joined her in exploring now, panting hoarsely. “I don’t know what’s going on,” Annaïg said. “But I … I think this isn’t meant to kill us. It’s hot, but not that hot. And I don’t think it’s getting worse.” “Right,” Slyr said. “You must be right. Why would he go through the trouble of capturing us only to kill us? He wouldn’t do that, would he?” She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself. “I don’t know Toel,” Annaïg said. “I don’t know anything about him.” “Why do you think I do?” Slyr snapped. There was something strange about her tone. “I didn’t say you did,” Annaïg replied. Slyr was silent for a moment. “Well, I do know a bit,” she finally offered. “He—” She stopped, then laughed softly. She folded back down on her bench. “What?” “I think they’re cleaning us,” she replied. “I’ve heard they use steam to draw the impurities from the body.” “I’ve heard of that,” Annaïg remembered. “In Skyrim they do it, and it’s come and gone as a fashion in Cyrodiil. Black Marsh is already a steaming jungle and Argonians don’t sweat, so it never caught on there.” Her breathing slowed as panic faded. Now that the surprise and fear were gone, the pervasive heat actually felt pretty nice. “What else do you know about Toel?” “Everyone has heard of Toel,” Slyr said. “Most master chefs of the higher kitchens are born to it, but Toel started down with us. When he wants something, he will do whatever is necessary to get it.” “Clearly,” Annaïg replied. “More than you know. Qijne and her kitchen served three lords. Toel serves a much greater one, but that is still a dangerous thing."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_035.txt", "text": "Bargains must have been struck, and probably a few assassinations accomplished.” “A few?” “Other than the rest of our kitchen, I mean.” “They’re all dead, aren’t they?” “I didn’t see anyone moving.” Annaïg was starting to feel a little dizzy. It wasn’t getting any hotter, but the heat was beginning to sit more heavily on her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know many of them very well, but you …” “I hated most of them,” Slyr said. “And I was indifferent to most of the rest.” “But you saved my life. Qijne was trying to kill me.” “You’re—ah—different,” Slyr said. “Well—thank you.” Slyr crossed her arms. “Besides, he came for you. If you were dead, what use would I be to him?” “Don’t sell yourself short.” “I don’t,” Slyr said softly. An awkward pause followed. “I hope they let us out of here soon,” Annaïg ventured, to try to lighten things. “Yes.” But it was too hot to talk after that. Annaïg sat with her head on her knees, closed her eyes and pretended she was on the levee at Yor-Tiq, back in Black Marsh, lazing in the sun while Glim went diving for trogfish. It was a difficult fantasy to maintain; images of the slaughter kept coming back to her, especially Qijne’s dying gaze. Remembering that, she felt at her wrist. It was still there, the torus. They hadn’t noticed it when they took her clothes. If she could figure out how to use it, she would at least have one small advantage. She squeezed it, tried to think the blade out, but nothing worked, and the heat made her so tired she finally stopped trying. Just as she thought she couldn’t take any more, light came flooding through what she had earlier guessed was a door, and behind it the sweet kiss of cool air. “Out, and into the pool with you,” a voice said. Annaïg hesitated, embarrassed at her lack of clothing but anxious to get out of the heat. She saw the mentioned pool ahead. It looked cool, lovely. Slyr was already on her way, so she followed. To her surprise, she didn’t see anyone, although the voice had sounded near. The water was so shockingly cold that for an instant she thought she might lose consciousness. Her yelp literally got closed in her throat. “Kaoc’!” she finally managed. “Sumpslurry!” Slyr gasped. Their gazes met, held for an instant—and then together they began laughing. It just exploded out of Annaïg, as if it had been bottled and pent up for a thousand years. The feeling wasn’t happiness; it was more like being crazy. But it was a lot better than crying. “You should have seen your expression,” Slyr giggled when she finally got control of herself. “I’m sure it was no more ridiculous than yours,” she replied. “Lords, this is cold.” Annaïg took in the new chamber then; it had low ceilings of cloth woven in complicated, curvilinear patterns of gold, hyacinth, lime, and sanguine."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_035.txt", "text": "It draped down the walls, giving the appearance that they were in a large, very oddly shaped tent. Globes like those in the sweat-room, but brighter, depended here and there, filling the chamber with a pleasant golden light. On the near wall, two golden robes hung. “I hope those are ours,” she said. “Not yet they aren’t,” the voice from earlier said. “Back in the heat with you.” This time her gaze found the speaker—a froglike creature about two feet high, mottled orange, yellow, and green. It was crouched above the doorway. “We have to go back in there?” Annaïg said. “You’re both extremely polluted,” the thing said. “This could take a while. But at least you seem to be enjoying it.” She wasn’t enjoying it an hour later, when the alternating heat and cold had rendered all the strength out of her. She was also starving. But finally the frog-thing gave a little nod and sent them across the room to the robes. The fabric was like nothing she had ever touched before, utterly smooth, almost like a liquid. She thought she had never felt anything better. “Come along,” the creature said, hopping down from its perch and landing, to stand on its hind limbs. It waddled off, through a slit in the cloth that draped the walls and into a smooth, polished corridor. After a few turns he led them into a room appointed much as the pool-room had been, except the drapery was of more muted, autumn shades. Her heart struck up a bit when she saw a small, low table set with a pitcher of some sort of liquid and bowls of fruits, fern fronds, and small condiment bowls. “Eat,” the creature said. “Rest. Be ready to speak with Lord Toel.” Annaïg didn’t have to be told twice. The pitcher contained an effervescent beverage that had almost no taste, but reminded her of honeysuckle and plum, though it wasn’t sweet. The fruits were all unknown to her: a small orange berry with a tough rind but sweet, lemony pulp inside; a black, lozenge-shaped thing with no skin that was a bit chewy and was a lot like soft cheese; tiny berries no larger than the head of a needle, but clustered in the thousands, which exploded into vapor on touching her tongue. The ferns were the least pleasant, but the various jellies in the small bowls clung viscously to them, and those were delightfully strange. She couldn’t taste alcohol in the drink, but by the time she felt sated, things were getting pleasantly spinny. “This is nice,” Annaïg said, looking around. There were two beds, also on the floor. “Do you think this is our room? One room just for the two of us?” “Like our little hideaway in Qijne’s kitchen.” “But bigger. And with beds. And—ah—interesting food.” Slyr closed her eyes. “I’ve dreamed of this,” she said. “I knew it would be better.” “Congratulations,” Annaïg said. Slyr shook her head. “It’s because of you."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_035.txt", "text": "These things you come up with … when Toel figures that out, I’ll be out of his kitchen, just as your lizard-friend was out of Qijne’s.” “That won’t happen,” Annaïg said. “Without you, I wouldn’t have known where to start, and now I don’t know where to start again. I need you.” “Toel will have cooks of more use to you.” “He won’t,” Annaïg said. “It’s both of us or neither.” Slyr shook her head. “You’re a strange one,” she said. “But I—” She put her head down. “What?” “I said I didn’t care about anyone in Qijne’s kitchen. But if you had died, I think I might be sad.” Annaïg smiled. “Thanks,” she said. “Okay,” Slyr said, rising unsteadily. “Do you care which bed?” “No. You choose.” Annaïg soon found her own bed. Like the robe, it was a delight, especially after weeks of hard pallets and stone floor. She was dropping off to sleep, feeling content for the moment, at least in a creature sort of way. She thought maybe she should open her locket, contact Attrebus, let him know how things had changed. But then it struck her: Her amulet was gone. Even with worry as her bedmate, when she woke the next morning she was more rested and felt better than she had in a long time, even before coming to Umbriel. Slyr was still dead to the world, but the frog-creature had returned and was waiting patiently near the table. “You’ll break your fast with Lord Toel,” he said. “Let me wake Slyr,” she said. “Not her,” it said. “Only you.” Slyr’s fears from the night before were still fresh in her mind. “I’d rather—” She began. “You’d rather not protest Lord Toel’s wishes,” the thing interrupted. She nodded, reminding herself that she had a greater mission. Besides, she could never put in a good word for the other woman if she never got to talk to Toel. “What’s your name?” she asked the creature. “Dulgiijbiddiggungudingu,” it sputtered. “Gluuip.” She starred at the froth the name had formed on the creature’s mouth. “Dulbig—” she started. “Dulg will do,” he added. “Lead the way, Dulg.” “You don’t imagine you’re going in that?” Dulg asked. He gestured toward a curtained area. She followed his gesture, and in the enclosure discovered a gold and black gown. Like everything else here, it might have been spun of spider silk, or something far finer. She never wore things like this. It clung embarrassingly to her contours and was uselessly ornamented with fine beaded webs at the cuffs and collars. She felt clunky and far more out of her element than she had in Qijne’s fire pits. Although her father held a noble title in High Rock that had once had currency in Black Marsh, since before she was born there had been no balls, no cotillions, no evenings at the theater. All of that—and the frippery that went with it—was swept away when the Argonians retook control of their land."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_035.txt", "text": "And good riddance to that, at least. Or so she had always thought. But she felt herself wondering if Attrebus would think she looked passable in this outfit. “Come, come,” Dulg called impatiently. “Your hair and face must be tended to.” An hour later, after the services of a silent, slight, blondish man, Dulg finally led her through a suite of richly furnished rooms and into a chamber with fresh air pouring through a large door and beyond … Toel was there, but she could not make her gaze focus on him. There was too much else to wonder at. She was outside, and Umbriel rose and fell all around her. She stood on an outjut in a cliff face that was steep but not vertical, and that looked out on a vast, conical basin. Below her spread an emerald green lake and, above, the city grew from the stone itself, twisting spires and latticed buildings that might have been built with colored wire, whole castles hanging like bird cages from immensely thick cables. Higher still, the rocky rim of the island supported gossamer towers in every hue imaginable, and what appeared to be an enormous spiderweb of spun glass that broke the sunlight into hundreds of tiny rainbows. “You like my little window?” Toel asked. She stiffened, afraid to say anything for fear it might be the wrong thing, but just as fearful of saying nothing. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “I didn’t know.” “Didn’t know that anything in Umbriel could be beautiful, you mean?” She opened her mouth to try and correct her mistake, but he shook his head. “How could you, laboring down in the pits? How could you have imagined this?” She nodded. “Do you fear me, child?” he asked. “I do,” she admitted. He smiled slightly at that, and then walked closer to the rail, putting his back to her. If she were quick and strong, she might send him toppling over. But of course he knew that. She could tell by the easy confidence with which he moved. He knew she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do any such thing. “Do you like your quarters?” he asked. “Very much,” she replied. “You are very generous.” “I’ve elevated you,” he said. “Things are better here. I think you will find your work more enjoyable, more stimulating.” He turned and walked to a small table furnished with two chairs. “Sit,” he said. “Join me.” She complied, and a slight man in a vest with many buttons brought them a drink that hissed and fizzed and was mostly vapor. It tasted like mint, sage, and orange peel and was nearly intolerably cold. “Now,” Toel said. “Tell me about this place you are from.” “Lord?” “What is it like, how was your life there? What did you do?"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_035.txt", "text": "That sort of thing.” She wondered at first why she felt so surprised, but then it occurred to her that no one—not even Slyr—had ever asked her about her life before coming to Umbriel—not unless it concerned her knowledge of plants and minerals. “There’s not much left of it, I think,” she said. “No, I imagine not. And yet some of it lives in you yet, yes? And in Umbriel.” “You mean because their souls were consumed here?” “Not merely consumed,” he replied. “Mostly, yes, Umbriel must use living energy to remain aloft and functioning. But some of it is cycled, transformed, reborn—it’s not all lost. Take solace in that, if you can. If you cannot, it’s no matter to me, really, but a waste of your time and energy.” “You think grieving a waste?” “What else could it be? Anger, fear, ecstasy—these states of mind might produce something useful. Grief and regret produce nothing except bad poetry, which is actually worse than nothing. Now. Speak of what I asked you.” She closed her eyes, trying to decide where to start, what to say. She didn’t want to tell him anything that might help Umbriel and its masters. “My home was in a city called Lilmoth,” she said. “In the Kingdom of Black Marsh. I lived with my father. He was—” Toel held up a finger. “Pardon me,” he said. “What is a father?” “Maybe I used the wrong word,” she said. “I’m still learning this dialect.” “Yes. I know of no such word.” “My father is the man who sired me.” Again the blank stare. She shifted and held her hand up, palms facing each other. “Ah, a man and woman, they, ahh … procreate—” “Yes,” Toel said. “That can be very entertaining.” She felt her face warm and nodded. “You think so, too, I see. Very interesting. So a father is the man you used to procreate with?” “No. Oh, no. That would be—no. I mean I’ve never—” She shook her head and started again. “A man and woman—my father and mother—they procreated and had me.” “‘Had you’?” “I was born to them.” “You’re not making sense, dear.” “After they procreated, I was conceived, and I grew in my mother until I was born.” He sat back, and for the first time she saw his eyes flash with real astonishment. It looked very strange on him, as if he had never been surprised at anything. “Do you mean to say that you were inside of a woman? And came out of her?” “Yes.” “Like a parasite—like a Zilh worm or chest borer?” “No, it’s normal, it’s—weren’t you …?” “That’s revolting!” he said, and laughed. “Absolutely revolting. Did you eat her corpse after you came out?” “Well, it didn’t kill her.” “How big were you?” She shaped her hands to indicate the size of a newborn."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_035.txt", "text": "“Well, I have to say, this is already one of the most interesting—and disturbing—conversations I’ve ever had.” “Then you people aren’t born?” “Of course we are. Properly, from the Marrow Sump.” “So when you use the word ‘procreate’—” “It simply means sex. Copulation. It has no other sense, that I know of.” Annaïg suddenly felt the world rearranging itself around her. She had been assuming that all the talk about coming from the sump and returning to it was a metaphor, a way of talking about life and death. But Toel wasn’t kidding, she was sure of that. “Please, go on. Tell me more such disgusting things.” And so they talked on. After his initial outburst, however, he did not interrupt her much; he listened, with only the occasional question, usually concerning terms he didn’t know. She talked mostly about her life in Black Marsh, about history, about the secession of Black Marsh from the Empire and the subsequent collapse of the Empire. She did not say anything about the revival of the Empire, about the Emperor or Attrebus—but it was a challenge, because the way he listened, the way he hung on her every word, made her want to keep talking, to not let it stop, to keep that attention on her forever. When she finally forced herself to stop, he steepled his fingers under his lip. Then he nodded out at his world. “You speak of vast forests and deserts, of countries whose size almost surpasses my imagination. I have never walked such lands—I never will. This, Umbriel, is the only world I can ever know. This, Umbriel, is your home now, and the only place you will ever know again. The sooner you understand that, the better. Waste no time on what you have lost, for you will never have it again.” “But my world is all around you,” she said. “I could take you there, show it to you …” He shook his head. “It is not so simple. The outside of Umbriel, in a sense, is in your world. But here, where you find yourself now—surely you observed the larvae, saw how they lose corporeal form when they move fully into your plane. The same would be true of me, were I to leave. My body would dissolve, and Umbriel would reclaim the stuff of my soul. There is no leaving for me. Or you.” “But I am not from Umbriel,” she said. “I am not a part of it.” “Not yet,” Toel said. “But in time you will be as much a part of Umbriel as I am.”"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_037.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel The man who had named himself Captain Evernal stepped from behind the tent. He was fortyish, with tanned skin, blond hair, and an impressive mustache. Attrebus could see twenty men, but he suspected there were more. “What’s this?” Sul asked. Evernal shrugged. “That depends on your business here.” “We have no business here,” Sul replied. “You’re a mile off the main road.” “Is that a crime?” “It isn’t,” Evernal said. “But it suggests you were coming to this camp, since there isn’t anything else in this direction.” “Happenstance. We were sightseeing. Hoping to run across a flock of greems. The lad here has never seen one.” “Well, then,” the captain said. “You won’t mind us searching your packs.” Sul gestured at their mounts. Four of the regulators strode over. It didn’t take them long to find the moon-sugar. “Well, this is interesting,” the captain said. Attrebus saw Sul’s shoulders relax, slightly. Oh, Divines, he’s going to try it, Attrebus thought. “Why is it interesting?” Attrebus blurted. “I paid a fair price for that.” “Then surely you were warned about the penalties of trafficking with the wild cats.” “There’s no trafficking here,” Attrebus said. “I’ve not offered to sell anything.” Evernal rolled his eyes. “Oh, come now.” Attrebus drew himself straighter. “No, you come now, Captain Evernal. Do you have a charge to make? Based on what evidence?” “Evidence? I don’t need evidence,” Evernal said. “I know very well that you bought that sugar for these cats. Look around you—there’s no court involved. No witnesses.” “I see. Then you’re bandits, plain and simple.” “We’re regulators. We uphold the law.” Attrebus snorted. “Do you even know what a contradiction is? You just as much as said you could murder us with impunity, and you specifically bragged there are no courts involved. You’re a common brigand, sir.” Evernal reddened, but some of his men had uneasy expressions, which suggested he’d hit a nerve. “Go,” Evernal finally said. “Leave the sugar.” Attrebus felt his stomach unclench a bit. But then he saw the expression on Lesspa’s face. “What about them?” he asked. “I told you to go. Count your blessings and do it.” “Come on,” Sul said. But then Attrebus noticed something. He pushed away his uncertainties, pulled his center tight. “No,” he said. “No?” the captain repeated incredulously. “Who do you think I am?” Attrebus thundered. “I know you by your Nibenese accent, Evernal. You may work for the thug who runs Rimmen, but your body and soul belong to the Empire. Who do you think I am?” He saw Evernal waver and his eyes widen. “Milord …” “Wrong title,” Attrebus snapped. “Try again. My likeness is common enough, even here, I’m sure.” The captain swallowed audibly. “My Prince,” he managed. “Your face is a bit bruised, and …” “Is it?” Attrebus said. “I suppose that it is. And so you are to be forgiven for that. For that."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_037.txt", "text": "But I do not care to have my business questioned or my escort detained.” Evernal looked around at the Khajiit. “Escort?” “It is my business, Captain. We’ll be out of your territory in a day, and you’ll never see any of us here again.” “It’s not that simple, highness—” “It is,” Attrebus said. “Look around you. There are no courts here.” Evernal sighed and stepped near. “I fought for your father,” he said. “I’ve heard much of you. But work has been scarce in Cyrodiil.” Attrebus softened his tone. “Then you know in your heart what’s right. And you know my reputation. I’m on a mission of greatest gravity, and already I am too much delayed. Will you really let it be said that you hindered Prince Attrebus Mede?” “No, Prince,” Evernal replied. “I would not.” Attrebus clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man,” he said. Evernal bowed, then beckoned to his men. In a few moments they were alone with the Khajiit. “That was quite a gamble,” Sul said when they were gone. “Telling them who you were. What if they had decided to ransom you?” Attrebus smiled, suddenly feeling a bit shaky. “I saw he was wearing the badge of the eighteenth legion,” he said. “Just under his cloak, pinned next to a lock of some girl’s hair. I knew he’d not only fought for my father, but that he was still proud of it.” Sul’s glare lessened a bit. “You’re trembling,” he said. Attrebus sat down on the ground. “Right,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “I didn’t really think. I’ve made so many speeches—and people cheered and followed my orders. But if all of that was a lie—” “You sounded like a prince,” Sul assured him. “Confident, in command, imperious.” “Yes, but if I had given it any thought …” “It’s a good thing you didn’t,” Sul replied. “For Evernal, the tales about you are true. You acted the part, and where we might have died, we live.” “Become who they think I am,” Attrebus muttered. Lesspa was approaching, so he stood. She regarded him silently for a moment, then scratched herself on the chin and reached over to scratch his. “You brought it,” she said. “Another might have taken our money. And what you did just now—we are grateful.” “You protected us,” Attrebus said. “I couldn’t do any less.” She nodded. “Your words ring like music. You are really the prince?” “I am.” One of the tents was down, and the Khajiit were already folding it. “We will be ready in less than an hour. I pray you wait.” “You said you were going back west. I must go east.” “They would have taken our kits and slain the old ones,” she said, “imprisoned the rest of us until we became city-ghosts, sniveling in the dust, begging for skooma. It was not your concern. You reached out from your interests to embrace ours. That is Sei’dar, an important thing to us.” She smiled."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_037.txt", "text": "“Besides—you survive, you are Emperor, yes? That’s not a bad friend to have.” East of Rimmen the land rose from the dust in a series of rolling ridges covered in brush and scrub oak, and eventually—as they ascended higher—timber. The hills were swarming with Khajiit renegades organized around rough hill forts, but they kept their distance, which they certainly had Lesspa and her companions to thank for. By noon the next day they were descending into the lower Niben Valley, and he was back in the Empire. It was like walking down into a cloud, so much wetter was the air of County Bravil than the Elsweyr steppes. Thick mats of fern and moss muffled their footsteps and a canopy of ash, oak, and cypress kept the sun from them. It seemed to make Lesspa’s people nervous. They reached the Green Road near sundown and made camp there. “What now?” Sul asked. Attrebus considered the road. Dusk was settling and the frogs in the marshes below were singing to Masser as it rose above the trees. Willows rustled in the evening breeze, and the jars and whills tested their voice against a forlorn owl. Fireflies winked up from the ferns. “North takes me back home,” he said. “My father might listen to me now, give me troops.” “Do you really think so?” “No. The only thing that’s changed is that I lost the men and women he did trust me with. He’ll still think Umbriel is no immediate threat. He’ll put me in an extremely comfortable prison to make sure I don’t run off again, at least not until I’ve supplied an heir.” “What then? You said Umbriel was traveling north, toward Morrowind. I think it’s going to Vivec City, or what’s left of it. If that’s true, we need to beat Vuhon there.” “You said that before. You didn’t explain it.” He saw the muscles clench in Sul’s jaw. “Where is it now?” the Dunmer demanded. “How fast is it moving?” “I’m not sure of either of those things. It’s moving slowly, or it was. It took the better part of a day to cover the distance from the south coast of Black Marsh to Lilmoth, which Annaïg said is around fifteen miles.” “Thirty miles in a day and a night, then. That only gives us a few days.” “To get to Vivec City? Through the Valus Mountains? We can’t do that in twenty days. What if we went to Leyawiin, got a ship there—” “No, not unless you know someone with a flying ship. We’d have to sail all the way up to the top of the world and come back down, or else land and go overland through wasteland.” “Walk back, then. Why do we have to beat it to Vivec City?” “Because I believe there is a thing there, something the master of Umbriel needs. Something he fears.” “You seem to know everything about Umbriel except where to find it—and now I’ve told you that."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_037.txt", "text": "I think it’s time you told me what you know.” Sul snorted. “Don’t let your success with the regulators go to your head. You’re not my prince, boy.” “I never said I was. But I’ve told you everything I know. You can return the favor.” Sul’s eyes flamed silently for a moment, then he scratched his chin. “I don’t know much about this flying city of yours—not specifically. I believe its master is a man named Vuhon. He vanished into Oblivion forty-three years ago, and now I think he’s come back.” “This is the man who killed your woman.” Sul went rigid. “We will not speak of her,” he said in a low, dangerous tone. “There was once a place in Vivec City—the Ministry of Truth.” “I’ve heard of it,” Attrebus said. “It was considered a wonder of the world. A moon from Oblivion, floating above the Temple District.” “Yes. Held there by the power of our god, Vivec. But Vivec left, or was destroyed, and his power began to fade, and with it the spells that kept the velocity of the ministry in check.” “What do you mean?” “It fell from the sky, you understand? It was traveling quickly, more quickly than you can imagine. Vivec stopped it with the power of his will. But the velocity was still there, ready to be unleashed. Do you see what that meant?” “You’re saying it would complete its fall as if it had never been interrupted.” “That’s what our best feared, yes. And one of our best was Vuhon. Along with others, he built an ingenium, a machine that continued to hold the ministry aloft. But there was a … cost.” “What cost?” “The ingenium required souls to function.” Attrebus felt pinpricks along his spine. “Umbriel—Annaïg says it takes the souls of the living …” “You see?” “But what happened?” Sul was silent for so long this time that Attrebus thought he wouldn’t speak again, but he finally sighed. “The ingenium exploded. It hurled Vuhon into Oblivion. Then the ministry crashed into the city, and Vvardenfell exploded.” “The Red Year,” Attrebus gasped. “He caused that?” “He was responsible. He and others. And now he has returned.” “For what?” “I don’t know what designs he has on Tamriel, but I’m sure he has them, and I’m sure they aren’t pleasant ones,” Sul responded. “But I think his immediate objective is a sword, an ancient and dangerous weapon. It’s tied somehow to Umbriel and Vuhon.” “You’ve been hunting Vuhon all of these years?” “I spent many of them merely surviving.” “You were in Morrowind when all of this happened?” Sul made an ugly sound that Attrebus later would realize was the man’s bitterest chuckle. “I was in the ministry,” he answered, “I was also thrown into Oblivion. For thirty-eight years.” “With Vuhon?” Sul rubbed his forehead. “The ingenium used souls to keep a sort of vent into Oblivion open, specifically into the realm of the daedra prince, Clavicus Vile."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_037.txt", "text": "You know of him, I assume?” “Of course. He has a shrine not far from the Imperial City. They say you can make a pact with him, given the right cantations.” “That’s true,” Sul agreed. “Although a pact with Vile is one you’re likely to regret. He’s not the most amiable of Oblivion princes.” “And yet he allowed Vuhon to draw energies from his realm?” Sul cracked his neck. “Vile has a thing for souls,” he said, “and if he noticed the rift at all, he probably enjoyed what was coming through more than he missed the energies going out. It’s even possible that Vuhon made a formal bargain with the prince. I just don’t know.” He gestured at a log and sat on it. Attrebus followed suit. “When we arrived, there was someone—or something—waiting for us. But it wasn’t Vile. It was shaped like a man, but dark, with eyes like holes into nothing. He had a sword, and as we lay there, it laughed and tossed it through the rift we’d come through. I tried to follow it, but it was too late.” “Waiting for you? How did it know you were coming?” “He called himself Umbra, and like Vile, he had a thing for souls. He’d been attracted to the rift by the ingenium and had even tried to enlarge it, with no success. So he’d cast a fortune and learned that a day was coming when it would briefly widen, and so there he was.” “Just to throw a sword through it?” “Apparently. Umbra took us captive—he was powerful, almost as powerful as a daedra prince. In fact, it was the power of a daedra prince—he’d somehow managed to cut a piece from Clavicus Vile himself.” “Cut a piece? Of a daedra prince?” “Not a physical piece, like an arm or a heart,” Sul clarified. “Daedra aren’t physical beings like you and me. But the effect was similar—Vile was, in a sense, injured. Badly so. And Umbra became stronger, though still not so strong as Vile. Not strong enough to escape his realm once Vile circumscribed it against him. “Circumscribed?” “Changed the nature of the ‘walls’ of his realm, made them absolutely impermeable to Umbra and the power he had stolen. Understand, at all costs the prince didn’t want Umbra to escape. The circumscription was so strong he couldn’t even go through the rift himself—but the sword could.” “Again, why the sword?” Attrebus wondered. “Umbra claimed to have once been captive in the weapon. He feared that if Vile got his hands on it, he would return him to it.” “This is making me dizzy,” Attrebus said. “But you wanted to hear everything, remember?” Sul snapped. “Well, let’s keep it simple then, shall we? Clavicus Vile was nursing his wounds and hunting for Umbra. Umbra used his stolen power to conceal himself in one of the cities at the fringe of Vile’s realm. But he still couldn’t escape."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_037.txt", "text": "Vuhon promised him that if Umbra spared his life, he would build a new ingenium, capable of escaping even Vile’s circumscription. Umbra agreed, and I suppose that’s what they did.” “They brought the city with them?” Sul shrugged. “I don’t know about that part. I never saw much of the city. Vuhon wasn’t very happy with me. He only kept me alive to torture. After a few years he forgot about me and I escaped. I had some arts, and since the forbidding wasn’t on me, I managed to leave Vile’s realm, albeit into another part of Oblivion.” “So it’s Umbra that wants the sword, not Vuhon?” “It might be either. Maybe Vuhon has turned against Umbra and seeks to imprison him. Whatever the case, we can’t let them have it.” Attrebus opened his mouth, but Sul jerked his head from side to side. “Enough. You know what you need to know for now.” “I—So I allow all this—we still can’t get there in time.” “No,” Sul said. “As I said, there is a way. If we survive it.” “What way would that be?” “We’ll take a shortcut. Through Oblivion.” And he left Attrebus there with the willows and soft, gliding voices of the night birds."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_038.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel “Perfect,” Toel opined, his mysterious little grin turning into something a bit larger. He dipped his finger in the little bowl of viscous mist and brought the bit that clung to it up to his lips for another taste. With his other hand he stroked the back of her neck lightly, familiarly, and she felt her cheeks warm. “I’ve come to expect the very best from you,” he said. “Come around this afternoon so we can discuss your progress here.” He gave a perfunctory nod to the rest of the staff and then left. Still embarrassed, Annaïg studied her vapor another moment. When she looked up, the rest of the cooks had returned silently to their jobs. All except Slyr. “Another evening with Toel,” she said softly. “How he must enjoy your conversation.” Annaïg felt a bit of sting from that. “I hope you don’t think anything else is going on.” “What would I know?” she replied. “I’ve never been invited to Lord Toel’s quarters. How can I imagine what might go on there?” “It sounds like you’ve been imagining it quite a lot,” Annaïg returned. “But if you’re fantasizing about anything improper, that’s nothing to do with me.” “Him having you there at all is improper,” Slyr countered. “It’s bad for morale.” “Well, maybe you ought to tell him that.” Slyr looked back down at the powders she was sifting. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “You know I worry.” “You’re still here, aren’t you?” “It’s only been a few days,” she said. “He never even speaks to me.” Annaïg snorted a little laugh. “Now you’re talking like he’s your lover.” Slyr looked back up. “I just worry, that’s all.” “Well, worry over this for a bit, then,” she replied, rising to her feet. “I need to go check on the root wine vats.” Toel’s kitchen was very different from Qijne’s inferno. There was only one pit of hot stone and one oven, and neither was of particular size. In their place were long tables of polished red granite. Some supported brass steaming chambers, centrifuges, a hundred kinds of alchemical apparatuses. Others were entirely for the preparation of raw ingredients. While the production of distillations, infusions, and precipitations of soul-stuff had been a minor part of Qijne’s kitchen, here more than half the cooking space was dedicated to the coquinaria spiritualia. The rest of the cavernous kitchen was devoted to one thing—feeding trees. She remembered the strange collar of the vegetation that depended from the edge and rocky sides of Umbriel. She didn’t know much about trees, so it hadn’t occurred to her to wonder how they survived. As it turned out, plants—like people and animals—needed more than sunlight and water to live. They also needed food of a sort, and Toel’s kitchen made that food."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_038.txt", "text": "Huge siphons drew water and detritus from the bottom of the sump and brought it into holding vats, where it was redirected into parsers that separated out the matter most useful to the trees. What wasn’t used was returned to the sump. What remained was fortified by the addition of certain formulae before being pumped to the roots through a vast ring beneath Umbriel’s rim. Toel wanted her to learn all of the processes in his kitchen, so she spent an hour or so each day with the vats, and ostensibly she was experimenting with some of the formulae to try and improve upon them. In fact, the vats were very far from everything else, and very quiet. And, in a large cabinet in the work area, was the most complete collection of materials she had ever seen. Dimple, her new hob, was already there when she arrived, and had found four substances for her to examine. None of them smelled right, so she sent him away and went back to her experiment with the tree-wine. She wondered if trees tasted anything, if they knew one “flavor” of tree-wine from another. She stirred a reagent of calprine into her flask wand and watched it turn yellow. After a moment she saw Dimple return with more containers. Absorbed in what she was doing, she didn’t actually look at what he’d brought, but when she took a break, she rubbed her eyes and turned her attention there. One of the jars was half filled with a black liquid. She blinked and hesitated, not wanting to get her hopes up too high, not wanting to be disappointed again. She knew it by its smell. “That’s it, then,” she whispered. “Everything I need.” But she felt oddly empty, because that wasn’t really true. She didn’t have Mere-Glim and the knowledge she needed to destroy Umbriel. Or her locket, so Attrebus would know where she was. If Attrebus was still alive. The last time they’d spoken, there was something about him, vulnerability. And the way he talked to her, as if he cared, as if he was risking his life just for her … She shook that thought off and read the label on the jar. ICHOR OF WINGED TWILIGHT. Well, that made sense. She put it in the little cabinet that was for her private use, along with the other ingredients she needed, and a great many she did not. Then she finished out the hour and went back to help with dinner. Slyr watched her dress in yet another new outfit that Dulg had appeared with, a simple green gossamer slip of a gown. The other woman was halfway through a bottle of wine already. “Don’t forget me,” she said as Annaïg left. As usual, she met him on his balcony. They sipped a red slurry that—despite being cold—burned her throat gently as it went down. “Lord Irrel sent his compliments,” Toel said. “He enjoyed your meal, then.” Toel nodded."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_038.txt", "text": "“The meal was not uninspired,” he said. “I am an artist. But you have added so much to my palette, and the special touches you invent—Lord Irrel is usually pleased with what I make him, but lately his compliments have come more frequently and sincerely.” “I’m happy to have helped, then.” She felt a little giddy, and realized that whatever was in her drink was already having an effect. “With me you will become great,” he said. “But there is more to being great than being an artist. You must also have vision, and the strength to do the thing that must be done. Do you understand?” “I think so, Chef.” “And you must learn to make choices uncolored by any sort of passion.” Annaïg took another drink, not liking the direction the conversation was going. “When I took you from Qijne, I spared Slyr as well. But since she has been here, I haven’t felt justified in that decision. I rather think she should go.” “Without her, I would never have come to your attention,” Annaïg said. “Without her, I would never have learned so much in so little time.” “And yet how far you have outstripped her, and how slowly she is learning the ways of my kitchen. Do you really believe she has any business being here?” “She saved my life,” Annaïg said. “Qijne would have killed me.” “Yes, I know that,” he replied. “In that moment she was very useful to me, and to you. But that moment is gone.” “I pray you,” she said. “Don’t pray to me,” he said. “I give this decision to you. You could have Sarha or Loy for assistants—with them you would learn quickly, rise quickly. You could work directly for me, as my understudy. But so long as Slyr is here, she will be your only assistant. But if you ask me to rid you of her, I will do it in an instant.” “Let her stay, please.” “As I said,” he went on, disappointment evident in his voice, “it’s your choice, and remains your choice. I hope you will try to consider that decision without passion or sympathy. I hope you will be great.” “I will try to be great,” Annaïg said. “But I hope to do it without betraying my friends.” “Does this work, where you are from?” “I … I don’t know. Sometimes, I hope.” He nodded and his gaze found hers, and in his eyes she saw something both frightening and compelling. She felt again the caress on the back of her neck, and her belly tingled. “There is another decision I give you to make,” he said, very softly. “Like the first, you are free to make it on any evening I have you here.” She couldn’t find any words, or even think straight."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_038.txt", "text": "She had flirted with a few boys, kissed a few, but it had always seemed clumsy and ridiculous, and she’d certainly never been swept away by the sort of passion she had read of. But this wasn’t a boy. This was a man, a man who wanted her, wanted her very badly, who could probably take her if he desired it. She realized she was breathing hard. “I—ah …” she started. “I wonder if I can have some water.” He smiled, and leaned back, and signed for water to be brought, and she sat there the rest of the evening feeling drunk and foolish and very much a little girl. He could see right through it all, through any manner and bearing she tried to fabricate. But beneath all of that there was this other, little voice, the one that reminded her that it should always be her choice, that it shouldn’t be something someone could condescend to give you. And that voice didn’t go away, and when dinner was over she returned to her room, where Slyr had passed out, alone."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_039.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel A short morning’s ride brought them to a hill overlooking Water’s Edge, a bustling market town that—like Ione—had done most of its growing in the last few decades. During the years when the old Empire was collapsing, it had served as a free port when Bravil and Leyawiin were independent and often at odds with each other, and Water’s Edge had been protected by both and by what remained of the Imperial navy. Even enemies needed some neutral ground for trade, a place where conflict was set aside. And now that the Empire was reunited, it was growing still, attracting entrepreneurs and tradesmen from crime-ridden Bravil especially. “I don’t understand why we didn’t just go to Bravil,” Attrebus complained to Sul. “That’s at least in the right direction.” “This was closer,” Sul replied. “Distance doesn’t matter so much as time. We’re short of time as it is. If I can get the things I need here, we have a far better chance of succeeding.” “And if you can’t get what you need?” “The College of Whispers has a cynosure here,” the Dunmer replied. “The things I’m after aren’t terribly uncommon.” “I should think opening a portal into oblivion would require something rather extraordinary.” “It does,” Sul said. “But I already have that.” He tapped his head, then swung himself up on his horse. Attrebus began saddling his own mount. “What are you doing?” the Dunmer asked. “You said you wanted allies. I’m going to see what I can do.” Sul looked as if he tasted something bad. “Let me check things out first,” he said. He switched his reins and rode off. Attrebus watched him go, then resumed making his horse ready. “You’re going into town, too?” Lesspa asked. Attrebus nodded. “Yes. There’s a garrison there, and I know the commander. I need to send word to my father I’m still alive. I might even be able to recruit a few more men.” “We aren’t enough for you, Prince?” “Yes,” Attrebus said. “About that. I appreciate your help up to this point, but you deserve to know what we’re up against. When you’ve heard me out, if you still want to go, that’s great. But if you don’t, I’ll understand.” “My ears are twitching,” she replied. And so he told her about Umbriel—or at least everything he knew about it—and about Sul’s plan to reach Morrowind. When he finished, she just regarded him for a moment. Then she made a little bow. “Thank you,” she said. Then she walked back over to her people. He finished saddling, then splashed a bit of cold water from the stream on his face and shaved. By the time he was done with that, he noticed one of the Khajiit tents was already down. He sighed, but part of him was relieved. He needed them, yes, but the thought of leading more people to be slaughtered was a hard one."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_039.txt", "text": "His mood lifted a little as he entered the town and felt—for the first time since crossing the border—that he was really back in the Empire, in his element. The shops—many with freshly painted signs—cheered him, as did the children laughing and playing in the streets. A question merrily answered by a girl drawing water from the well at the town center sent him toward the Imperial garrison, a couple of wooden barracks flanking an older building of dark stone. A guard stood outside the door, wearing his father’s colors. “Good day,” the guard said as he drew near. “Good day to you,” Attrebus replied, watching for the glimmer of recognition, but either the man did not know his face or was good at concealing his reactions. “Can you tell me who is on post here?” “That would be Captain Larsus,” the fellow said. “Florius Larsus?” Attrebus asked. “The same,” the guard replied. “I should like to see him,” Attrebus said. “Very good. And whom shall I say is calling?” “Just tell him it’s Treb,” he replied. The guard’s eyes did widen a bit, and he went into the building. A moment later the door swung open and Florius appeared. He looked irritated at first, but when his gaze settled on Attrebus, his jaw hung open. “By the Divines,” he said. “You’re supposed to be dead!” “I hope I get to have my own opinion about that,” he answered. Larsus bounded over to him and clapped him on the shoulders. “Great gods, man, get in here. Do you even know how many men your father has out looking for you?” Attrebus followed him into a simple but ample room with a desk, a few bookshelves, and a cabinet from which Larsus produced a bottle of brandy and two cups. “If everyone thinks I’m dead, then why does my father have men out searching for me?” “Well, he doesn’t believe it. But the rumor is they found your body.” “Some rumors are better than others.” Larsus poured the brandy and passed the cup to Attrebus. “Well, it’s good to see you alive,” the captain said. “But don’t keep me in suspense. Tell me what happened.” “My companions were all slain, and I was taken captive. They took me to Elsweyr with the intention of selling me, but they ended up dying instead. And so here I am.” “That’s—I don’t know what to say. Are you alone?” “Yes,” Attrebus lied. “Well, you look well enough. A little battered—listen, I’ll arrange for your transport home immediately, and send a courier ahead to let your father know the good news.” “Send the courier,” Attrebus said. “But I won’t be returning to the Imperial City.” Larsus frowned, but at that moment another fellow entered the room—a man with sallow Breton features and curly black hair. He looked familiar—Attrebus was sure he had seen him at court, or at least in the palace. “Riente,” Larsus said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_039.txt", "text": "“See who it is!” Riente cocked his head to the side, and then bowed. “Your highness,” he said. “It’s wondrous to see you alive.” “Captain Larsus and I were just discussing that,” Attrebus said. “Well, I shouldn’t intrude, then,” Riente said. “I only came to report that the matter at the Little Orsinium Tavern is cleared up.” “Thank you, Riente.” “Captain, majesty,” he said, bowing again before vanishing through the door whence he’d come. Larsus turned back to Attrebus. “Now, Treb, what are you talking about? My orders are to return you to the Imperial City without delay.” “I’m giving you different orders,” Attrebus said. “You can’t countermand your father.” He paused and looked a bit sheepish. “My orders include permission to restrain you if necessary.” “But you won’t do that.” Larsus hesitated again. “I will.” Attrebus leaned forward. “Listen, Florius. I always thought we were friends, but recent events make me wonder. I know now that my life, up until now, has been something of a fantasy. Perhaps you, like so many, only pretended to like me. But I remember those days after we first met, when we were six? Did it really all go back so far?” Larsus colored. “No,” he said. “We were friends, Treb. We are. But the Emperor …” “I can’t go back, not yet. There are things I must do. And I need your help.” Larsus sighed. “What things?” And so for the second time that day, Attrebus recounted what he knew of Umbriel. “I’ve heard of it,” Larsus acknowledged. “But this doesn’t change anything. When the Emperor learns I’ve let you go, it’s my head.” “I won’t let that happen.” “How can you prevent it, if you’re in Morrowind, probably dead?” “I’m asking you to go with me, Florius. It’s the real thing this time, not the playacting of before. But this needs doing, and I’d like you at my side.” “Just the two of us?” “I lied. There is one other.” “I—even if you can keep me out of the dungeons, this will end my career, Treb.” “If we succeed, all will be forgiven. My father could never punish a savior of Cyrodiil—the people would never have it, and you know how quickly stories about me get around. I’ll write letters to my biographers—the story of our quest will be circulating in days.” He raised his voice, like a bard. “‘The prince, all thought him dead, but he rose up from defeat and went to find the foe …’” He returned to normal speech. “My father will have to embrace the story. And your part in it.” Florius squinted, as if Attrebus’s words were still there in the air to be examined. Then he nodded. “Very well,” he said. He rustled through the desk. “Write your letters and post them at the Gaping Frog—it’s just off the town square. I’ll send your father a message by Imperial courier, informing him of your safety—and my resignation."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_039.txt", "text": "I’ll meet you at the Frog in, say, three hours.” “I knew I could count on you, Florius.” “I’m a fool,” Florius said. “But you’re my fool now.” “Go on. I’ll see you in three hours.” The Gaping Frog was almost empty when Attrebus made his way in and took a seat at the smoothest table he saw, which still had its share of nicks, scratches, and knife-scribed autographs. The place was mostly empty, rather sunny for a tavern, smelling pleasantly of ale and some sort of stew. He had an ale and wrote two more or less identical letters to his best-known biographers and posted them with the barkeep, a female orc with two broken teeth. Then—it being about midday—he had a bowl of what turned out to be mutton daube and two more ales, and sat there, feeling full and civilized, wondering how Sul had made out. The few people who had come in for lunch wandered out, until it was just Attrebus and the barkeep. But less than a minute after the last of the other patrons left, the door opened again. He looked up, thinking it might be Florius come a bit early, but instead it was a group of people. At first he didn’t understand what was wrong with their faces, but then he understood; they were wearing masks. And all of them had naked blades. He bolted up, drawing his own sword, Flashing. The barkeep made an odd sound, and he saw her stagger and then drop heavily behind the counter. “Who are you?” he shouted. “Show your faces.” He made a wild cut at the one nearest, but stepped back as his companions moved to circle him. The door burst open again, and the man on his left jerked his head to look. Attrebus thrust with Flashing, catching him in the ribs. The man cursed and fell back, clutching his side, even as one of his companions cut at Treb’s head. Attrebus dropped, feeling the wake of the blade on his scalp. He was struggling to get his blade back up when something big hit his only remaining attacker. The other three were busy defending their own lives against Lesspa and her cousins, and he now saw that it was Lesspa’s brother, Sha’jal, savaging the man at his feet. By the time he got around them, the rest of the fray was over. Attrebus rushed to the bar, but the barkeep was dead with a knife in her right eye. “Are you all right?” Lesspa asked. “I am, thanks to you,” he replied. “I thought you were leaving.” “No, no. We sent the kits and the old ones back with a few warriors, but the rest of us stay with you. We’ve been watching out for you. These fellows with their masks, they didn’t seem to have the best of intentions.” “Take their masks off,” Attrebus said, bending toward the corpse nearest him."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_039.txt", "text": "Four of them were unfamiliar, but the fourth was Riente, the fellow from Florius’s office. “Florius!” he swore. He ran the two hundred yards back to the garrison, not caring if the cats were with him or not. He shoved the door open, blade in hand. Florius was in his chair, with his head on the table. There wasn’t much blood; he’d been stabbed at the base of the skull. “It told you to wait,” Sul said. “I should have tied you up before I left.” “He was going with us,” Attrebus said. “I talked him into it. I killed him.” “You killed him the moment he knew who you were. There was a guard dead, too—did you talk to a guard?” “Yes,” he said, feeling sick. “The massacre of your men, and now this? You need to ask yourself—who wants you dead?” Attrebus closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. “I’ve seen Riente before. In the Imperial City. And some of the things Radhasa said made it sound like someone there had hired her. I assumed it was some criminal faction, but … I don’t know who could want me murdered.” “It’s not just anyone,” Sul said. “It’s someone with a lot of connections. They may have scried you were coming here, but from your description it sounds more likely that they put someone here, in Bravil, Leyawiin—anyplace they thought you might turn up.” “One of the dukes, my uncle maybe. Maybe someone who doesn’t want me to be Emperor.” “Yes, but why now? Why not a year ago, in your sleep with venom from some woman’s lips? Why not a year from now?” “You think it has something to do with Umbriel?” “What else could it be?” Sul demanded. “Track back. Who knew what you were up to?” “Gulan. My father. Annaïg. Hierem, my father’s minister. But we weren’t in private—others surely heard.” Sul’s eyes went a bit strange for a moment, as if something Attrebus had said registered with him, but then it was gone. “Ah, well,” he said. “It’s moot for the moment.” “Florius is dead. It’s not moot.” “For the moment, I said. I found the things we needed. When both moons are in the sky tonight, we’ll go where no one will follow—that, you can be sure of. Now, I’m going back to town to sell the horses, because we can’t take them with us, and to pick up more supplies for the trip. This time, stay put. I’ll take some of the cats to help.” Sul returned a few hours before sundown, and under his direction they began to hike north, first on the trail, then through the bottomlands. At dusk they reached their destination—the ruins of an Oblivion gate, not notably different from the one at Ione, except there wasn’t a town built around it."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_039.txt", "text": "They gathered on the glassy, fused earth, and Attrebus and the cats knelt in a circle around Sul, who walked among them dabbing a red ointment from a small jar and marking each of their foreheads, and finally his own. When he was finished, he stoppered the jar and put it in his haversack. “Get what you need,” he said. “We’ll be traveling light. When we start, stay close to me, as close as you can. We’ll be moving fast.” Attrebus shouldered his pack and put his hand on Flashing’s hilt. He faced the Khajiit. There were four of the massive Senchetigers and four riders. Lesspa with Sha’jal, Taaj with S’enjara, M’kai with Ahapa, and J’lasha riding M’qar. “You’re sure about this, all of you?” Attrebus asked them. “Our lances are with you,” Lesspa said. “Only our lances,” M’kai added. “I hope you know how to use them.” His accent was so thick and his tone so solemn that it took a snicker from Taaj before he realized M’kai was joking. “We’re ready, Prince,” Lesspa said. “Okay,” he told Sul. “I’m ready, too. You can start whenever.” He looked up at the moons. Sul nodded and the sky shattered."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_040.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel The landscape beneath Mere-Glim had changed considerably since he’d last been in the Fringe Gyre. Gone the dense forest, winding rivers, and oxbow lakes, all replaced by ash-colored desert and jagged peaks. That meant they were out of Black Marsh at last, and well over Morrowind. He’d never been out of his homeland before. Not that it mattered anymore. He was dead to the Hist, and almost everyone he knew was dead. For all intents and purposes, he hadn’t been in Black Marsh since he and Annaïg had come upon Umbriel. Crossing a border was just a formality. Of course, he could jump. Why shouldn’t he? His body would be too broken to become one of the living dead he could see massed in every direction now that the concealing canopy was gone. He hissed. Maybe later. Annaïg was probably dead, but until he was sure, he would go through the motions as if they mattered. So back up the tree he went, retracing his path to where he’d met Fhena. True to her word, she appeared within half an hour, smiling. Her grin broadened when he handed her a sack full of orchid shrimp. “I thought you might not be coming back,” she said. “I … got in trouble last time,” he said. Her smile vanished. “I didn’t tell anyone,” she said. “I promise.” “It wasn’t that,” he said. “I got distracted on the way back. I was late. Since then I’ve had to be a little more careful.” “Well, I’m glad you came back. Everyone else I meet—they’re all pretty much the same. You’re very strange.” “A … thanks.” “I mean it as a compliment.” “I’ll take it that way, then.” She perched on one of the smaller branches and crossed her legs. “Where you come from—is everyone strange, like you?” she asked, plucking one shrimp from her sack and biting its head off. “Well, of course where I’m from doesn’t exist anymore, thanks to Umbriel.” At least the place that I grew up doesn’t. Everyone I know there is probably dead.” “I know. I’m sorry. But what I meant—” “I know what you meant,” he replied. “Where I was from—is called Black Marsh. That’s where my people are from. But there are other sorts of people, just as there are here.” “What do you mean, ‘other sorts of people’?” Right, he remembered. They’re really all just worms. Their appearance is superficial. “Well, there is a whole race of people, for instance, who look a lot like you. We call them the Dunmer, and they used to live in Morrowind, which is what’s below us now. Now most of them are gone.” “Used to live?” “There was an explosion,” he said. “A volcano erupted and destroyed most of their cites. Then my people came in and killed or drove out more.” “Why? To claim their souls?” “No, because—it’s a long story. The Dunmer have preyed on my people for centuries."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_040.txt", "text": "We paid them back for that. The few that remain are scattered. Most are on Soulstheim, an island far north of here.” She clapped her hands in delight. “I don’t understand half of what you’re saying. More than half.” “That makes you happy?” “Yes! Because it gives me questions. I love questions. Like—what’s a volcano?” “It’s a mountain that has fire inside of it.” “See? So what’s a mountain?” It went on like that for a while, and he actually found himself enjoying it, but finally he knew it was best he go, so he said so. “Can we meet again?” she asked. “I’ll try to come back.” He gathered his courage to ask his question, but she swam ahead of him. “I found your friend!” she said. “I should have told you to start with, but I was afraid you would leave without talking to me if I did.” “You know where Annaïg is? She’s alive?” “I’m sorry—were you hoping she was dead?” “No, I—where is she?” “I didn’t mention you, when I was asking,” she assured him. “She’s very famous in the kitchens, especially after the slaughter.” “Slaughter?” “She was in one kitchen, but then another kitchen invaded it to capture her. Like your story about your people invading Morrowind, I guess. And now she’s in a much higher kitchen.” “Do you know which one?” She concentrated for a moment. Then her face brightened again. “Toel,” she said. “Toel Kitchen.” “And do you know where it is?” Her face fell. “I don’t. I don’t know my way around outside of the Fringe Gyre. I could ask Kalmo or someone else who makes deliveries, but then they might want to know why I’m asking.” “It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t ask, for now. I don’t want to get you in trouble. It’s enough to know she’s alive.” “I’m glad I was helpful,” Fhena said. “You’ve no idea,” Mere-Glim told her. He hesitated, and then touched his muzzle to her cheek. She jerked away in surprise. “Why did you do that?” she asked. “It’s called a kiss,” he said, feeling stupid. “Humans and mer do it to express—” “I know what a kiss is,” she replied. “We do it during procreation. Not like that, though. Are you asking me to procreate?” “No,” Mere-Glim said. “No. That was a different kind of kiss—it just expresses thanks. I’m not trying … No.” “I wonder if we even could?” she wondered. “I’m going now,” Glim said, and hurried away. Mere-Glim woke from nightmares of emptiness and pain and it was a moment before he understood someone was whispering his name. He sat up, grunting, and made out Wert’s features in the dim light. “What is it?” he asked. “Come with me,” Wert replied. “We want to talk to you.” He groggily followed Wert through the skraw passages and then out of them, into a place that had a stale sort of smell to it, as if it wasn’t used very often."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_040.txt", "text": "Light wands had been placed in a little pile, and around it stood eight other skraws. “What is this?” Glim asked. Wert cleared his voice. “You stood up to the overseer,” he said. “I was angry,” Glim replied. “And I’m not used to being treated like that.” “He’d never felt the pain before,” another of the skraws said. “I’ll bet he wouldn’t do it again.” “Well?” Wert said. “Well, what?” “Would you stand up to him again?” “I don’t know. If I had reason to. It’s only pain.” “He might have killed you. Probably the only reason he didn’t is that there’s only one of you, and you’re so valuable. But that’ll change soon.” “Why are you asking me this?” Glim snapped. “Why do you care?” “You said it yourself,” Wert said. “Why should we have to take the vapors? I didn’t really understand you when you started talking that way. It’s hard to think like that. But you’ve been most of your life without overseers. Things occur to you that don’t to us.” “It’s never occurred to you that your lives could be better?” “No. But now you’ve brought it up, see? Now it’s hard to make the thought go away.” “And you’ve spread it around.” “Right.” “So what do you want with me?” “Let’s say we want free of the vapors—just that one thing. How do we go about that?” Glim almost felt like laughing. Here was Annaïg’s resistance, such as it was. “Well,” he said slowly, “I haven’t thought about it. I’m not sure I want to.” “What do you mean?” “I mean this isn’t my sort of thing,” Glim replied. “I’m not interested in leading a revolution.” “But that’s not right,” Wert blurted. “If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be in this situation.” “Situation? You haven’t done anything yet, have you?” “Situation,” Wert repeated, tapping his head. “Look—” Glim began, but then stopped. He could use this, couldn’t he? If they thought he was leading them in some sort of insurrection, he could use them to get to Annaïg. He saw they were all watching him expectantly. “Look,” he said again, “without the sump, no one is born. Probably more than half of the food supply comes from here, and I’ll bet the Fringe Gyre needs water from here to produce the rest. And we control the sump.” “But the overseers control us.” “But they can’t—or won’t—do what we do. What if things started going wrong? Mysteriously? We don’t tell anyone that we’re behind it, and they punish us, but if things keep going wrong—if water doesn’t go where it’s supposed to, if the orchid shrimp die because we forget to scatter the nutrients, well, we’ll make a point. They can’t kill us all, because then who would see that new skraws are born?"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_040.txt", "text": "And then we let them know that all we ask for everything to go back to normal is something better than the vapors, something that doesn’t hurt you so much.” He saw they were all just staring at him, dumbstruck. “That’s crazy,” one of them finally said. “No,” Wert breathed. “It’s genius. Glim, how do we start?” “Quietly,” he said. “For now, the only thing I want you to do is make maps.” “Maps?” “Maps of any place we deliver to—food, nutrients, sediment—anything. I want to know where the siphons at the bottom of the Drop go and why. Do we have access to the ingenium through any of them?” “I mean, what’s a map?” Wert asked. Glim hissed out a long sigh, and then began to explain."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_042.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel Attrebus screeched involuntarily and the Khajiit howled; the sensation was like falling—not down, but in all directions at once. The moons were gone, and in their place a ceiling of smoke and ash. Stifling heat surrounded them and the air stank of sulfur and hot iron. They stood on black lava, and lakes of fire stretched off before them. “Stay together!” Sul shouted. He took a step, and again the unimaginable sensation, and now they were in utter darkness—but not silence, for all around them were chittering sounds and the staccato scurrying of hundreds of feet. They were in an infinite palace of colored glass. They were on an icy plane with a burning sky. They were standing by a dark red river, and the smell of blood was nearly suffocating. They were in the deepest forest Attrebus had ever seen. He was braced for the next transition, but Sul was suddenly swearing. “What?” Attrebus said. “Where are we? Is this still Oblivion?” “Yes,” he said “We’ve been interrupted. He must have sniffed out my spoor and laid a trap.” “What do you mean?” “This is part of a trail I made to escape Oblivion,” he said. “It took me years to make it. It starts in Azura’s realm and ends in Morrowind. I used the sympathy of Dagon’s gate to enter his realm at the point my trail crossed it, so we really started in the middle. A few more turns and we would have been there. Now …” He scratched the stubble on his chin and glanced at the leaves overhead. “We’re lucky,” he murmured. “We have some time before dark. We might have a chance.” “A chance against whom?” Attrebus asked “The Hunter,” Sul answered. “The Father of the Manbeasts—Prince Hircine.” In the distance Attrebus heard the sound of a horn, then another behind him. “We’re being hunted by a daedra prince?” “The Hungry Cat, we call him,” Lesspa said. She actually sounded excited. “I knew coming with you was the thing to do. There could be no worthier opponent than Prince Hircine.” “That may be,” Attrebus said, “but I don’t intend to die here, no matter how honorable a death it might be.” “He won’t necessarily kill us,” Sul said absently, turning slowly, looking out through the curiously clear forest and its enormous trees. “He didn’t kill me, the time he caught me. He just kept me here for a few years.” “How did you escape?” “That’s a very long story, and I didn’t do it without help.” “Well, being held here won’t do either.” “He’ll probably kill us,” Sul said. He pointed. “It’s that way—another door that will put us back on track. It’s in a more difficult place, which is why I prefer this one—but it will do.” “And if it’s trapped, too?” “Hircine always gives a chance,” Lesspa said. “That’s his way.” “She’s right,” Sul agreed."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_042.txt", "text": "“It’s not sport if the prey can’t escape.” The horns sounded again, and a third joined them, in the direction Sul had just pointed. “That’s bad,” Attrebus remarked. “Those are Hircine’s drivers,” Sul said, “not the prince himself. We haven’t heard his horn—you’ll know it when you do, believe me. If we can get past the driver, we might have a chance.” “We’ll get past him,” Lesspa said. “Mount behind me, Prince Attrebus. Sul, you ride S’enjara with Taaj.” Attrebus climbed up behind Lesspa. There was no saddle, or anything to hold onto but her, so he reached around her waist. The tigers began at an easy lope that was still far faster than Attrebus could have run. Lesspa had a lance in her left hand, and so did Taaj. The other two Khajiit had small but efficient-looking bows. The horns sounded again, the loudest now being the one they were headed toward. Because of the lack of understory, and because the huge trees were spaced so far apart, they caught glimpses of Hircine’s driver from a fair distance, but it wasn’t until the last thirty yards that Attrebus saw what they faced. The driver himself might have been a massive albino Nord with long, sinewy arms. He was bare to the waist and covered in blue tattoos. His mount was the largest bear Attrebus had ever seen, and four only slightly smaller bears ran along with him. “Bears,” Lesspa sighed. It sounded as if she were happy. She shouted a few orders in her native dialect. The archers wheeled and began firing, but Sha’jal was suddenly moving so fast that Attrebus nearly fell off. Everything to the sides blurred; only their destination was clear, and getting larger with terrifying speed. Sha’jal bellowed out a deafening roar and bounded up on one of the bears, using it as a step to kick himself even higher, and all of the weight went out of Attrebus as they soared straight at the driver. He brought up a spear with a leaf-shaped blade bigger than some short swords, but not quick enough to hit the huge cat. Lesspa’s lance went true into the driver’s chest, but the resulting impact spun them half around, and Attrebus finally lost his grip. He hit the ground on his shoulder, felt pain jar through his skeleton, but all he could think of were the bears all around him, so he scrambled back up despite the pain. A good thing, too, because one was coming right for him. He drew Flashing, made a wild stroke, and staggered aside as the bear lunged for his throat. Flashing bounced off the beast’s skull, leaving a cut that appeared to only make it madder. Then it reared up over him, giving him the opportunity to thrust his blade into its belly. It bawled and threw its weight on him, wrenching his weapon from his hand. He threw up his arms to protect his head and tried to roll aside."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_042.txt", "text": "He was only partly successful; the beast came down on his lower body, claws ripping into his byrnie. He kicked at the crushing weight, but it was only the bear rolling off to lick at its wounded belly that freed him. Heaving for breath, he took Flashing back up and chopped though its neck. A flash like lightning lit the trees; he turned and saw another of the bears topple, smoking, as Sul leapt over it and toward the heart of the fray. The white giant was gone, and in its place something between a man and a bear was fighting the Sench-tigers. It hurled two away, but even as it did, Sha’jal leapt on the driver’s back and closed his viselike jaws behind his neck. The other Khajiit were finishing off the mount. The other bears lay in brown heaps. The were-bear bawled and tried to shake free. Sul strode up almost casually and cut him from crotch to sternum. The tigers plunged into the were-beasts’ steaming entrails. They were quick about it, and before Attrebus had taken another twenty breaths, they were mounted again, riding hard as the other horns drew nearer. By the sound of it, one of the drivers was behind them and the other was coming from their left flank. “Hold on!” Lesspa yelled. He was just wondering why when they were suddenly moving downhill in what amounted to a controlled fall. They burst into open sunlight and bounded over a stream as they left the forest behind and plunged downslope to a grassy savanna. A red sun was just touching the horizon, painting bloody the river that meandered across the flatland. Of course, this was Oblivion, so it might be blood. Off to what he presumed was the south, he saw a herd of some large beasts, but before he could figure out what they were, they were on the plain and he couldn’t make them out anymore. They were in the same general direction as one of the drivers who was approaching and blowing, so he hoped that whatever they were, they might slow him down. “More our element, grassland,” Lesspa told him. It was only then that he noticed that M’qar was riderless. “Where’s J’lasha?” he asked Lesspa. “On Khenarthi’s path,” she replied. “I’m sorry.” “He died well. There’s no sorrow in that.” A herd of antelopes with twisting horns scattered at their approach. Lesspa slowed Sha’jal to a walk and dismounted. Taaj and Sul followed her lead. “The other drivers are still coming,” Attrebus pointed out. “The Sench are sprinters, not distance runners,” Lesspa replied. “They need to get their wind back if we’re to run again.” They were parallel to the river now, which had dug itself a respectable ditch here, at least a hundred feet deep. It made Attrebus nervous to have a sheer drop on one side and riders coming from every other direction. He told Sul so. “A tributary comes in up ahead,” Sul told him."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_042.txt", "text": "“It makes a gentler slope going in, and we can get down into the canyon there. The door we’re looking for is up the canyon another mile or so.” “You really think we’ll make it?” “Hircine himself won’t show up until after it’s dark. He hunts with a pack of werewolves. Until then all we have to do is avoid the drivers.” “Ground is shaking,” Lesspa observed. Attrebus felt it, too. At first he wondered if it wasn’t some characteristic of Hircine’s plane; he’d heard that Oblivion realms were often unstable. But then he saw the cloud of dust off to the south and understood the truth; what he felt was the thunder of thousands of hooves. “We probably want to avoid that, too,” he pointed out. “The driver,” Sul growled. “To mount!” Lesspa called, then sang out in Khajiit. Once again the tigers dug in and flew along the edge of the precipice. He could see the stampede now, but could only tell that the herd was brown. “Up ahead!” Sul shouted. “You see, there? That’s where we go down.” Attrebus could see it, all right, and could see that they were never going to make it, not at the speed that herd was moving. In less than a minute they were close enough for him to see they were some sort of wild cattle, albeit cattle that probably stood six feet high at the shoulders and had horn-spans almost that wide. Impossibly, the tigers increased their speed, and the tributary grew nearer, but now he could hear the beasts snorting and bellowing, closer and closer, a wall falling on him … And suddenly he saw the tiger Sul was riding make a peculiar leap that took it over the edge of the cliff. Then Sha’jal was in the air, too. The fall opened below him as if in a dream. Everything seemed to be moving quite slowly. They were nearly parallel to the cliff, and Sha’jal was lashing out at something—a tree, growing up from below them. He caught it and then all of the blood rushed from his head as they swung down and in toward the cliff face. When his senses returned, he was fetched up hard against some sort of recess in the rock wall; he could see the trunk of the tree rising from somewhere lower, but even as he watched, it was smashed from view by the rain of cattle that began pouring down a few yards in front of them. He looked right and left, and incredibly, all of the Khajiit and Sul were there, pressed against the back of the shallow rock shelter. Flakes of shale rained on their heads, and he could only hope that the weight of the wild cattle didn’t break it. They kept coming, bleating, eyes rolling, legs flailing. Lesspa started laughing, and the other Khajiit quickly joined her. After a moment, Attrebus found himself chuckling, too, not even certain why."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_042.txt", "text": "And, finally—as the last of the light was fading—the beasts stopped falling. “Quickly, now,” Sul said. “I think we can work our way down on this side. We don’t have much time.” Sul proved right—their hideaway was part of a larger erosional gully, probably an earlier channel of the tributary. They were able to step and slide their way down it. The river was choked with dead and dying cattle, and the water stank of their blood, urine, and feces. They continued downstream, crossing the tributary a few moments later. Attrebus could barely see now, but the Khajiit and Sul seemed to be having little trouble, and the strand along the river was sandy and relatively flat. And then a new, silvery light shone as a moon rose into the sky. Above, two horns blared, quite near. Upstream, another answered in a voice so incredibly deep and primal that Attrebus suddenly felt like a rabbit in the open, surrounded by wolves. It chased all thought from him, and before he knew it he was dashing forward in mindless terror. Something caught him from behind, and he swung violently, trying to break the grip before realizing it was Sul … “Easy,” he said. “Snap out of it.” “That’s Hircine,” Attrebus said. “It’s over.” “Not yet,” Sul said. “Not yet.” The horn sounded again, and now he heard wolves baying. “Keep together,” Sul warned them. “When we get there, we’ll have to be quick.” Dark figures watched them from both rims of the canyon, and strange bestial sounds drifted down, but apparently the other drivers were content just to keep them bottled in and let their master have the kill. They rushed on, breathless, limping. Sul shouted something, but Attrebus couldn’t make it out because of the wolves. He glanced behind him, and in the moonlight saw an enormous silhouette shaped like a man, but with the branching horns of a stag. “He’s here!” “So are we!” Sul shouted. “Ahead there, you see, where the canyon narrows. It’s just through there.” It was all running then, following Sul. The howls grew closer, so near that he could already feel the teeth in his back. The canyon narrowed until it was only about twenty feet wide. “Another fifty yards!” Sul shouted. “That’s too far,” Lesspa said. She stopped and shouted something in Khajiit. They all turned to face the hunt. “We’ll catch up after we’ve killed him,” she said. “Lesspa—” But Sul grabbed his arm and yanked him along. “Don’t spit on their sacrifice,” he said. “The only way to make it worthwhile is to survive.” Behind them he heard Lesspa’s warrior shriek, and a wolf howled in pain. He tried to concentrate on keeping his feet working beneath him and off the fire in his chest. He was terrified, but he wanted to stand with Lesspa, to stop running. And yet he knew he couldn’t. The walls of the canyon narrowed further, until they were only about ten feet apart."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_042.txt", "text": "The shingle vanished, and they were running in swiftly moving water. And something was splashing behind them. Then he took a step, and nothing was under it—the river dropped away into empty space. He didn’t see any bottom."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_044.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel Annaïg passed a bit of what had once been a soul along a wire drawn through a glass globe full of greenish vapor. As she watched, droplets formed on the wire and then quickly condensed into beadlike crystals. She waited for them to set properly, then carefully unsealed the two hemispheres of the globe and slid the wire out, so the tiny formations tinged and settled in the hollow glass and shone little tiny opals. “There’s that down,” she murmured. “Forty-eight more courses to go.” Lord Irrel’s tastes tended toward the inane. No meal of less than thirty courses ever pleased him, and fifty or more was safest. Almost everything he ate was the product of some process involving stolen souls. She’d been squeamish about that at first, but like a butcher getting used to blood, she had become less focused on what it was and more on what to do with it. At times she still wondered if she was destroying the last bit of a person, the final part of them that made them them. Toel assured her that wasn’t how it worked, that the energy that came to the kitchens came from the ingenium, which had already processed it to purity. In the end she felt sure she would have been more bothered by dismembering human corpses, even though there was nothing there to feel or know what was happening. A soft clearing of the throat behind her caused her to turn. A young woman with red skin and horns stood there, looking a little worried. Annaïg did not know her, but she was dressed as a pantry worker. “Pardon me, Chef,” the woman said. “Do not think I presume, and I’m certain what your answer will be, but a skraw is here with a delivery, and he says he will only give it to you.” “A skraw?” “That’s what they call them that work in the sump.” Annaïg’s spirit lifted in a sudden rush. Mere-Glim worked in the sump, or at least so Slyr had said. “Well,” she said, trying to keep her composure, “I suppose I have a moment. Take me to this fellow.” She followed the woman through the pantries and beyond, to the receiving dock, where she had never been. It wasn’t particularly imposing, merely a room with various tunnels leading away. There were also two large square holes in the walls that didn’t seem to go anywhere until she realized they were shafts going up and down. In fact, as she watched, a large crate came into one of them from above. Several workers sitting on the top of it got down and began unfastening the latches on the front. She did not see Mere-Glim. Instead, there was a dirty-looking fellow in a sort of loincloth holding a large bucket. “This is him, Chef.” “Very good—you may go,” Annaïg told her. She bowed and hurried off. “Well,” Annaïg asked."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_044.txt", "text": "“What’s this?” “Nothing, lady,” the man croaked. He looked unhealthy, jaundiced. “Only I was told to deliver this just to you.” She peered into the bucket, which seemed to be filled with phosphor worms, annalines, and dash clams. “That’s it?” “That’s it, lady.” “Very good, then. I’ll take them.” She took the bucket and went back up, hoping no one would see her, torn between hope that the bucket contained something from Glim and worry that it was all some weird practical joke. She stopped in the pantry and put the seafoods in their various holding tanks, and was leaning toward the practical joke end of things when her hand found something smooth and familiar. Her locket. She clutched it tight, realizing dizzily that this was one of the best moments of her young life. To have Glim back. And her mother’s amulet. And hope—she hadn’t realized just how resigned she had become to Umbriel. With no way to contact Treb, she’d tried not to think about him, which was to say not to think of escape. Yes, she’d found what she needed in order to leave, but hadn’t even put them together yet. She realized she must be grinning as if mad, so she took a moment to compose herself, slipped the amulet in her pocket, and went back to work. She went by the tree-wine vats first, however, and, making certain no one was in the area, flipped open the amulet. Inside was a little piece of some sort of hide or vellum, and although it was damp, the letters hadn’t run. It was in the private hand that she and Glim had invented as children. Annaïg: I found you and I’ve found the sky. I know more than I did. Let me know what and when and where. You can send a note by any of the skraws. She placed the locket in one of her drawers. The note she dipped in vitriol and watched it dissolve. Then she returned to her cooking station. She was putting a film on the soup when Slyr came over from her station. “Could you try this?” she asked. “I’ve been experimenting with condensations of those black, bumpy fruit. I forget what you call them.” “Blackberries?” “That’s right. Only they’re not black, are they? Their juice is almost the color of blood.” “Sure,” Annaïg said. She took the spoon, which had little droplets like perspiration on it, and carefully licked them off. They tasted a little like blackberries, but more like lemon and turpentine. “That’s pretty good,” she said, “at least by the lord’s standards. I should think it would go nicely on white silk noodles.” “That was my thought,” Slyr said. “Thanks for your advice.” She tilted her head. “I was looking for you earlier. I couldn’t find you anywhere.” “I went down to the pantry to check on a few things,” she said. “Ah,” Slyr said. “That explains it.” But her tone hinted that it didn’t."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_044.txt", "text": "Annaïg sighed as the woman walked off. Slyr grew more jealous by the day, even though she had learned to hide it pretty well. Slyr seemed convinced that she was trysting with Toel at every possible moment. Sometimes she felt like telling her about Toel’s offer and conditions, but worried that might actually make things worse. She finished filming the soup, then went back to her work with the tree-wine, thinking she might find the privacy there to open her locket. She had just reached the vats when she felt a funny scratch in the back of her throat. Her nose was numb, her head was ringing, and suddenly her heart was beating strangely. “Slyr!” she gasped, stumbling forward. Her lungs felt like they were closing. She shut her eyes, focusing on the taste, the scent, the feel of the stuff Slyr had given her, then leaned against her cabinet, rifling for ingredients. The ringing was growing louder, and all her extremities were cold. She built a picture of the poison in her mind, tried to think what would settle it, pacify it, break it apart, but everything was happening too fast. She fell onto the table, spilling jars and shattering vials. She let her instincts take over, just operating by smell, drinking some of this, a finger dab of that … The ringing crescendoed, and she went away. She came back on Toel’s balcony on a white couch draped with sheets. Toel himself sat a few feet away, looking over a scroll. She must have made a noise, because he turned, smiling. “Well, there you are,” he said. “That was very near.” “What happened?” “You were poisoned, of course. She used ampher venin. Its effects are delayed, but once symptoms develop, it works very quickly. Sound familiar?” She nodded, realizing to her dismay that under the sheets she didn’t have any clothes on. “You should have died, but you didn’t,” he continued. “You somehow concocted a stabilizer. That kept you alive the half an hour before someone noticed you lying there. Without me, of course, you would have died anyway, but it is … remarkable.” “I didn’t know what I was doing,” she replied. “On some level you did,” he replied. He put his hands on his knees. “Well,” he said. “How shall I have her executed?” “Slyr?” She felt a stab of anger, bordering on hatred. What had she ever done to Slyr to deserve murder? It was quite the opposite, wasn’t it? She had protected her. And yet, execution … He must have seen it in her face, because he sighed, crossed his legs, and sat back in his chair. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “She’s just afraid,” Annaïg said. “You mean jealous,” Toel replied. “Envious.” “It’s all the same thing, really,” Annaïg said. “She—I think she is not only afraid for her position here, she also desires your, ah … affections.” He smiled."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_044.txt", "text": "“Well, once my ‘affections’ are bestowed, they are not easily forgotten.” “What do you mean?” He rolled his eyes. “Are you really so naive? You don’t know?” “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” “How do you suppose you came to my attention? How do you think I so easily bypassed Qijne’s outer security? Why do you think Slyr fought so hard to save your life?” “She betrayed Qijne?” “She saw a chance to rise. I admire that in her—I came from a lowlier position than hers, and my desire to better myself brought me here. She has the ambition but not the talent—you have the talent but not the ambition.” Oh, I have ambition all right, Annaïg thought. The ambition to bring all of you down. But did she? If she could find some way to destroy Umbriel, could she do it, and doom all of these people? But she thought of Lilmoth and knew that she could. Why, then, couldn’t she bring herself to let Toel kill Slyr, who, after all, had just tried to murder her? Who had betrayed her comrades in Qijne’s kitchen to violent death? Surely this was someone who deserved to die. But she couldn’t say it, and she knew it. It was too personal, too close. “Let her live,” Annaïg said. “Please.” “The terms remain the same,” he said. “She remains your assistant. What makes you think she won’t try again?” Because I won’t be here, she thought. “She won’t,” she told him. He made a tushing noise. “You really don’t have it, do you? I thought you might be great, perhaps even greater than me one day, but you can’t do what must be done.” He signed, and one of Toel’s guards pushed Slyr from just beyond the door. The woman’s red eyes brimmed with misery. “What’s wrong with you?” Slyr asked. “I don’t understand you at all.” “I thought we were friends,” Annaïg replied. “We were,” Slyr said. “I think we were.” “That’s beautiful,” Toel said. “Touching. Now listen to me, both of you. Annaïg may have no drive, but she is more than a curiosity. She gives this kitchen the edge over the others, and I will brook no threat to her. Slyr, if she slips in the kitchen and cracks her head, you will die in the most horrible manner I can conceive, and I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors. I don’t care if Umbriel himself walks down here and strikes her down by his own hand, you will still suffer and perish. Only her breathing body keeps you alive. Do you understand?” Slyr bowed her head. “I do, Chef,” she murmured. “Very well.” He lifted his chin toward a servant in the corner. “When Annaïg is steady enough, bring her her clothes and return her to her rooms.” “And this one?” the guard said, indicating Slyr. “She’s shown initiative,” he said, “misguided, but there it is."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_044.txt", "text": "Clean her up and bring her to my quarters.” Slyr’s eyes registered disbelief, but then her lips curled in triumph. Molag Bal take them all, Annaïg thought. I’m getting off this damned rock."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_045.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel Annaïg was still weak from the effects of the poison, but she insisted on sleeping in her own quarters that night, and Toel’s servants allowed her her wish. Slyr did not return—a fact for which she was extremely grateful. That night she wrote Glim a note, in the same argot he’d written hers in. It was very simple. Glim. I’m glad you’re alive. I’ve got what we need. I’m ready to go. How soon, and where? Love. The next day, still pale and tending to tremble, she went early to the pantry. She found a skraw—not the same one—a woman this time. “What do you have here?” she asked her. “Thendow frills,” the skraw wheezed. “Sheartooth loin. Glands from duster stalks …” After a few moments, the pantry workers stopped their curious stares and went back to their business. They probably figured if one of the chefs wanted to come down and do their jobs, who were they to argue? When she was pretty sure no one was looking, she slipped the skraw the note. “I want the pearl-colored ones next time,” she said. “Do you understand?” “Yes, lady,” the skraw replied. “Good,” she said, and left the dock. She returned to the kitchens, did her portion of the dinner—Lord Irrel only ate one meal a day—and then went back to the tree-wine vats. With no hesitation at all she made eight vials of tonic. She put four in her pocket and the rest in the cabinet, and it was all very much like moving in a dream, detached, without fear, as if the poisoning had somehow made her invulnerable. It had certainly made her less visible. Toel didn’t speak to her at all, and Slyr kept her distance, although she did occasionally catch the other woman looking at her with what was probably disdain. But it didn’t matter. It just didn’t matter. She slept alone again that night, and the next morning she had a reply from Glim. Midnight tonight. Meet me at the dock. Something struck his feet, and Treb’s knees buckled, taking him straight down on his face in a bed of yellow wildflowers that smelled like skunk. He and Sul were on a hillside covered in various colorful blossoms and odd, twisting trees with caps like mushrooms. They were on a jagged island in a furious sea beneath a sky half-filled with a jade moon. They were on an island of ash and shattered stone, still surrounded by water, but this water appeared to be boiling. The steaming air stank of hard minerals, and the sky was bleak and gray. Sul just stood there, studying the ground, kicking at what looked like a shallow excavation, but he didn’t appear surprised. “Are we trapped again?” Attrebus asked. “No,” Sul grated. “We’ve arrived. Welcome to Vivec City.” He spat into the ash."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_045.txt", "text": "“I thought we were still in Oblivion.” “This doesn’t look homey to you?” “I—” He took in the scene again. The island stood in the center of a bay that was close to perfectly circular, with a rim standing somewhat higher than the island except in one place where it opened into a sea or larger lake. It reminded him of the volcanic crater he’d once seen on a trip to Hammerfell. To the left, beyond the rim, the land rose up in rugged mountains. “Don’t you see the how beautiful she is, this city?” Sul snapped. “Can’t you see the canals, the gondoliers?” He stabbed his finger out across the bay. “Don’t you see the great cantons, each building a city in itself? And here, right here—the High Fane, the palace, the Ministry of Truth—all for you to gaze upon that you might wonder.” Attrebus bowed his head a bit. “I’m sorry, Sul. I meant no disrespect. I’m sorry for what happened here.” “You’ve nothing to be sorry for as regards to this place,” Sul said. “But there are those who must account.” His voice sounded harsher than usual. “You might have warned me about the fall, back in Hircine’s realm,” Attrebus said, hoping to lighten the mood. To his surprise, it seemed to work. A hint of a grin pulled at Sul’s lips. “I told you it was harder to get to,” the Dunmer reminded him. “Just a tiny bit harder, I guess.” “It’s done now.” “I wish Lesspa—” He stopped, realizing he didn’t want to talk about that. Not long ago he’d had his arms around her waist, felt the breath in her, heard the savage joy of her cry. To think of her, torn and cold, her eyes staring at nothing … “We’d be dead now if it weren’t for her,” Sul said. “The Khajiit didn’t hold them for long, but it was long enough. We could have died with her, but then what about Umbriel, Annaïg, your father’s empire? You’re a prince, Attrebus. People die for princes. Get used to it.” “It wasn’t even her fight.” “She thought it was. You made her believe it was.” “And that’s supposed to make me feel better.” Sul’s softer mood broke as quickly as it had formed. “Why in the world would any of this be about making you feel better? A leader doesn’t do things to make himself ‘feel better.’ You do what you should, what you must.” Attrebus felt the rebuke almost like a physical blow. It left him speechless for a moment. Then he nodded. “How do we find this sword?” he asked. He waved his hands about. “I mean, in all of this ruin …” Sul studied him angrily for a moment, then looked away. “I was a servant of Prince Azura,” he said. “Insomuch as I serve anyone, I suppose I still serve her."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_045.txt", "text": "I wandered for years through Oblivion until she gave me haven in her realm, and there I slowly went mad. For a daedra prince, she is kind, especially to those she takes a liking to. She knew I wanted vengeance, and she gave me visions to help me achieve it. I did her services in the other realms. I settled problems for her, and in the end she promised to let me go, to act on what knowledge she had given me. She didn’t. She decided to keep me, one of her favorite playthings.” “And so you escaped her, as you escaped Vile’s realm.” “Yes. And yet, even though I am no longer in her realm or direct service, she still sends me the visions. Sometimes to aid, sometimes to taunt, never enough to be fully helpful. But she has no love for our enemy, and because of that I trust her more often than not.” “And she showed you where the sword is?” “Yes.” Attrebus frowned. “You were here before, when you escaped Oblivion. Why didn’t you find the sword then?” “This is all controlled by Argonians now,” he said, “although they obviously don’t live here. But they do have some ritual associated with this crater, what is now called the Scathing Bay. I arrived here during the ritual, so after running through half the realms of Oblivion, I had to keep running until they gave up, somewhere in the Valus Mountains. After that I … delayed coming back here. It’s not easy to see this.” “I can understand that,” Treb said. “You can’t, really,” Sul replied. “Wait here. I need to do something. Alone.” “Even if you find the sword, how do we get across this boiling water?” “Don’t worry about that,” Sul said. “I’ve been here before, remember? Occupy yourself. Keep an eye out for Umbriel. I’ll find the sword.” He watched Sul pick his way across the island until he vanished behind an upjut. He looked off across the waters south, toward where Umbriel ought to be, but saw nothing but low-hanging clouds, so he sat down and went through his haversack, looking for food. He was chewing on a bit of bread when Coo cried softly. He pulled the mechanical bird out, and to his delight found himself staring at the image of Annaïg’s face. Her eyebrows were steepled and she looked pale, and then her eyes widened and she started to cry. “You’re there!” she mumbled. “Yes,” Attrebus said. “I’m here. Are you all right?” “I didn’t cry until now,” she said. “I haven’t cried since before any of this began. I’ve kept it locked … I—” She broke off, sobbing uncontrollably. He reached forward, as if to comfort her, but realized, of course, that he couldn’t. It was heart-wrenching to watch such pain and not be able to do anything. “It’s going to be fine,” he ventured."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_045.txt", "text": "“Everything’s going to be fine.” She nodded, but kept crying for another long moment before finally regaining control of her voice. “I’m sorry,” she said, still sniffling. “Don’t be,” he said. “I can only imagine what you’ve been through.” “I’ve tried to be brave,” she said. “To learn the things you’ll need to know. But I have to leave this place now. I thought I was fine until I saw you. I thought I wasn’t afraid anymore. But I am.” “Who wouldn’t be?” Treb soothed. “Can you? Can you leave?” “I’ve re-created the solution that allowed me to fly, and I’ve found a way to Glim—and he’s found a place where we can get out. I … I don’t think I can wait until you reach us. We’re leaving tonight.” “But that’s perfect,” Attrebus said. “I’m in Morrowind. I think you’re coming straight to us.” “You’re in our path?” “My companion thinks so.” “Well you can’t stay there,” she said. “I told you what it does.” “Don’t worry about us,” he said. “When you escape, I’ll find you. I’ll let you know which way to fly. Yes?” She nodded. “I thought you might be dead,” he said. “I kept trying to contact you—” “I lost my locket,” she said. “But I got it back.” “So you’re leaving tonight?” he asked. “That’s the plan,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And are you alone right now?” “For the moment,” she said. “Someone might come, and then I’ll have to hide the locket.” “Fine, I’ll understand when you have to go. But until then, tell me what’s been happening. Tell me how you are.” And he listened as she told him her tale in her sweet lilting voice, and he realized how very much he had missed it. Missed her. Sul trudged to the other side of the island, trying not to let his rage blot out his ability to think. It wasn’t enough that the ministry fell; the impact caused the volcano that was the heart and namesake of Vvardenfell to explode. Ash, lava, and tidal waves had done their work, and when that was calmed, the Argonians had come, eager to repay what survived of his people for millennia of abuse and enslavement. Of course, those that had settled in southern Morrowind were likely regretting it now, as Umbriel moved over their villages. That didn’t help, though, did it? He looked again at the size of the crater. How fast had the ministry been traveling? Did she feel anything? Had Ilzheven known who killed her? Find the sword. Kill Vuhon. Then it would be over. He remembered the ingenium exploding; it had expanded and distorted first, and then all he had known was a sort of flash. Then he and Vuhon were elsewhere, in Oblivion. In his vision, Azura had shown him that again, shown him Umbra hurling the blade through the vanishing portal—and then the scene changed, and he’d seen the sword, lying on shattered stone."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_045.txt", "text": "He saw it covered by a few feet of ash. But he and Attrebus had come through the weak spot left by the portal, just as he had a few years earlier, just as the sword must have. It was a tricky spot, because the ingenium had been exploding at the same instant the ministry finished its ages-long fall, so rather than a spot or sphere, the rift was more like a shaft, most of it underground. If he hadn’t seen the sword on the surface, he would have imagined it entombed beneath his feet. But it hadn’t been where he’d seen it; there wasn’t enough ash, and then there was what looked like an excavation. He hadn’t had time to notice that when he appeared in the midst of the Argonians, but this time it took only a few seconds to realize that someone had already taken Umbra. He could almost hear Azura laughing, because she knew what he had to do next. His lover formed like a column of dust, like the whirlwinds in the ashlands, tightening in circumference as her presence intensified, until at last each delicate curve of her face drifted before him. Only her eyes held color, and those were like the last fading of a sunset. “Ilzheven,” he whispered, and the eyes flickered a bit brighter. “I am here,” she said. It was a mere wisp of sound, but it was her voice, the only music he remembered from that long-ago life. “I am always here. A part of this.” Her face softened. “I know you, Ezhmaar,” she said. “What has happened to you, my love?” “Time still passes for me,” he replied, angry at his voice for the way it quavered. “Much has happened to me in its grip.” “It is not time that has hurt you so,” she said. “What have you done to yourself, Ezhmaar?” She reached to touch his face, and he felt it as a faint, cool breeze. “Is it still there?” she went on. “The house where we learned each other? In the bamboo grove, where the waters trickled cold from the mountains and the larkins sang?” His throat closed and for a moment he couldn’t answer. “I haven’t seen it since we last were there together,” he finally managed. But he knew it couldn’t be. Not as close as the valley had been to the volcano. “It is still here,” she said, lightly touching her chest. “That place, my love—our love.” He touched his own breast, but couldn’t say anything for fear of undoing himself, just when he most needed all of his strength. “I don’t have long, Ilzheven,” he said. “I need to ask you something.” “I will answer you if I can,” she said. “There was a sword here, in the ash. It fell after the impact."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_045.txt", "text": "Can you tell me what became of it?” Her gaze went off past him and stayed there for so long he feared he couldn’t hold her present any longer. But then she spoke again. “Rain exposed the hilt, and men found it. Dunmer, searching this place. They took it with them.” “Where?” “North, toward the Sea of Ghosts. The bearer wore a signet ring with a draugr on it.” He felt his grip loosening. Ilzheven reached for him again, but her fingers became dust and blew off on the breeze. “Let it go,” she whispered. “Do no more harm to yourself.” “You don’t understand,” he said. “I am part of this place,” she said. “I know all that happened, and I beg you for the love we shared, let it go.” “I cannot,” he said, as her face was erased by the wind. He stood there for a long time, fighting his shame, hardening his heart. It would not do for Attrebus to see him like this. But it had been so good to hear her voice. He missed that most of all. “I have to go,” Annaïg said suddenly. “I hear someone coming. Keep well.” “Take care,” he said, “don’t …” But she was already gone. He held the bird for a few more moments, thinking that perhaps she’d been mistaken and they could resume their conversation. After a few minutes he gave up and replaced Coo in his sack. Then he looked off what he guessed to be south, where the crater opened into what must be the Inner Sea, if he remembered his geography lessons correctly. Something about the scene struck him as peculiar—other than the boiling of the water and all—but at first he couldn’t place it. Then he realized what he was seeing was the top of a mountain, peeking through the clouds. Peeking through the bottom of the clouds. “Oh, no,” he whispered. From Annaïg’s description, he’d thought he would see it coming, even with the clouds—where were the flashing threads, the larvae diving down? But that would only happen if something alive was below it, and there wasn’t anything living here, was there? He smelled boiled meat and tracked his gaze back to the water. Things were coming out of Scathing Bay. North, beyond the Sea of Ghosts, Sul reflected. That probably meant Soulstheim. That would have to be overland or by sea, then. He didn’t have a handy path through Oblivion to reach the islands. He wondered if all of the inner sea was boiling. He heard Attrebus shouting. Swearing, he drew his sword and ran toward where he’d left the prince. He nearly ran into him on the rise. “It’s here!” Attrebus shouted. “The damned thing is already here!” Sul gazed toward the water, at the lumbering monsters that had once been living flesh. It would be hard to tell what most of them had been if it weren’t for their tails."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_045.txt", "text": "“That way off of the island you were talking about?” Attrebus asked. “The way we came,” Sul replied. “We have to fight our way back to the spot where we arrived.” “That’s … not good. Do you have any arts that will allow us to swim in scalding water?” “No.” Sul saw that he was scared, and that he was trying not to be. “The longer we wait, the harder it will be,” Sul said. He reached into his sack and produced his ointment, redabbing their brows. “We cut a path to our arrival point,” he said. “That’s all we have to do. Just stay alive that long.” “Let’s go, then,” Attrebus said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel When Colin heard the tap of hard-soled shoes, he whispered the name of Nocturnal and felt the shadows around him; felt the moonlight press them down through the marble of the palace to kiss the camp, gritty cobblestones, felt them enter his eyes and mouth and nostrils until he was a shadow himself. Felt them drape across the woman who emerged into the courtyard from the office of the minister. He padded after her. She was cloaked and cowled, but he knew her walk; he’d been watching her for days. Not for long at a time, because he had cases to attend to. Marall had been right about that—he’d been pulled from the business concerning Prince Attrebus immediately. But he wasn’t quite willing to let it go, was he? He couldn’t even say why. So he’d found the woman Gulan had spoken to that last time, an assistant to the minister. Her name was Letine Arese, a petite blond woman of thirty years. He’d learned her habits, how she moved, when she left the ministry evenings, where she went after. Tonight, as he’d expected, she was breaking all of her patterns. Leaving at eight instead of six. Going northeast toward the Market District instead of heading for the Foaming Flask for a drink with her sister and assorted friends. She wound her way through the crowds of the market district, and Colin became less a shadow and more a nobody—there, avoided if necessary, but not really remarked. After a time she left the arteries for the veins, and then capillaries, where once again it was him and her and shadow. She came to a door and rapped on it. A slit opened; soft words were spoken. Then the door swung out a crack and she entered. He quickly examined the building. There were no ground-floor windows, of course—not in this neighborhood, but the house had three stories, and on the third he made one out. He couldn’t see ladders or drainpipes to climb, but the building next door was so close he was able to brace his arms and legs and go up it as he might a chimney. Annaïg just managed to hide the amulet before Slyr came out of the corridor. The other woman looked around, puzzled. “Who were you talking to?” she asked. “To myself,” Annaïg replied. “It helps me think.” “I see.” She stood there for a moment, looking uncomfortable. “Do you want something?” Annaïg inquired. “Don’t kill me,” Slyr blurted. “What the Xhuth! are you talking about?” Annaïg demanded. “You were there—you heard Toel. If I had wanted you dead, you would be dead.” “I know,” she cried, wringing her hands. “It didn’t make any sense. The only thing I can think of is that you want to do it yourself, when I’m not expecting it. You could probably think of something really inventive and nasty."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "Look, I know you’re probably mad at me—” “‘Probably’ mad at you?” Annaïg exploded. “You tried to kill me!” “Yes, I see now how that might upset you,” Slyr said. “To be fair, I wasn’t expecting to have to deal with any sort of … Well, this.” “Yes,” Annaïg said, measuring her words. “Yes, I understand that because you imagined I would be dead. Now I’m not, and because you haven’t a decent bone in your body, you assume no one else does.” In that instant, her anger constricted violently into the most vicious rage she’d ever known. She felt a sudden jerk on her wrist and then something slid around her pointer finger and stiffened. Qijne’s filleting knife. Of course—all she needed was to really want to kill someone. And she could. Two steps … “Please, don’t joke with me,” Slyr pleaded. “I can’t even sleep, I’m so miserable.” Annaïg willed her heart to slow. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “You’ve been sleeping with Toel.” Slyr blinked. “I’ve been procreating with Toel,” she admitted, “but you don’t imagine he lets me stay in his bed all night! I’ve been sleeping in the halls, terrified of what you’re going to do next.” “Next? I haven’t done anything to you.” “You didn’t poison the Thendow frills this morning?” “They were poisoned?” “Well,” she hedged, “not that I could tell. But I heard you were down there, handling them, and that doesn’t make much sense unless you were up to something. And you knew I was supposed to make the decoction of Thendow—” “You aren’t dead, are you?” “Of course not! I made Chave do the Thendow.” “Unbelievable,” Annaïg said. “And did Chave die?” “You’re clever enough to make something that would only affect me—I know you are. My hairs are all over our room.” Annaïg rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to kill you, Slyr. At least not today.” But then she remembered her appointment with Glim, and she shot the other woman a nasty smile. “But there’s always tomorrow.” “I’ll do anything,” Slyr said. “Anything you ask.” “Perfect. Then go away and don’t talk to me again unless it’s pertaining to our work.” It was probably twenty minutes after the woman left that the knife slowly withdrew back to Annaïg’s wrist. The kitchen wasn’t still at night; the hobs were there, cleaning, jabbering in a language she didn’t know. She had wondered about that, from time to time. Everyone she had spoken to claimed that everyone came out of the sump, went back to the sump, and so forth. But what about the hobs and scamps? Were they “people” in the sense that chefs and skraws were? Or were they like the foodstuff that came from the sump and the Fringe Gyre—things that grew and reproduced in a normal sort of way? Maybe Glim knew. After all, he’d been working in the sump. The hobs gave her curious looks as she passed through the kitchen."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "She wasn’t worried—she doubted they would say anything to their masters, but if they did, it would be too late. Before entering the pantries, she stopped and looked back, and for a moment she almost seemed to see herself, or a sort of ghost of herself, the person she might have become if she’d followed Toel’s advice instead of her heart. The ghost looked confident, effective, filled with secrets. Annaïg turned and left her there, to fade. The dock, unlike the kitchen, was very quiet, and dark, and she had no light. She stood there, waiting, starting to feel it all unravel. What if it was all a trap of some sort, a trick, a game? But then she heard something wet move. “Glim?” “Nn!” And he was there, his faintly chlorine scent, the familiar rasp of his breath, his big damp scaly arms crushing her to his chest. “You’re getting me wet, you big lizard,” she said. “Well, if you want me to leave …” She hit him on the arm and pushed back. “Daedra and Divines it’s good to see you, Glim. Or almost see you. I thought I had lost you.” “I found Qijne’s body,” he said, “and the others from her kitchen—” He choked off into a weird, distressed gasping sound that she hadn’t heard since they were both children. “Let’s not talk through our chance,” she said, patting his arm. “Plenty of time to talk later.” Glim snorted. “No one is going to try and stop us,” he said. “No one here can conceive of leaving the place.” “Toel would stop me, if he knew,” she said. “So let’s not dally.” And so Glim guided her onto one of the big dumbwaiter things, and shortly they began ascending, “I’ve never been up this,” Glim said. “But I suspect it’s a lot easier than the route I’ve been using. And you won’t have to breathe underwater.” “Which is nice,” she replied. “Although I’ve got that covered, if it comes to it.” She patted her pockets. “Do you?” he asked. His voice sounded a bit odd. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing that matters now.” They arrived at a dock not unlike the one they’d left, but Glim found a stairway that took them up and out to the Fringe Gyre. Both moons were out, making a glowing ocean of the low clouds that came up almost to Umbriel’s rim. The gyre fanned below them, as fantastic a forest as she could ever imagine. And behind—the dazzling spires of Umbriel as she had never seen them—at night from the highest level. Even Toel was far below her. One tower rose higher than all of them by far, a fey thing that might have been spun from glass and gossamer. Who lived there? What were they like? She took a deep breath and turned firmly away. It didn’t matter. Then she handed Glim his dose. “Drink,” she said. “Your desires guide you, do you understand?"}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "We want to be as far west of here as we can get.” “I’ll just follow you,” Glim said. She took his hand. “We’ll go together.” And they drank, and they dropped away from Umbriel, and flew over the lambent clouds. Sul furrowed his brow and mumbled something under his breath. The air before them shivered and coruscated, and suddenly a monstrous daedra with the head of a crocodile stood between them and the walking dead. It turned to face Sul, its reptilian eyes full of hatred, but he barked something at it, and with a snarl it turned and rushed into their attackers. Sul waded in behind the thing, and Attrebus followed. He hacked at the rotting, boiled corpse of an Argonian; he hit its upper arm, and Flashing sheared through the decomposing flesh as if it were cheese, hit the bone, and slid down to cut through the elbow joint. The thing came on, heedless of its loss, and he had to fight the urge to vomit. It reached for him again and he cut off its head, which of course didn’t stop it either, so he next chopped at its knees. The next one to come at him had a short sword, which it jabbed at him in a thoroughly unsophisticated way. He cut the arm off and then slashed at its legs, so it fell, too. What surprised him was how fast they were. Somehow he’d imagined them slower. He and Sul weren’t fighting forward anymore, but had their backs to the Dunmer’s summoning and were trying to keep from being surrounded. They were still moving toward their arrival point, but not very quickly, and the dead were now thick on all sides. Attrebus and Sul wielded their weapons more like machetes than swords, chopping as if to clear a jungle path of vines—except the vines kept coming back. Treb knew it was over when one of them fell and caught him around the leg, holding on with horrible strength. He chopped down at it, and one of those in front of him leapt forward and grappled his sword arm. Then he went down in a wave of slimy, slippery, disgusting bodies. He had time for one short howl of despair. I’m sorry Annaïg, he thought. I tried. He waited for the knife or teeth or claws that would end him, but it didn’t happen. In fact, once they had him and Sul immobilized, they stood them both back up. Attrebus renewed his struggles, but quickly found there wasn’t much point. “What are they doing?” he asked Sul. But his answer didn’t come from the Dunmer; everything seemed to spin around, and the bleak landscape of Morrowind vanished. The window was barred and latched, but he had a small magic for that, and soon he was standing in someone’s bedroom, which fortunately was empty. He found the stairs and made his way down until he barely heard voices."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "He sat in the darkened stairs, beat down his worries, focused, and listened. “… would have known?” Arese was saying. “Anyone,” a male voice rumbled. “Anyone who knows you failed to pass on Gulan’s warning concerning the prince’s activities.” “That is a limited number of people,” she said. “What about the woman, Radhasa?” “I’ve not heard from her. She was supposed to lie low after the massacre—else how could she explain her survival? This note isn’t signed.” “Why on Tamriel would a blackmailer sign their name to a note?” “I see your point.” “But if not her, that leaves me with you,” she said. “Or someone else in your organization.” “Impossible.” “I argued against using you people in the first place,” she snorted. “The job was done.” “The job was not done. Attrebus lives, and someone has implicated me in the bargain.” “You’ve no proof Attrebus lives,” the man asserted. “That’s only a rumor.” “Wrong. A courier arrived from Water’s Edge this morning with news that he is alive. It went straight to the Emperor. He’s keeping it quiet, but troops have already been sent.” That’s news, Colin thought. He’d written the “blackmail” letter himself, to draw her out, but he hadn’t heard anything about a courier. “Well, then,” the man said. “I don’t leave a job unfinished. I deal with it, at no extra charge.” “That won’t do. Not now.” The man laughed. “Now, let’s not get silly,” he said. “If you don’t want me to finish the job, fine, but you’re not getting your money back. Don’t forget who I am.” “You’re a glorified thug,” Arese replied. “That’s who you are.” “I love your type,” the man snarled. “You pay me to do murder so you can pretend your hands are clean, so you can continue to think yourself better than me. I have news for you—you’re worse, because you don’t have the guts to put down your own dogs.” “I wouldn’t say that,” she replied, a colder note in her voice. “You’re not threatening me.” Colin heard several doors open, and he could all but see the man’s guards coming in. But then he heard something else, a sort of ripping sound accompanied by a rush of air and glass shattering. Every hair on his body pricked up. The next thing he heard was something human ears were not meant to receive, the human brain not meant to interpret, the primal feral sound of which the lion’s roar or the wolf’s growl were faint shadows. Harsh yellow light shone up the stairs, and then darkness. Then the screaming began, very human and beyond all terror. Colin began to shiver, then to shake. He was still shaking when the last of the screams abruptly choked off and he felt something ponderous moving through the house. Searching."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "When light returned, Attrebus first thought he was plunging through a shimmering sky, but it took only a moment to understand that although he was in the air, he wasn’t falling, but supported. The shimmer was glass—or what appeared to be glass—and it was all around him; was in fact what held him up in so strange a fashion that it took a moment to sort out how. Some forty feet below him was a web that might have been two hundred feet in diameter. It looked very much like a spider’s web, anchored to three metallic spires, an upthrust of stone, and a thicker tower of what appeared to be porcelain. Below the web was a long drop into a cone-shaped basin half full of emerald water and covered with strange buildings everywhere else. The web was made of glasslike tubes about the thickness of his arm. Every few feet along any given tube another sprouted and rose vinelike toward the sky. These in turn branched into smaller tendrils so that the whole resembled a gigantic bed of strange, transparent sea creatures—and indeed, most of them undulated, as if in a current. Attrebus was about ten feet from the top of the bushy structure, where the strands were no thicker than a writing quill, and these were what held him up. They clustered thickly on the soles of his boots, pressed his back and torso and every part of him except his face with firm, gentle pressure. He tried to take a step, and they moved with him, reconfiguring so he didn’t fall. They cut the sunlight into colors like so many prisms, but it was nevertheless not difficult to see in any direction. He noticed Sul a few feet away, similarly borne. “You did it!” he shouted. The crystalline strands shivered at his voice and rang like a million faint chimes. “We got away.” “I didn’t do anything,” Sul replied, shaking his head. “I never got close enough to the door to escape into Oblivion.” “Then where are we?” Treb asked. “In my home,” a voice answered. Attrebus looked higher up and saw someone walking down toward them, the transparent tubules shifting to meet his feet. He appeared to be a Dunmer of average size, his gray hair pulled back in a long queue. He wore a sort of loose umber robe with wide sleeves and black slippers. “Amazing,” the man said. “Sul. And you, I take it, are Prince Attrebus. Welcome to Umbriel.” “Vuhon,” Sul snarled. The only strange thing about the man’s appearance, Attrebus noticed, were his eyes—they weren’t red, like a Dunmer’s; the orbs where milky white and the surrounds black. “Once,” the man said. “Once I was called that. You may still use that name, if you find it convenient.” Sul howled, and Attrebus saw his hand flash as when he’d fought and burned Sharwa, but the balefire coruscated briefly in the filaments and then faded."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "Attrebus ran forward, lifting Flashing, but after a few steps the web suddenly went rigid like the glass it resembled, and he couldn’t move anything below his neck. “Please try to behave yourselves,” Vuhon said. “As I said, this is my home.” He let himself slump into a sitting position a few feet above them, and the strands formed something like a chair. “You’ve come here to kill me, I take it?” he asked Sul. “What do you think?” Sul said, his voice flat with fury. “I just said what I think—I merely phrased it as a question.” “You murdered Ilzheven, destroyed our city and our country, left our people to be driven to the ends of the earth. You have to pay for that.” Vuhon cocked his head. “But I didn’t do any of that, Sul,” he said softly. “You did. Don’t you remember?” Sul snarled and tried to move forward again, without success. Vuhon made a languid sort of sign with his hand, and the glassy vines rustled. A moment later they handed up to each of them a small red bowl full of yellow spheres that did not appear to be fruit. Vuhon took one and popped it in his mouth. A faint green vapor vented from his nostrils. “You should try them,” he said. “I don’t believe I will,” Attrebus said. Vuhon shrugged and turned his attention back to Sul. “Ilzheven died when the ministry hit Vivec City, old friend,” he said. “And the ministry hit Vivec City because you destroyed the ingenium preventing it falling.” “You were draining the life out of her,” Sul accused. “Very slowly. She would have lived for months.” “What are you talking about?” Attrebus demanded. “Sul, what’s he saying?” Sul didn’t answer, but Vuhon turned toward Attrebus. “He told you about the ministry? How we devised a method to keep it airborne?” “Yes. By stealing souls.” “We couldn’t find any other way to do it,” Vuhon allowed. “Given time, perhaps we could have. At first we had to slaughter slaves and prisoners outright, as many as ten a day. But then I found a way to use the souls of the living, although only certain people had souls—well, for simplicity’s sake, let us say ‘large’ enough. We only needed twelve at a time, then. A vast improvement. Ilzheven was chosen because she had the right sort of soul.” “You chose her because she wouldn’t love you,” Sul contradicted. “Because she loved me instead.” “We were always competitive, you and I, weren’t we?” Vuhon said, almost absently, as if just remembering. “Even as boys. But we were friends right up until the minute you burst into the ingenium chamber and starting trying to cut Ilzheven free.” “I meant only to free her,” Sul said. “If you hadn’t fought me, the ingenium would never have been damaged.” “You put yourself and your desires ahead of our people, Sul. And all you see is the result.” “You’re twisting it all up,” Sul said."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "“You know what happened.” Vuhon shrugged again. “It’s not important to me anymore. Did you find the sword?” “What sword?” Vuhon’s eyes narrowed. “I suppose you didn’t find it. My taskers certainly haven’t.” His voice rose and his calm broke. Attrebus suddenly seemed to hear boundless anger and violence in the Dunmer’s tone. “Where is it?” he shouted. “What do you want with it?” Attrebus asked. “That’s none of your concern.” “I think everything about you is my concern,” Attrebus snapped back. “Whatever happened in the past, you’re many thousands of times a murderer now. All those people in Black Marsh …” Vuhon sat back, seemed to relax. His voice became once again maddeningly tranquil. “I can’t really deny that,” he admitted. For a moment Attrebus was stunned by the casual confession. “But why?” he asked finally. “Look around you,” Vuhon said. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Almost against his will, Attrebus once again took in the sight of Umbriel. “Yes,” he was forced to confess. “This is my city,” Vuhon said. “My world. I do what I must to protect it.” “Protect it from what? How does destroying my world save yours? Are there no souls to feed on in Oblivion?” Vuhon seemed to consider that for a moment. “I’m not sure why I should waste my time telling you,” he replied. “I’ll most likely have to kill you anyway.” “If that’s so, why haven’t you done so?” “There are things you know that might be helpful to me,” Vuhon replied. “Or, if you could be convinced, do for me.” “Convince me, then,” Attrebus said. “Explain all of this.” Vuhon ran his thumb under his lips and shrugged. “Sul told you how we were cast into Oblivion? How we met Umbra, and the deal I made with him?” “Yes,” Attrebus replied. “And how you tortured him.” Vuhon’s grin turned a little nasty. “Yes, but I grew bored with that. I could never torture him as much as he tortured himself.” “A problem I won’t have with you,” Sul said. “Ah, Sul. You really haven’t changed.” The red bowls were gone, replaced by skewers of slowly writhing orange caterpillars. “Vile had made it impossible for Umbra to leave his realm, and after your escape, Sul, he tightened his walls further so that I couldn’t leave either, even if I’d had the means. The only way to escape was to circumvent his restriction, to remain in his realm, at least in a way. I built my ingenium, I powered it with Umbra and the energies he had stolen from Vile. I turned our city, wrapped those circumscribed walls around it. Twisted it like a sausage maker twists a casing to form a link, the way a child might an inflated pig’s bladder to form a double ball. Twisted it until it broke loose, like a bubble.” He bit one of the caterpillars, and it exploded into a butterfly, which he caught by the wing and devoured."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "“That was a long time ago,” he went on. “We’ve drifted through many realms and places beyond even Oblivion. We cannot leave the city—Vile’s circumscription still surrounds it. Nor would I want to leave it—I’ve come to love this place I built. To survive in those long spaces between the worlds, we had to become a little universe of our own, a self-sustaining cycle of life and death and rebirth, a continuum of matter and spirit—all powered, manipulated, mediated by my ingenium. We’ve moved beyond the inefficiency some call ‘natural,’ and in doing so approach perfection. Everything here is in a real sense a part of everything else, because all flows from the ingenium.” Sul—off to the right and in the corner of Treb’s vision—made a sudden gesture with his hands. Without turning his head, Attrebus shifted his gaze the tiniest bit. The Dunmer’s lips moved in an exaggerated fashion. Keep him talking, Attrebus thought he was saying. Attrebus put his full focus on Vuhon, who didn’t seem to have noticed. “Not so self-sustaining,” he countered. “Your world feeds on souls from the outside world.” Vuhon nodded. “I said we ‘approach’ perfection. Beyond Mundus, our need for sustenance is minimal. In some places, not necessary at all. Here, on this heavy plane of clay and lead, much more is required.” “Then why have you come here?” “Because this is one place that Clavicus Vile cannot pursue us, at least not in the fullness of his power.” “Then you’ve won,” Attrebus said. “You’re free. Why are you still running? Surely there must be some way to land this thing—in a valley, a lake—someplace?” “It’s not that simple,” Vuhon answered. “Vile can still work against us. He can send mortal followers to assassinate me, for instance.” He nodded pointedly at Sul. “Sul’s not an agent of Clavicus Vile,” Attrebus protested. “Do you know that? He was in Oblivion for a long time. And he hates me enough to make whatever bargains he thinks will get him his revenge. But that aside—Umbriel isn’t fully in your world yet.” “Yet?” Vuhon shook his head. “No, we remain a sort of bubble of Oblivion in Mundus, and as such we’re vulnerable. But I’ve found a way to change that, and to be free of Clavicus Vile forever.” “And you need this sword of Umbra to do that?” Again, that sudden uncharacteristic rage seemed to rise up in Vuhon. “No,” he all but snarled. “But you do want it,” Sul said, breaking his long silence. “It can still undo you, can’t it? Where is Umbra, Vuhon? You said he powers your ingenium. If Umbra is re-imprisoned in the sword, what becomes of your beautiful city?” Vuhon seemed to be actually shaking with rage. He closed his eyes and drew long deep breaths. When he finally did speak again, it was in even tones. “We didn’t come just for the sword,” he said. “I came to repair the rift into Vile’s realm, and now that’s done."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "Umbra wanted to find the weapon, and we shall still look for it, but we have other agents that can do that. If you know where it is, I will find out, I promise you. But it’s time to turn my attentions elsewhere.” “Why didn’t you use these other ‘agents’ of yours in the first place?” Attrebus asked. “They couldn’t have sealed the rift. Besides, this little meander gave me time to build my army. It’s already marching, you know. The walkers need not remain near Umbriel—they can go where I choose.” He scratched his chin. “And here is where you might prove yourself useful to me, Prince Attrebus,” he said. “Why should I want to do that?” Attrebus asked. “To preserve your own life, and the lives of many of your people. And to finally be the man you want to be.” A little spark traveled up his spine. “What do you mean, ‘the man I want to be’?” “I mean I suspect that your adventures have probably caused you to learn that much of your fame is based on fraud.” “How do you know that?” Attrebus asked, backing away. “If you’ve just come from Oblivion …” “Don’t you see?” Sul shouted. “He has someone inside the palace. That’s who tried to have you killed.” “Is this true?” Attrebus challenged. “Your fame was the problem, apparently. My ally feared you might create popular demand to attack Umbriel before we were ready, and to make the siege more bitter.” “Siege?” “Regrettably, I must attack the Imperial City. I suspect they will resist.” “Why must you attack the city?” “I need the city,” Vuhon said. “Specifically, I need to reach the White-Gold Tower. Then all of this can end. The dying can stop, and I can bring Umbriel to rest somewhere. If you want to save lives, all you need do is convince your father not to fight—better yet, to evacuate.” “My father spent his life putting the Empire back together. There’s no way he would surrender the White-Gold Tower. I certainly couldn’t convince him.” “You could try. It’s the offer I’m making you. I have gifts for you, the kind that only a god can bestow. You can return to Cyrodiil and lead your people to safety. You can be a real hero.” Attrebus looked at Sul, then back out at the city. “What about Sul?” Vuhon ate another butterfly. “Sul is mine. I’ll learn what he knows and then he will die.” “If you murder Sul, I’ll never help you.” “Think carefully, Prince. I could have lied to you and told you he would live. I didn’t. If you don’t help me, you’ll die, too. And then I will still take what I want at whatever cost of life is required.” Annaïg felt sheer exhilaration as she rushed through the air. The first time she’d been too terrified to even begin to enjoy it. This time she felt it was the most wonderful thing she’d ever done."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "She glanced back at the receding bulk of Umbriel. Nothing was following them. No one seemed to have noticed, and no one would until Toel came looking for her. By then she and Glim would be a hundred miles away. She gripped Glim’s hand harder, just a friendly squeeze, but something about it felt strange. She glanced at over at him. At first she thought he was surrounded by a stray wisp of cloud, but then she saw it was him, starting to bleed like a water-color that had been spilled on. And, looking at her hand, so was she. Attrebus fell silent for a long moment. Sul could practically see the thoughts turning in his head. The boy he’d rescued from kidnappers wouldn’t have thought about it at all—he had believed himself the hero the ballads spoke of, and that man would never turn on a companion. But he knew that Attrebus was a little more pragmatic now. He might even be capable of making the right decision, to sacrifice him, buy himself time. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t die, not before he killed Vuhon. And Vuhon had made a mistake just now. And Attrebus had given him almost all the time he needed. Sul closed his eyes. “How long do I have to make my decision?” he heard Attrebus ask. “Not long,” Vuhon said. “Sul, what are you—” Pain jagged through Sul, crippling, nightmarish hurt that once would have paralyzed him. But he’d felt it before, and worse, and all he had to do was reach through it, past their confinement, through the walls between worlds to find it there, waiting. Angry. “Come!” he commanded. “You shouldn’t have told me we were in Oblivion!” Sul shouted. And all around them glass whinged and shattered. Colin had to run. Out the window, down the street, away. Everything in him screamed for him to run. That’s how mice die, the small sane part of him thought. They see the shadow of the hawk, they run … He remembered the man he’d stabbed again, the confusion in his eyes as the blade struck him, the desire to live, to breathe just a little longer. Had he been the hawk then? He hadn’t felt like one. A boy was once born with a knife instead of a right hand … He felt tired. He wanted to give up, get it over with. But there was a rot in the core of the Empire, in the palace itself. And only he seemed to care. So he drew himself in, held the darkness to him closer than a lover, and tried to clear his mind as he heard the thing come around the corner. He felt its gaze touch him, but he kept his own on the floor, knowing that if he saw it, he would lose all control. The stairs creaked beneath its weight, and he felt it brush by him. It paused for a long moment, then continued up."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "A few moments later it came down, turned back around the corner. After what seemed an eternity, he felt the air wrench again, followed by the quiet opening and closing of the door. The house was still. He sat there, unable to move, until the smell of smoke brought him out of it. Heart thudding, he ran downstairs. The fire was already everywhere on the ground floor, but he could still see that the bodies looked almost as if they had exploded. It would take hours to figure out how many of them there were. He went back up and out through the window. He wished he’d been able to search the house, to find some clue as to Arese’s reason for wanting the prince dead. And for that matter, why she hadn’t killed the prince herself. A few questions in the right places would tell him which crime lord had just died, but that was moot at this point. No, he’d found out what he really wanted to know—Arese arranged the massacre. The next question—the most dangerous one—was whether she was working alone, or just the point of a larger knife. Attrebus had the barest glimpse of something horrible before he found himself suddenly free of both detention and support; he was falling. He reached out desperately and caught one of the broken tubes, which was whipping about like a dying snake. He turned his gaze up and saw the thing again, a phantasmal mass of chitinoid limbs and wings that felt like scorpion and hornet and spider all together. A lot of the strands—including those holding him—had been shattered by its arrival, but plenty were groping at it now from farther away, trying to wrap it up as it surged toward Vuhon. It tore through them, but they slowed it down. Vuhon—still supported—stood, and a long whip of white-hot flame lashed out at the thing. One of its claws fell off, but the same attack sheared through the protecting tubes. Attrebus was now below and behind Vuhon, and the tendrils seemed to have forgotten him. He sheathed Flashing so as to free both hands. The tube he held was now swaying rhythmically; when it came nearest Vuhon, he grabbed another and began climbing toward him. The nearer he got, the easier it was, for the web was still thickest beneath the enemy. Another flaming chunk of beast fell past him, and he tried to climb faster. If Vuhon was distracted by the thing, he might have a chance, but if he wasn’t, that whip of flame would turn on him. He was still twenty feet away when what passed for the daedra’s head came off, and Vuhon’s quick gaze found him. Suddenly the tendrils became rigid again, and Attrebus howled in frustration. That was when Sul came hurtling down from above and smashed into the glassy foliage that held him."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_046.txt", "text": "Attrebus had a glimpse of him, of the blood on his lips and the drooling from his nose, and then Sul’s wiry hand pushed through to grasp his shoulder. The Dunmer’s eyes were tortured and his voice cracked. “Not now,” he said. The falling-everywhere-at-once sensation hit him again, and Umbriel vanished."}
{"ID": "The infernal city _ an Elder scrolls novel -- J_ Gregory Keyes -- 2011 -- Random House Digital, Inc_ -- 9780345508010 -- c16aefd9bc22fd38e6dc128b17b72e4d -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "The_Infernal-_Scrolls_Novel_split_048.txt", "text": "The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel Annaïg sat with Glim for an hour weeping, turning her gaze out to a world that wouldn’t have her anymore. “I don’t understand,” Glim murmured. “We weren’t born here.” Annaïg looked at her friend’s forlorn face, sighed, and wiped away her tears. Enough of that, she thought. “I don’t understand either,” she said. “But I’m going to.” “What do you mean?” Glim asked. “We can’t leave. We have to go back, and I have to figure out how to—cure this, fix it, whatever’s causing this.” “Everything doesn’t have a cure or a fix,” Glim replied. “Sometimes there really isn’t any going back.” No,” she said softly, thinking of Lilmoth, of her father, of a life now more like the memory of a dream than anything that had ever been real. She had been dreaming, hadn’t she? Playacting. This was the first real thing that had ever happened to her. “No,” she repeated. “Glim, we go forward. But I promise you, forward will one day take us away from here. Just … not now.” And so they sat together for a while longer before going back down to the dock, and there they said their goodbyes. Coming out of the pantry, she stopped at the threshold. Even the hobs were gone now, and the kitchen—for another few hours—would be truly silent. And she imagined she saw herself again, that ghost of her with that faint smile on her face, looking confident, effective, filled with secrets. “Okay,” she said, softly. “Okay.” And she entered the kitchen."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0001.txt", "text": "Introduction: “Extinction at the K-T Boundary” The late twentieth century has witnessed a remarkable growth in scientific interest in the subject of extinction. It is hardly a new subject—Baron Georges Cuvier had first demonstrated that species became extinct back in 1786, not long after the American Revolution. Thus the fact of extinction had been accepted by scientists for nearly three-quarters of a century before Darwin put forth his theory of evolution. And after Darwin, the many controversies that swirled around his theory did not often concern issues of extinction. On the contrary, extinction was generally considered as unremarkable as a car running out of gas. Extinction was simply proof of failure to adapt. How species adapted was intensely studied and fiercely debated. But the fact that some species failed was hardly given a second thought. What was there to say about it? However, beginning in the 1970s, two developments began to focus attention on extinction in a new way. The first was the recognition that human beings were now very numerous, and were altering the planet at a very rapid rate—eliminating traditional habitats, clearing the rain forest, polluting air and water, perhaps even changing global climate. In the process, many animal species were becoming extinct. Some scientists cried out in alarm; others were quietly uneasy. How fragile was the earth’s ecosystem? Was the human species engaged in behavior that would eventually lead to its own extinction? No one was sure. Since nobody had ever bothered to study extinction in an organized way, there was little information about rates of extinction in other geological eras. So scientists began to look closely at extinction in the past, hoping to answer anxieties about the present. The second development concerned new knowledge about the death of the dinosaurs. It had long been known that all dinosaur species had become extinct in a relatively short time at the end of the Cretaceous era, approximately sixty-five million years ago. Exactly how quickly those extinctions occurred was a subject of long-standing debate: some paleontologists believed they had been catastrophically swift, others felt the dinosaurs had died out more gradually, over a period of ten thousand to ten million years—hardly a rapid event. Then, in 1980, physicist Luis Alvarez and three coworkers discovered high concentrations of the element iridium in rocks from the end of the Cretaceous and the start of the Tertiary—the so-called K-T boundary (the Cretaceous was shorthanded as “K” to avoid confusion with the Cambrian and other geological periods). Iridium is rare on earth, but abundant in meteors. Alvarez’s team argued that the presence of so much iridium in rocks at the K-T boundary suggested that a giant meteorite, many miles in diameter, had collided with the earth at that time. They theorized that the resulting dust and debris had darkened the skies, inhibited photosynthesis, killed plants and animals, and ended the reign of the dinosaurs. This dramatic theory captured the media and public imagination. It began a controversy which continued for many years."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0001.txt", "text": "Where was the crater from this meteor? Various candidates were proposed. There were five major periods of extinction in the past—had meteors caused them all? Was there a twenty-six-million-year cycle of catastrophe? Was the planet even now awaiting another devastating impact? After more than a decade, these questions remained unanswered. The debate raged on—until August 1993, when, at a weekly seminar of the Santa Fe Institute, an iconoclastic mathematician named Ian Malcolm announced that none of these questions mattered, and that the debate over a meteoric impact was “a frivolous and irrelevant speculation.” “Consider the numbers,” Malcolm said, leaning on the podium, staring forward at his audience. “On our planet there are currently fifty million species of plants and animals. We think that is a remarkable diversity, yet it is nothing compared to what has existed before. We estimate that there have been fifty billion species on this planet since life began. That means that for every thousand species that ever existed on the planet, only one remains today. Thus 99.9 percent of all species that ever lived are extinct. And mass killings account for only five percent of that total. The overwhelming majority of species died one at a time.” The truth, Malcolm said, was that life on earth was marked by a continuous, steady rate of extinction. By and large, the average lifespan of a species was four million years. For mammals, it was a million years. Then the species vanished. So the real pattern was one of species rising, flourishing, and dying out in a few million years. On average, one species a day had become extinct throughout the history of life on the earth. “But why?” he asked. “What leads to the rise and decline of earth’s species in a four-million-year life cycle? “One answer is that we do not recognize how continuously active our planet is. Just in the last fifty thousand years—a geological blink of an eye—the rain forests have severely contracted, then expanded again. Rain forests aren’t an ageless feature of the planet; they’re actually rather new. As recently as ten thousand years ago, when there were human hunters on the American continent, an ice pack extended as far down as New York City. Many animals became extinct during that time. “So most of earth’s history shows animals living and dying against a very active background. That probably explains 90 percent of extinctions. If the seas dry up, or become more salty, then of course ocean plankton will all die. But complex animals like dinosaurs are another matter, because complex animals have insulated themselves—literally and figuratively—against such changes. Why do complex animals die out? Why don’t they adjust? Physically, they seem to have the capacity to survive. There appears to be no reason why they should die. And yet they do. “What I wish to propose is that complex animals become extinct not because of a change in their physical adaptation to their environment, but because of their behavior."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0001.txt", "text": "I would suggest that the latest thinking in chaos theory, or nonlinear dynamics, provides tantalizing hints to how this happens. “It suggests to us that behavior of complex animals can change very rapidly, and not always for the better. It suggests that behavior can cease to be responsive to the environment, and lead to decline and death. It suggests that animals may stop adapting. Is this what happened to the dinosaurs? Is this the true cause of their disappearance? We may never know. But it is no accident that human beings are so interested in dinosaur extinction. The decline of the dinosaurs allowed mammals—including us—to flourish. And that leads us to wonder whether the disappearance of the dinosaurs is going to be repeated, sooner or later, by us as well. Whether at the deepest level the fault lies not in blind fate—in some fiery meteor from the skies—but in our own behavior. At the moment, we have no answer.” And then he smiled. “But I have a few suggestions,” he said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0002.txt", "text": "Prologue: “Life at the Edge of Chaos” The Santa Fe Institute was housed in a series of buildings on Canyon Road which had formerly been a convent, and the Institute’s seminars were held in a room which had served as a chapel. Now, standing at the podium, with a shaft of sunlight shining down on him, Ian Malcolm paused dramatically before continuing his lecture. Malcolm was forty years old, and a familiar figure at the Institute. He had been one of the early pioneers in chaos theory, but his promising career had been disrupted by a severe injury during a trip to Costa Rica; Malcolm had, in fact, been reported dead in several newscasts. “I was sorry to cut short the celebrations in mathematics departments around the country,” he later said, “but it turned out I was only slightly dead. The surgeons have done wonders, as they will be the first to tell you. So now I am back—in my next iteration, you might say.” Dressed entirely in black, leaning on a cane, Malcolm gave the impression of severity. He was known within the Institute for his unconventional analysis, and his tendency to pessimism. His talk that August, entitled “Life at the Edge of Chaos,” was typical of his thinking. In it, Malcolm presented his analysis of chaos theory as it applied to evolution. He could not have wished for a more knowledgeable audience. The Santa Fe Institute had been formed in the mid-1980s by a group of scientists interested in the implications of chaos theory. The scientists came from many fields—physics, economics, biology, computer science. What they had in common was a belief that the complexity of the world concealed an underlying order which had previously eluded science, and which would be revealed by chaos theory, now known as complexity theory. In the words of one, complexity theory was “the science of the twenty-first century.” The Institute had explored the behavior of a great variety of complex systems—corporations in the marketplace, neurons in the human brain, enzyme cascades within a single cell, the group behavior of migratory birds—systems so complex that it had not been possible to study them before the advent of the computer. The research was new, and the findings were surprising. It did not take long before the scientists began to notice that complex systems showed certain common behaviors. They started to think of these behaviors as characteristic of all complex systems. They realized that these behaviors could not be explained by analyzing the components of the systems. The time-honored scientific approach of reductionism—taking the watch apart to see how it worked—didn’t get you anywhere with complex systems, because the interesting behavior seemed to arise from the spontaneous interaction of the components. The behavior wasn’t planned or directed; it just happened. Such behavior was therefore called “self-organizing.” “Of the self-organizing behaviors,” Ian Malcolm said, “two are of particular interest to the study of evolution. One is adaptation. We see it everywhere."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0002.txt", "text": "Corporations adapt to the marketplace, brain cells adapt to signal traffic, the immune system adapts to infection, animals adapt to their food supply. We have come to think that the ability to adapt is characteristic of complex systems—and may be one reason why evolution seems to lead toward more complex organisms.” He shifted at the podium, transferring his weight onto his cane. “But even more important,” he said, “is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative to change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call ‘the edge of chaos.’ We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old and the new are constantly at war. Finding the balance point must be a delicate matter—if a living system drifts too close, it risks falling over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the system moves too far away from the edge, it becomes rigid, frozen, totalitarian. Both conditions lead to extinction. Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish.” He paused. “And, by implication, extinction is the inevitable result of one or the other strategy—too much change, or too little.” In the audience, heads were nodding. This was familiar thinking to most of the researchers present. Indeed, the concept of the edge of chaos was very nearly dogma at the Santa Fe Institute. “Unfortunately,” Malcolm continued, “the gap between this theoretical construct and the fact of extinction is vast. We have no way to know if our thinking is correct. The fossil record can tell us that an animal became extinct at a certain time, but not why. Computer simulations are of limited value. Nor can we perform experiments on living organisms. Thus, we are obliged to admit that extinction—untestable, unsuited for experiment—may not be a scientific subject at all. And this may explain why the subject has been embroiled in the most intense religious and political controversy. I would remind you that there is no religious debate about Avogadro’s number, or Planck’s constant, or the functions of the pancreas. But about extinction, there has been perpetual controversy for two hundred years. And I wonder how it is to be solved if—Yes? What is it?” At the back of the room, a hand had gone up, waving impatiently. Malcolm frowned, visibly annoyed. The tradition at the Institute was that questions were held until the presentation ended; it was poor form to interrupt a speaker. “You had a question?” Malcolm asked. From the back of the room, a young man in his early thirties stood. “Actually,” the man said, “an observation.” The speaker was dark and thin, dressed in khaki shirt and shorts, precise in his movements and manner."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0002.txt", "text": "Malcolm recognized him as a paleontologist from Berkeley named Levine, who was spending the summer at the Institute. Malcolm had never spoken to him, but he knew his reputation: Levine was generally agreed to be the best paleobiologist of his generation, perhaps the best in the world. But most people at the Institute disliked him, finding him pompous and arrogant. “I agree,” Levine continued, “that the fossil record is not helpful in addressing extinction. Particularly if your thesis is that behavior is the cause of extinction—because bones don’t tell us as much about behavior. But I disagree that your behavioral thesis is untestable. In point of fact, it implies an outcome. Although perhaps you haven’t yet thought of it.” The room was silent. At the podium, Malcolm frowned. The eminent mathematician was not accustomed to being told he had not thought through his ideas. “What’s your point,” he said. Levine appeared indifferent to the tension in the room. “Just this,” he said. “During the Cretaceous, Dinosauria were widely distributed across the planet. We have found their remains on every continent, and in every climatic zone—even in the Antarctic. Now. If their extinction was really the result of their behavior, and not the consequence of a catastrophe, or a disease, or a change in plant life, or any of the other broad-scale explanations that have been proposed, then it seems to me highly unlikely that they all changed their behavior at the same time, everywhere. And that in turn means that there may well be some remnants of these animals still alive on the earth. Why couldn’t you look for them?” “You could,” Malcolm said coldly, “if that amused you. And if you had no more compelling use for your time.” “No, no,” Levine said earnestly. “I’m quite serious. What if the dinosaurs did not become extinct? What if they still exist? Somewhere in an isolated spot on the planet.” “You’re talking about a Lost World,” Malcolm said, and heads in the room nodded knowingly. Scientists at the Institute had developed a shorthand for referring to common evolutionary scenarios. They spoke of the Field of Bullets, the Gambler’s Ruin, the Game of Life, the Lost World, the Red Queen, and Black Noise. These were well-defined ways of thinking about evolution. But they were all— “No,” Levine said stubbornly. “I am speaking literally.” “Then you’re badly deluded,” Malcolm said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. He turned away from the audience, and walked slowly to the blackboard. “Now, if we consider the implications of the edge of chaos, we may begin by asking ourselves, what is the minimal unit of life? Most contemporary definitions of life would include the presence of DNA, but there are two examples which suggest to us that this definition is too narrow. If you consider viruses and so-called prions, it is clear that life may in fact exist without DNA.…” At the back of the room, Levine stared for a moment."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0002.txt", "text": "Then, reluctantly, he sat down, and began to make notes."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0003.txt", "text": "The Lost World Hypothesis The lecture ended, Malcolm hobbled across the open courtyard of the Institute, shortly after noon. Walking beside him was Sarah Harding, a young field biologist visiting from Africa. Malcolm had known her for several years, since he had been asked to serve as an outside reader for her doctoral thesis at Berkeley. Crossing the courtyard in the hot summer sun, they made an unlikely pair: Malcolm dressed in black, stooped and ascetic, leaning on his cane; Harding compact and muscular, looking young and energetic in shorts and a tee shirt, her short black hair pushed up on her forehead with sunglasses. Her field of study was African predators, lions and hyenas. She was scheduled to return to Nairobi the next day. The two had been close since Malcolm’s surgery. Harding had been on a sabbatical year in Austin, and had helped nurse Malcolm back to health, after his many operations. For a while it seemed as if a romance had blossomed, and that Malcolm, a confirmed bachelor, would settle down. But then Harding had gone back to Africa, and Malcolm had gone to Santa Fe. Whatever their former relationship had been, they were now just friends. They discussed the questions that had come at the end of his lecture. From Malcolm’s point of view, there had been only the predictable objections: that mass extinctions were important; that human beings owed their existence to the Cretaceous extinction, which had wiped out the dinosaurs and allowed the mammals to take over. As one questioner had pompously phrased it, “The Cretaceous allowed our own sentient awareness to arise on the planet.” Malcolm’s reply was immediate: “What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told—and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’ The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.” Now, walking across the courtyard, Sarah Harding laughed. “They didn’t care for that.” “I admit it’s discouraging,” he said. “But it can’t be helped.” He shook his head. “These are some of the best scientists in the country, and still … no interesting ideas. By the way, what’s the story on that guy who interrupted me?” “Richard Levine?” She laughed. “Irritating, isn’t he? He has a worldwide reputation for being a pain in the ass.” Malcolm grunted."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0003.txt", "text": "“I’d say.” “He’s wealthy, is the problem,” Harding said. “You know about the Becky dolls?” “No,” Malcolm said, giving her a glance. “Well, every little girl in America does. There’s a series: Becky and Sally and Frances, and several more. They’re Americana dolls. Levine is the heir of the company. So he’s a smartass rich kid. Impetuous, does whatever he wants.” Malcolm nodded. “You have time for lunch?” “Sure, I would be—” “Dr. Malcolm! Wait up! Please! Dr. Malcolm!” Malcolm turned. Hurrying across the courtyard toward them was the gangling figure of Richard Levine. “Ah, shit,” Malcolm said. “Dr. Malcolm,” Levine said, coming up. “I was surprised that you didn’t take my proposal more seriously.” “How could I?” Malcolm said. “It’s absurd.” “Yes, but—” “Ms. Harding and I were just going to lunch,” Malcolm said, gesturing to Sarah. “Yes, but I think you should reconsider,” Levine said, pressing on. “Because I believe my argument is valid—it is entirely possible, even likely, that dinosaurs still exist. You must know there are persistent rumors about animals in Costa Rica, where I believe you have spent time.” “Yes, and in the case of Costa Rica I can tell you—” “Also in the Congo,” Levine said, continuing. “For years there have been reports by pygmies of a large sauropod, perhaps even an apatosaur, in the dense forest around Bokambu. And also in the high jungles of Irian Jaya, there is supposedly an animal the size of a rhino, which perhaps is a remnant ceratopsian—” “Fantasy,” Malcolm said. “Pure fantasy. Nothing has ever been seen. No photographs. No hard evidence.” “Perhaps not,” Levine said. “But absence of proof is not proof of absence. I believe there may well be a locus of these animals, survivals from a past time.” Malcolm shrugged. “Anything is possible,” he said. “But in point of fact, survival is possible,” Levine insisted. “I keep getting calls about new animals in Costa Rica. Remnants, fragments.” Malcolm paused. “Recently?” “Not for a while.” “Umm,” Malcolm said. “I thought so.” “The last call was nine months ago,” Levine said. “I was in Siberia looking at that frozen baby mammoth, and I couldn’t get back in time. But I’m told it was some kind of very large, atypical lizard, found dead in the jungle of Costa Rica.” “And? What happened to it?” “The remains were burned.” “So nothing is left?” “That’s right.” “No photographs? No proof?” “Apparently not.” “So it’s just a story,” Malcolm said. “Perhaps. But I believe it is worth mounting an expedition, to find out about these reported survivals.” Malcolm stared at him. “An expedition? To find a hypothetical Lost World? Who is going to pay for it?” “I am,” Levine said. “I have already begun the preliminary planning.” “But that could cost—” “I don’t care what it costs,” Levine said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0003.txt", "text": "“The fact is, survival is possible, it has occurred in a variety of species from other genera, and it may be that there are survivals from the Cretaceous as well.” “Fantasy,” Malcolm said again, shaking his head. Levine paused, and stared at Malcolm. “Dr. Malcolm,” he said, “I must say I’m very surprised at your attitude. You’ve just presented a thesis and I am offering you a chance to prove it. I would have thought you’d jump at the opportunity.” “My jumping days are over,” Malcolm said. “But instead of taking me up on this, you—” “I’m not interested in dinosaurs,” Malcolm said. “But everyone is interested in dinosaurs.” “Not me.” He turned on his cane, and started to walk off. “By the way,” Levine said. “What were you doing in Costa Rica? I heard you were there for almost a year.” “I was lying in a hospital bed. They couldn’t move me out of intensive care for six months. I couldn’t even get on a plane.” “Yes,” Levine said. “I know you got hurt. But what were you doing there in the first place? Weren’t you looking for dinosaurs?” Malcolm squinted at him in the bright sun, and leaned on his cane. “No,” he said. “I wasn’t.” They were all three sitting at a small painted table in the corner of the Guadalupe Cafe, on the other side of the river. Sarah Harding drank Corona from the bottle, and watched the two men opposite her. Levine looked pleased to be with them, as if he had won some victory to be sitting at the table. Malcolm looked weary, like a parent who has spent too much time with a hyperactive child. “You want to know what I’ve heard?” Levine said. “I’ve heard that a couple of years back, a company named InGen genetically engineered some dinosaurs and put them on an island in Costa Rica. But something went wrong, a lot of people were killed, and the dinosaurs were destroyed. And now nobody will talk about it, because of some legal angle. Nondisclosure agreements or something. And the Costa Rican government doesn’t want to hurt tourism. So nobody will talk. That’s what I’ve heard.” Malcolm stared at him. “And you believe that?” “Not at first, I didn’t,” Levine said. “But the thing is, I keep hearing it. The rumors keep floating around. Supposedly you, and Alan Grant, and a bunch of other people were there.” “Did you ask Grant about it?” “I asked him, last year, at a conference in Peking. He said it was absurd.” Malcolm nodded slowly. “Is that what you say?” Levine asked, drinking his beer. “I mean, you know Grant, don’t you?” “No. I never met him.” Levine was watching Malcolm closely. “So it’s not true?” Malcolm sighed. “Are you familiar with the concept of a techno-myth? It was developed by Geller at Princeton. Basic thesis is that we’ve lost all the old myths, Orpheus and Eurydice and Perseus and Medusa."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0003.txt", "text": "So we fill the gap with modern techno-myths. Geller listed a dozen or so. One is that an alien’s living at a hangar at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Another is that somebody invented a carburetor that gets a hundred and fifty miles to the gallon, but the automobile companies bought the patent and are sitting on it. Then there’s the story that the Russians trained children in ESP at a secret base in Siberia and these kids can kill people anywhere in the world with their thoughts. The story that the lines in Nazca, Peru, are an alien spaceport. That the CIA released the AIDS virus to kill homosexuals. That Nikola Tesla discovered an incredible energy source but his notes are lost. That in Istanbul there’s a tenth-century drawing that shows the earth from space. That the Stanford Research Institute found a guy whose body glows in the dark. Get the picture?” “You’re saying InGen’s dinosaurs are a myth,” Levine said. “Of course they are. They have to be. Do you think it’s possible to genetically engineer a dinosaur?” “The experts all tell me it’s not.” “And they’re right,” Malcolm said. He glanced at Harding, as if for confirmation. She said nothing, just drank her beer. In fact, Harding knew something more about these dinosaur rumors. Once after surgery, Malcolm had been delirious, mumbling nonsense from the anaesthesia and pain medication. And he had been seemingly fearful, twisting in the bed, repeating the names of several kinds of dinosaurs. Harding had asked the nurse about it; she said he was like that after every operation. The hospital staff assumed it was a drug-induced fantasy—yet it seemed to Harding that Malcolm was reliving some terrifying actual experience. The feeling was heightened by the slangy, familiar way Malcolm referred to the dinosaurs: he called them “raptors” and “compys” and “trikes.” And he seemed especially fearful of the raptors. Later, when he was back home, she had asked him about his delirium. He had just shrugged it off, making a bad joke—“At least I didn’t mention other women, did I?” And then he made some comment about having been a dinosaur nut as a kid, and how illness made you regress. His whole attitude was elaborately indifferent, as if it were all unimportant; she had the distinct feeling he was being evasive. But she wasn’t inclined to push it; those were the days when she was in love with him, her attitude indulgent. Now he was looking at her in a questioning way, as if to ask if she was going to contradict him. Harding just raised an eyebrow, and stared back. He must have his reasons. She could wait him out. Levine leaned forward across the table toward Malcolm and said, “So the InGen story is entirely untrue?” “Entirely untrue,” Malcolm said, nodding gravely. “Entirely untrue.” Malcolm had been denying the speculation for three years. By now he was getting good at it; his weariness was no longer affected but genuine."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0003.txt", "text": "In fact, he had been a consultant to International Genetic Technologies of Palo Alto in the summer of 1989, and he had made a trip to Costa Rica for them, which had turned out disastrously. In the aftermath, everyone involved had moved quickly to quash the story. InGen wanted to limit its liability. The Costa Rican government wanted to preserve its reputation as a tourist paradise. And the individual scientists had been bound by nondisclosure agreements, abetted later by generous grants to continue their silence. In Malcolm’s case, two years of medical bills had been paid by the company. Meanwhile, InGen’s island facility in Costa Rica had been destroyed. There were no longer any living creatures on the island. The company had hired the eminent Stanford professor George Baselton, a biologist and essayist whose frequent television appearances had made him a popular authority on scientific subjects. Baselton claimed to have visited the island, and had been tireless in denying rumors that extinct animals had ever existed there. His derisive snort, “Saber-toothed tigers, indeed!” was particularly effective. As time passed, interest in the story waned. InGen was long since bankrupt; the principal investors in Europe and Asia had taken their losses. Although the company’s physical assets, the buildings and lab equipment, would be sold piecemeal, the core technology that had been developed would, they decided, never be sold. In short, the InGen chapter was closed. There was nothing more to say. “So there’s no truth to it,” Levine said, biting into his green-corn tamale. “To tell you the truth, Dr. Malcolm, that makes me feel better.” “Why?” Malcolm said. “Because it means that the remnants that keep turning up in Costa Rica must be real. Real dinosaurs. I’ve got a friend from Yale down there, a field biologist, and he says he’s seen them. I believe him.” Malcolm shrugged. “I doubt,” he said, “that any more animals will turn up in Costa Rica.” “It’s true there haven’t been any for almost a year now. But if more show up, I’m going down there. And in the interim, I am going to outfit an expedition. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how it should be done. I think the special vehicles could be built and ready in a year. I’ve already talked to Doc Thorne about it. Then I’ll assemble a team, perhaps including Dr. Harding here, or a similarly accomplished naturalist, and some graduate students.…” Malcolm listened, shaking his head. “You think I’m wasting my time,” Levine said. “I do, yes.” “But suppose—just suppose—that animals start to show up again.” “Never happen.” “But suppose they did?” Levine said. “Would you be interested in helping me? To plan an expedition?” Malcolm finished his meal, and pushed the plate aside. He stared at Levine. “Yes,” he said finally. “If animals started showing up again, I would be interested in helping you.” “Great!” Levine said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Section0003.txt", "text": "“That’s all I wanted to know.” Outside, in the bright sunlight on Guadalupe Street, Malcolm walked with Sarah toward Malcolm’s battered Ford sedan. Levine climbed into a bright-red Ferrari, waved cheerfully, and roared off. “You think it will ever happen?” Sarah Harding said. “That these, ah, animals will start showing up again?” “No,” Malcolm said. “I am quite sure they never will.” “You sound hopeful.” He shook his head, and got awkwardly in the car, swinging his bad leg under the steering wheel. Harding climbed in beside him. He glanced at her, and turned the key in the ignition. They drove back to the Institute. The following day, she went back to Africa. During the next eighteen months, she had a rough sense of Levine’s progress, since from time to time he called her with some question about field protocols, or vehicle tires, or the best anaesthetic to use on animals in the wild. Sometimes she got a call from Doc Thorne, who was building the vehicles. He usually sounded harassed. From Malcolm she heard nothing at all, although he sent her a card on her birthday. It arrived a month late. He had scrawled at the bottom, “Have a happy birthday. Be glad you’re nowhere near him. He’s driving me crazy.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0005.txt", "text": "Aberrant Forms In the fading afternoon light, the helicopter skimmed low along the coast, following the line where the dense jungle met the beach. The last of the fishing villages had flashed by beneath them ten minutes ago. Now there was only impenetrable Costa Rican jungle, mangrove swamps, and mile after mile of deserted sand. Sitting beside the pilot, Marty Gutierrez stared out the window as the coastline swept past. There weren’t even any roads in this area, at least none that Gutierrez could see. Gutierrez was a quiet, bearded American of thirty-six, a field biologist who had lived for the last eight years in Costa Rica. He had originally come to study toucan speciation in the rain forest, but stayed on as a consultant to the Reserva Biológica de Carara, the national park in the north. He clicked the radio mike and said to the pilot, “How much farther?” “Five minutes, Señor Gutierrez.” Gutierrez turned and said, “It won’t be long now.” But the tall man folded up in the back seat of the helicopter didn’t answer, or even acknowledge that he had been spoken to. He merely sat, with his hand on his chin, and stared frowning out the window. Richard Levine wore sun-faded field khakis, and an Australian slouch hat pushed low over his head. A battered pair of binoculars hung around his neck. But despite his rugged appearance, Levine conveyed an air of scholarly absorption. Behind his wire-frame spectacles, his features were sharp, his expression intense and critical as he looked out the window. “What is this place?” “It’s called Rojas.” “So we’re far south?” “Yes. Only about fifty miles from the border with Panama.” Levine stared at the jungle. “I don’t see any roads,” he said. “How was the thing found?” “Couple of campers,” Gutierrez said. “They came in by boat, landed on the beach.” “When was that?” “Yesterday. They took one look at the thing, and ran like hell.” Levine nodded. With his long limbs folded up, his hands tucked under his chin, he looked like a praying mantis. That had been his nickname in graduate school: in part because of his appearance—and in part because of his tendency to bite off the head of anyone who disagreed with him. Gutierrez said, “Been to Costa Rica before?” “No. First time,” Levine said. And then he gave an irritable wave of his hand, as if he didn’t want to be bothered with small talk. Gutierrez smiled. After all these years, Levine had not changed at all. He was still one of the most brilliant and irritating men in science. The two had been fellow graduate students at Yale, until Levine quit the doctoral program to get his degree in comparative zoology instead. Levine announced he had no interest in the kind of contemporary field research that so attracted Gutierrez."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0005.txt", "text": "With characteristic contempt, he had once described Gutierrez’s work as “collecting parrot crap from around the world.” The truth was that Levine—brilliant and fastidious—was drawn to the past, to the world that no longer existed. And he studied this world with obsessive intensity. He was famous for his photographic memory, his arrogance, his sharp tongue, and the unconcealed pleasure he took in pointing out the errors of colleagues. As a colleague once said, “Levine never forgets a bone—and he never lets you forget it, either.” Field researchers disliked Levine, and he returned the sentiment. He was at heart a man of detail, a cataloguer of animal life, and he was happiest poring over museum collections, reassigning species, rearranging display skeletons. He disliked the dust and inconvenience of life in the field. Given his choice, Levine would never leave the museum. But it was his fate to live in the greatest period of discovery in the history of paleontology. The number of known species of dinosaurs had doubled in the last twenty years, and new species were now being described at the rate of one every seven weeks. Thus Levine’s worldwide reputation forced him to continually travel around the world, inspecting new finds, and rendering his expert opinion to researchers who were annoyed to admit that they needed it. “Where’d you come from?” Gutierrez asked him. “Mongolia,” Levine said. “I was at the Flaming Cliffs, in the Gobi Desert, three hours out of Ulan Bator.” “Oh? What’s there?” “John Roxton’s got a dig. He found an incomplete skeleton he thought might be a new species of Velociraptor, and wanted me to have a look.” “And?” Levine shrugged. “Roxton never really did know anatomy. He’s an enthusiastic fund-raiser, but if he actually uncovers something, he’s incompetent to proceed.” “You told him that?” “Why not? It’s the truth.” “And the skeleton?” “The skeleton wasn’t a raptor at all,” Levine said. “Metatarsals all wrong, pubis too ventral, ischium lacking a proper obturator, and the long bones much too light. As for the skull …” He rolled his eyes. “The palatal’s too thick, antorbital fenestrae too rostral, distal carina too small—oh, it goes on and on. And the trenchant ungual’s hardly present. So there we are. I don’t know what Roxton could have been thinking. I suspect he actually has a subspecies of Troodon, though I haven’t decided for sure.” “Troodon?” Gutierrez said. “Small Cretaceous carnivore—two meters from pes to acetabulum. In point of fact, a rather ordinary theropod. And Roxton’s find wasn’t a particularly interesting example. Although there was one curious detail. The material included an integumental artifact—an imprint of the dinosaur’s skin. That in itself is not rare. There are perhaps a dozen good skin impressions obtained so far, mostly among the Hadrosauridae. But nothing like this."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0005.txt", "text": "Because it was clear to me that this animal’s skin had some very unusual characteristics not previously suspected in dinosaurs—” “Señores,” the pilot said, interrupting them, “Juan Fernández Bay is ahead.” Levine said, “Circle it first, can we?” Levine looked out the window, his expression intense again, the conversation forgotten. They were flying over jungle that extended up into the hills for miles, as far as they could see. The helicopter banked, circling the beach. “There it is now,” Gutierrez said, pointing out the window. The beach was a clean, curving white crescent, entirely deserted in the afternoon light. To the south, they saw a single dark mass in the sand. From the air, it looked like a rock, or perhaps a large clump of seaweed. The shape was amorphous, about five feet across. There were lots of footprints around it. “Who’s been here?” Levine said, with a sigh. “Public Health Service people came out earlier today.” “Did they do anything?” he said. “They touch it, disturb it in any way?” “I can’t say,” Gutierrez said. “The Public Health Service,” Levine repeated, shaking his head. “What do they know? You should never have let them near it, Marty.” “Hey,” Gutierrez said. “I don’t run this country. I did the best I could. They wanted to destroy it before you even got here. At least I managed to keep it intact until you arrived. Although I don’t know how long they’ll wait.” “Then we’d better get started,” Levine said. He pressed the button on his mike. “Why are we still circling? We’re losing light. Get down on the beach now. I want to see this thing firsthand.” Richard Levine ran across the sand toward the dark shape, his binoculars bouncing on his chest. Even from a distance, he could smell the stench of decay. And already he was logging his preliminary impressions. The carcass lay half-buried in the sand, surrounded by a thick cloud of flies. The skin was bloated with gas, which made identification difficult. He paused a few yards from the creature, and took out his camera. Immediately, the pilot of the helicopter came up alongside him, pushing his hand down. “No permitido.” “What?” “I am sorry, señor. No pictures are allowed.” “Why the hell not?” Levine said. He turned to Gutierrez, who was trotting down the beach toward them. “Marty, why no pictures? This could be an important—” “No pictures,” the pilot said again, and he pulled the camera out of Levine’s hand. “Marty, this is crazy.” “Just go ahead and make your examination,” Gutierrez said, and then he began speaking in Spanish to the pilot, who answered sharply and angrily, waving his hands. Levine watched a moment, then turned away. The hell with this, he thought. They could argue forever. He hurried forward, breathing through his mouth. The odor became much stronger as he approached it. Although the carcass was large he noticed there were no birds, rats, or other scavengers feeding on it."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0005.txt", "text": "There were only flies—flies so dense they covered the skin, and obscured the outline of the dead animal. Even so, it was clear that this had been a substantial creature, roughly the size of a cow or horse before the bloat began to enlarge it further. The dry skin had cracked in the sun and was now peeling upward, exposing the layer of runny, yellow subdermal fat beneath. Oof, it stunk! Levine winced. He forced himself closer, directing all his attention to the animal. Although it was the size of a cow, it was clearly not a mammal. The skin was hairless. The original skin color appeared to have been green, with a suggestion of darker striations running through it. The epidermal surface was pebbled in polygonal tubercles of varying sizes, the pattern reminiscent of the skin of a lizard. This texture varied in different parts of the animal, the pebbling larger and less distinct on the underbelly. There were prominent skin folds at the neck, shoulder, and hip joints—again, like a lizard. But the carcass was large. Levine estimated the animal had originally weighed about a hundred kilograms, roughly two hundred and twenty pounds. No lizards grew that large anywhere in the world, except the Komodo dragons of Indonesia. Varanus komodoensis were nine-foot-long monitor lizards, crocodile-size carnivores that ate goats and pigs, and on occasion human beings as well. But there were no monitor lizards anywhere in the New World. Of course, it was conceivable that this was one of the Iguanidae. Iguanas were found all over South America, and the marine iguanas grew quite large. Even so, this would be a record-size animal. Levine moved slowly around the carcass, toward the front of the animal. No, he thought, it wasn’t a lizard. The carcass lay on its side, its left rib cage toward the sky. Nearly half of it was buried; the row of protuberances that marked the dorsal spinous processes of the backbone were just a few inches above the sand. The long neck was curved, the head hidden beneath the bulk of the body like a duck’s head under feathers. Levine saw one forelimb, which seemed small and weak. The distal appendage was buried in sand. He would dig that out and have a look at it, but he wanted to take pictures before he disturbed the specimen in situ. In fact, the more Levine saw of this carcass, the more carefully he thought he should proceed. Because one thing was clear—this was a very rare, and possibly unknown, animal. Levine felt simultaneously excited and cautious. If this discovery was as significant as he was beginning to think it was, then it was essential that it be properly documented. Up the beach, Gutierrez was still shouting at the pilot, who kept shaking his head stubbornly. These banana-republic bureaucrats, Levine thought. Why shouldn’t he take pictures? It couldn’t harm anything. And it was vital to document the changing state of the creature."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0005.txt", "text": "He heard a thumping, and looked up to see a second helicopter circling the bay, its dark shadow sliding across the sand. This helicopter was ambulance-white, with red lettering on the side. In the glare of the setting sun, he couldn’t read it. He turned back to the carcass, noticing now that the hind leg of the animal was powerfully muscled, very different from the foreleg. It suggested that this creature walked upright, balanced on strong hind legs. Many lizards were known to stand upright, of course, but none so large as this. In point of fact, as Levine looked at the general shape of the carcass, he felt increasingly certain that this was not a lizard. He worked quickly now, for the light was fading and he had much to do. With every specimen, there were always two major questions to answer, both equally important. First, what was the animal? Second, why had it died? Standing by the thigh, he saw the epidermis was split open, no doubt from the gaseous subcutaneous buildup. But as Levine looked more closely, he saw that the split was in fact a sharp gash, and that it ran deep through the femorotibialis, exposing red muscle and pale bone beneath. He ignored the stench, and the white maggots that wriggled across the open tissues of the gash, because he realized that— “Sorry about all this,” Gutierrez said, coming over. “But the pilot just refuses.” The pilot was nervously following Gutierrez, standing beside him, watching carefully. “Marty,” Levine said. “I really need to take pictures here.” “I’m afraid you can’t,” Gutierrez said, with a shrug. “It’s important, Marty.” “Sorry. I tried my best.” Farther down the beach, the white helicopter landed, its whine diminishing. Men in uniforms began getting out. “Marty. What do you think this animal is?” “Well, I can only guess,” Gutierrez said. “From the general dimensions I’d call it a previously unidentified iguana. It’s extremely large, of course, and obviously not native to Costa Rica. My guess is this animal came from the Galápagos, or one of the—” “No, Marty,” Levine said. “It’s not an iguana.” “Before you say anything more,” Gutierrez said, glancing at the pilot, “I think you ought to know that several previously unknown species of lizard have shown up in this area. Nobody’s quite sure why. Perhaps it’s due to the cutting of the rain forest, or some other reason. But new species are appearing. Several years ago, I began to see unidentified species of—” “Marty. It’s not a damn lizard.” Gutierrez blinked his eyes. “What are you saying? Of course it’s a lizard.” “I don’t think so,” Levine said. Gutierrez said, “You’re probably just thrown off because of its size. The fact is, here in Costa Rica, we occasionally encounter these aberrant forms—” “Marty,” Levine said coldly. “I am never thrown off.” “Well, of course, I didn’t mean that—” “And I am telling you, this is not a lizard,” Levine said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Section0005.txt", "text": "“I’m sorry,” Gutierrez said, shaking his head. “But I can’t agree.” Back at the white helicopter, the men were huddled together, putting on white surgical masks. “I’m not asking you to agree,” Levine said. He turned back to the carcass. “The diagnosis is settled easily enough, all we need do is excavate the head, or for that matter any of the limbs, for example this thigh here, which I believe—” He broke off, and leaned closer. He peered at the back of the thigh. “What is it?” Gutierrez said. “Give me your knife.” “Why?” Gutierrez said. “Just give it to me.” Gutierrez fished out his pocketknife, put the handle in Levine’s outstretched hand. Levine peered steadily at the carcass. “I think you will find this interesting.” “What?” “Right along the posterior dermal line, there is a—” Suddenly, they heard shouting on the beach, and looked up to see the men from the white helicopter running down the beach toward them. They carried tanks on their backs, and were shouting in Spanish. “What are they saying?” Levine asked, frowning. Gutierrez sighed. “They’re saying to get back.” “Tell them we’re busy,” Levine said, and bent over the carcass again. But the men kept shouting, and suddenly there was a roaring sound, and Levine looked up to see flamethrowers igniting, big red jets of flame roaring out in the evening light. He ran around the carcass toward the men, shouting, “No! No!” But the men paid no attention. He shouted, “No, this is a priceless—” The first of the uniformed men grabbed Levine, and threw him roughly to the sand. “What the hell are you doing?” Levine yelled, scrambling to his feet. But even as he said it, he saw it was too late, the first of the flames had reached the carcass, blackening the skin, igniting the pockets of methane with a blue whump! The smoke from the carcass began to rise thickly into the sky. “Stop it! Stop it!” Levine turned to Gutierrez. “Make them stop it!” But Gutierrez was not moving, he was staring at the carcass. Consumed by flames, the torso crackled and the fat sputtered, and then as the skin burned away, the black, flat ribs of the skeleton were revealed, and then the whole torso turned, and suddenly the neck of the animal swung up, surrounded by flames, moving as the skin contracted. And inside the flames Levine saw a long pointed snout, and rows of sharp predatory teeth, and hollow eye sockets, the whole thing burning like some medieval dragon rising in flames up into the sky."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0006.txt", "text": "San José Levine sat in the bar of the San José airport, nursing a beer, waiting for his plane back to the States. Gutierrez sat beside him at a small table, not saying much. An awkward silence had fallen for the last few minutes. Gutierrez stared at Levine’s backpack, on the floor by his feet. It was specially constructed of dark-green Gore-Tex, with extra pockets on the outside for all the electronic gear. “Pretty nice pack,” Gutierrez said. “Where’d you get that, anyway? Looks like a Thorne pack.” Levine sipped his beer. “It is.” “Nice,” Gutierrez said, looking at it. “What’ve you got there in the top flap, a satellite phone? And a GPS? Boy, what won’t they think of next. Pretty slick. Must have cost you a—” “Marty,” Levine said, in an exasperated tone. “Cut the crap. Are you going to tell me, or not?” “Tell you what?” “I want to know what the hell’s going on here.” “Richard, look, I’m sorry if you—” “No,” Levine said, cutting him off. “That was a very important specimen on that beach, Marty, and it was destroyed. I don’t understand why you let it happen.” Gutierrez sighed. He looked around at the tourists at the other tables and said, “This has to be in confidence, okay?” “All right.” “It’s a big problem here.” “What is.” “There have been, uh … aberrant forms … turning up on the coast every so often. It’s been going on for several years now.” “‘Aberrant forms’?” Levine repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. “That’s the official term for these specimens,” Gutierrez said. “No one in the government is willing to be more precise. It started about five years ago. A number of animals were discovered up in the mountains, near a remote agricultural station that was growing test varieties of soy beans.” “Soy beans,” Levine repeated. Gutierrez nodded. “Apparently these animals are attracted to beans, and certain grasses. The assumption is that they have a great need for the amino acid lysine in their diets. But nobody is really sure. Perhaps they just have a taste for certain crops—” “Marty,” Levine said. “I don’t care if they have a taste for beer and pretzels. The only important question is: where did the animals come from?” “Nobody knows,” Gutierrez said. Levine let that pass, for the moment. “What happened to those other animals?” “They were all destroyed. And to my knowledge, no others were found for years afterward. But now it seems to be starting again. In the last year, we have found the remains of four more animals, including the one you saw today.” “And what was done?” “The, ah, aberrant forms are always destroyed. Just as you saw. From the beginning, the government’s taken every possible step to make sure nobody finds out about it. A few years back, some North American journalists began reporting there was something wrong on one island, Isla Nublar."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0006.txt", "text": "Menéndez invited a bunch of journalists down for a special tour of the island—and proceeded to fly them to the wrong island. They never knew the difference. Stuff like that. I mean, the government’s very serious about this.” “Why?” “They’re worried.” “Worried? Why should they be worried about—” Gutierrez held up his hand, shifted in his chair, moved closer. “Disease, Richard.” “Disease?” “Yeah. Costa Rica has one of the best health-care systems in the world,” Gutierrez said. “The epidemiologists have been tracking some weird type of encephalitis that seems to be on the increase, particularly along the coast.” “Encephalitis? Of what origin? Viral?” Gutierrez shook his head. “No causative agent has been found.” “Marty …” “I’m telling you, Richard. Nobody knows. It’s not a virus, because antibody titres don’t go up, and white-cell differentials don’t change. It’s not bacterial, because nothing has ever been cultured. It’s a complete mystery. All the epidemiologists know is that it seems to affect primarily rural farmers: people who are around animals and livestock. And it’s a true encephalitis—splitting headaches, mental confusion, fever, delirium.” “Mortality?” “So far it seems to be self-limited, lasts about three weeks. But even so it’s got the government worried. This country is dependent on tourism, Richard. Nobody wants talk of unknown diseases.” “So they think the encephalitis is related to these, ah, aberrant forms?” He shrugged. “Lizards carry lots of viral diseases,” Gutierrez said. “They’re a known vector. So it’s not unreasonable, there might be a connection.” “But you said this isn’t a viral disease.” “Whatever it is. They think it’s related.” Levine said, “All the more reason to find out where these lizards are coming from. Surely they must have searched …” “Searched?” Gutierrez said, with a laugh. “Of course they’ve searched. They’ve gone over every square inch of this country, again and again. They’ve sent out dozens of search parties—I’ve led several myself. They’ve done aerial surveys. They’ve had overflights of the jungle. They’ve had overflights of the offshore islands. That in itself is a big job. There are quite a few islands, you know, particularly along the west coast. Hell, they’ve even searched the ones that are privately owned.” “Are there privately owned islands?” Levine asked. “A few. Three or four. Like Isla Nublar—it was leased to an American company, InGen, for years.” “But you said that island was searched …” “Thoroughly searched. Nothing there.” “And the others?” “Well, let’s see,” Gutierrez said, ticking them off on his fingers. “There’s Isla Talamanca, on the east coast; they’ve got a Club Med there. There’s Sorna, on the west coast; it’s leased to a German mining company. And there’s Morazan, up north; it’s actually owned by a wealthy Costa Rican family. And there may be another island I’ve forgotten about.” “And the searches found what?” “Nothing,” Gutierrez said. “They’ve found nothing at all. So the assumption is that the animals are coming from some location deep in the jungle."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0006.txt", "text": "And that’s why we haven’t been able to find it so far.” Levine grunted. “In that case, lots of luck.” “I know,” Gutierrez said. “Rain forest is an incredibly good environment for concealment. A search party could pass within ten yards of a large animal and never see it. And even the most advanced remote sensing technology doesn’t help much, because there are multiple layers to penetrate—clouds, tree canopy, lower-level flora. There’s just no way around it: almost anything could be hiding in the rain forest. Anyway,” he said, “the government’s frustrated. And, of course, the government is not the only interested party.” Levine looked up sharply. “Oh?” “Yes. For some reason, there’s been a lot of interest in these animals.” “What sort of interest?” Levine said, as casually as he could. “Last fall, the government issued a permit to a team of botanists from Berkeley to do an aerial survey of the jungle canopy in the central highlands. The survey had been going on for a month when a dispute arose—a bill for aviation fuel, or something like that. Anyway, a bureaucrat in San José called Berkeley to complain. And Berkeley said they’d never heard of this survey team. Meantime, the team fled the country.” “So nobody knows who they really were?” “No. Then last winter, a couple of Swiss geologists showed up to collect gas samples from offshore islands, as part of a study, they said, of volcanic activity in Central America. The offshore islands are all volcanic, and most of them are still active to some degree, so it seemed like a reasonable request. But it turned out the ‘geologists’ really worked for an American genetics company called Biosyn, and they were looking for, uh, large animals on the islands.” “Why would a biotech company be interested?” Levine said. “It makes no sense.” “Maybe not to you and me,” Gutierrez said, “but Biosyn’s got a particularly unsavory reputation. Their head of research is a guy named Lewis Dodgson.” “Oh yeah,” Levine said. “I know. He’s the guy who ran that rabies-vaccine test in Chile a few years back. The one where they exposed farmers to rabies but didn’t tell them they were doing it.” “That’s him. He also started test-marketing a genetically engineered potato in supermarkets without telling anybody they were altered. Gave kids low-grade diarrhea; couple of them ended up in the hospital. After that, the company had to hire George Baselton to fix their image.” “Seems like everybody hires Baselton,” Levine said. Gutierrez shrugged. “The big-name university professors consult, these days. It’s part of the deal. And Baselton is Regis Professor of Biology. The company needed him to clean up their mess, because Dodgson has a habit of breaking the law. Dodgson has people on his payroll all around the world. Steals other companies’ research, the whole bit. They say Biosyn’s the only genetics company with more lawyers than scientists.” “And why were they interested in Costa Rica?” Levine asked. Gutierrez shrugged."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0006.txt", "text": "“I don’t know, but the whole attitude toward research has changed, Richard. It’s very noticeable here. Costa Rica has one of the richest ecologies in the world. Half a million species in twelve distinct environmental habitats. Five percent of all the species on the planet are represented here. This country has been a biological research center for years, and I can tell you, things have changed. In the old days, the people who came here were dedicated scientists with a passion to learn about something for its own sake—howler monkeys, or polistine wasps, or the sombrilla plant. These people had chosen their field because they cared about it. They certainly weren’t going to get rich. But now, everything in the biosphere is potentially valuable. Nobody knows where the next drug is coming from, so drug companies fund all sorts of research. Maybe a bird egg has a protein that makes it waterproof. Maybe a spider produces a peptide that inhibits blood clotting. Maybe the waxy surface of a fern contains a painkiller. It happens often enough that attitudes toward research have changed. People aren’t studying the natural world any more, they’re mining it. It’s a looter mentality. Anything new or unknown is automatically of interest, because it might have value. It might be worth a fortune.” Gutierrez drained his beer. “The world,” he said, “is turned upside down. And the fact is that a lot of people want to know what these aberrant animals represent—and where they come from.” The loudspeaker called Levine’s flight. Both men stood up from the table. Gutierrez said, “You’ll keep all this to yourself? I mean, what you saw today.” “To be quite honest,” Levine said, “I don’t know what I saw today. It could have been anything.” Gutierrez grinned. “Safe flight, Richard.” “Take care, Marty.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0007.txt", "text": "Departure His backpack slung over his shoulder, Levine walked toward the departure lounge. He turned to wave goodbye to Gutierrez, but his friend was already heading out the door, raising his arm to wave for a taxi. Levine shrugged, turned back. Directly ahead was the customs desk, travelers lined up to have their passports stamped. He was booked on a night flight to San Francisco, with a long stopover in Mexico City; not many people were queuing up. He probably had time to call his office, and leave word for his secretary, Linda, that he would be on the flight; and perhaps, he thought, he should also call Malcolm. Looking around, he saw a row of phones marked ICT TELEFONOS INTERNATIONAL along the wall to his right, but there were only a few, and all were in use. He had better use the satellite phone in his backpack, he thought, as he swung the pack off his shoulder, and perhaps it would be— He paused, frowning. He looked back at the wall. Four people were using the phones. The first was a blonde woman in shorts and a halter top, bouncing a young sunburned child in her arms as she talked. Next to her stood a bearded man in a safari jacket, who glanced repeatedly at his gold Rolex watch. Then there was a gray-haired, grandmotherly woman talking in Spanish, while her two full-grown sons stood by, nodding emphatically. And the last person was the helicopter pilot. He had removed his uniform jacket, and was standing in short sleeves and tie. He was turned away, facing the wall, shoulders hunched. Levine moved closer, and heard the pilot speaking in English. Levine set his pack down and bent over it, pretending to adjust the straps while he listened. The pilot was still turned away from him. He heard the pilot say, “No, no, Professor. It is not that way. No.” Then there was a pause. “No,” the pilot said. “I am telling to you, no. I am sorry, Professor Baselton, but this is not known. It is an island, but which one … We must wait again for more. No, he leaves tonight. No, I think he does not know anything, and no pictures. No. I understand. Adiós.” Levine ducked his head as the pilot walked briskly toward the LACS A desk at the other end of the airport. What the hell? he thought. It is an island, but which one … How did they know it was an island? Levine himself was still not sure of that. And he had been working intensively on these finds, day and night, trying to put it together. Where they had come from. Why it was happening. He walked around the corner, out of sight, and pulled out the little satellite phone. He dialed it quickly, calling a number in San Francisco. The call went through, rapidly clicking as it linked with the satellite. It began to ring. There was a beep."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0007.txt", "text": "An electronic voice said, “Please enter your access code.” Levine punched in a six-digit number. There was another beep. The electronic voice said, “Leave your message.” “I’m calling,” Levine said, “with the results of the trip. Single specimen, not in good shape. Location: BB-17 on your map. That’s far south, which fits all of our hypotheses. I wasn’t able to make a precise identification before they burned the specimen. But my guess is that it was an ornitholestes. As you know, this animal is not on the list—a highly significant finding.” He glanced around, but no one was near him, no one was paying attention. “Furthermore, the lateral femur was cut in a deep gash. This is extremely disturbing.” He hesitated, not wanting to say too much. “And I am sending back a sample that requires close examination. I also think some other people are interested. Anyway, whatever is going on down here is new, Ian. There haven’t been any specimens for over a year, and now they’re showing up again. Something new is happening. And we don’t understand it at all.” Or do we? Levine thought. He pressed the disconnect, turned the phone off, and replaced it in the outer pocket of his backpack. Maybe, he thought, we know more than we realize. He looked thoughtfully toward the departure gate. It was time to catch his flight."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0008.txt", "text": "Palo Alto At 2 a.m., Ed James pulled into the nearly deserted parking lot of the Marie Callender’s on Carter Road. The black BMW was already there, parked near the entrance. Through the windows, he could see Dodgson sitting inside at a booth, his bland features frowning. Dodgson was never in a good mood. Right now he was talking to the heavyset man alongside him, and glancing at his watch. The heavyset man was Baselton. The professor who appeared on television. James always felt relieved whenever Baselton was there. Dodgson gave him the creeps, but it was hard to imagine Baselton involved in anything shady. James turned off the ignition and twisted the rearview mirror so he could see as he buttoned his shirt collar and pulled up his tie. He glimpsed his face in the mirror—a disheveled, tired man with a two-day stubble of beard. What the hell, he thought. Why shouldn’t he look tired? It was the middle of the fucking night. Dodgson always scheduled his meetings in the middle of the night, and always at this same damn Marie Callender restaurant. James never understood why; the coffee was awful. But then, there was a lot he didn’t understand. He picked up the manila envelope, and got out of the car, slamming the door. He headed for the entrance, shaking his head. Dodgson had been paying him five hundred dollars a day for weeks now, to follow a bunch of scientists around. At first, James had assumed it was some sort of industrial espionage. But none of the scientists worked for industry; they held university appointments, in pretty dull fields. Like that paleobotanist Sattler whose specialty was prehistoric pollen grains. James had sat through one of her lectures at Berkeley, and had barely been able to stay awake. Slide after slide of little pale spheres that looked like cotton balls, while she nattered on about polysaccharide bonding angles and the Campanian-Maastrichtian boundary. Jesus, it was boring. Certainly not worth five hundred dollars a day, he thought. He went inside, blinking in the light, and walked over to the booth. He sat down, nodded to Dodgson and Baselton, and raised his hand to order coffee from the waitress. Dodgson glared at him. “I haven’t got all night,” he said. “Let’s get started.” “Right,” James said, lowering his hand. “Fine, sure.” He opened the envelope, began pulling out sheets and photos, handing them across the table to Dodgson as he talked. “Alan Grant: paleontologist at Montana State. At the moment he’s on leave of absence and is now in Paris, lecturing on the latest dinosaur finds. Apparently he has some new ideas about tyrannosaurs being scavengers, and—” “Never mind,” Dodgson said. “Go on.” “Ellen Sattler Reiman,” James said, pushing across a photo. “Botanist, used to be involved with Grant. Now married to a physicist at Berkeley and has a young son and daughter. She lectures half-time at the university."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0008.txt", "text": "Spends the rest of her time at home, because—” “Go on, go on.” “Well. Most of the rest are deceased. Donald Gennaro, lawyer … died of dysentery on a business trip. Dennis Nedry, Integrated Computer Systems … also deceased. John Hammond, who started International Genetic Technologies … died while visiting the company’s research facility in Costa Rica. Hammond had his grandchildren with him at the time; the kids live with their mother back east and—” “Anybody contact them? Anybody from InGen?” “No, no contact. The boy’s started college and the girl is in prep school. And InGen filed for Chapter 11 protection after Hammond died. It’s been in the courts ever since. The hard assets are finally being sold off. During the last two weeks, as a matter of fact.” Baselton spoke for the first time. “Is Site B involved in that sale?” James looked blank. “Site B?” “Yes. Has anybody talked to you about Site B?” “No, I’ve never heard of it before. What is it?” “If you hear anything about Site B,” Baselton said, “we want to know.” Sitting beside Baselton in the booth, Dodgson thumbed through the pictures and data sheets, then tossed them aside impatiently. He looked up at James. “What else have you got?” “That’s all, Dr. Dodgson.” “That’s all?” Dodgson said. “What about Malcolm? And what about Levine? Are they still friends?” James consulted his notes. “I’m not sure.” Baselton frowned. “Not sure?” he said. “What do you mean, you’re not sure?” “Malcolm met Levine at the Santa Fe Institute,” James said. “They spent time together there, a couple of years ago. But Malcolm hasn’t gone back to Santa Fe recently. He’s taken a visiting lectureship at Berkeley in the biology department. He teaches mathematical models of evolution. And he seems to have lost contact with Levine.” “They have a falling out?” “Maybe. I was told they argued about Levine’s expedition.” “What expedition?” Dodgson said, leaning forward. “Levine’s been planning some kind of expedition for a year or so. He’s ordered special vehicles from a company called Mobile Field Systems. It’s a small operation in Woodside, run by a guy named Jack Thorne. Thorne outfits Jeeps and trucks for scientists doing field research. Scientists in Africa and Sichuan and Chile all swear by them.” “Malcolm knows about this expedition?” “He must. He’s gone to Thorne’s place, occasionally. Every month or so. And of course Levine’s been going there almost every day. That’s how he got thrown in jail.” “Thrown in jail?” Baselton said. “Yeah,” James said, glancing at his notes. “Let’s see. February tenth, Levine was arrested for driving a hundred and twenty in a fifteen zone. Right in front of Woodside Junior High. The judge impounded his Ferrari, yanked his license, and gave him community service. Basically ordered him to teach a class at the school.” Baselton smiled. “Richard Levine teaching junior high. I’d love to see that.” “He’s been pretty conscientious. Of course he’s spending time in Woodside, anyway, with Thorne."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0008.txt", "text": "That is, until he left the country.” “When did he leave the country?” Dodgson said. “Two days ago. He went to Costa Rica. Short trip, he was due back early this morning.” “And where is he now?” “I don’t know. And I’m afraid, uh, it’s going to be hard to find out.” “Why is that?” James hesitated, coughed. “Because he was on the passenger manifest of the flight from Costa Rica—but he wasn’t on the plane when it landed. My contact in Costa Rica says he checked out of his hotel in San José before the flight, and never went back. Didn’t take any other flight out of the city. So, uh, for the moment, I’m afraid that Richard Levine has disappeared.” There was a long silence. Dodgson sat back in the booth, hissing between his teeth. He looked at Baselton, who shook his head. Dodgson very carefully picked up all the sheets of paper, tapped them on the table, making a neat stack. He slipped them back into the manila envelope, and handed the envelope to James. “Now listen, you stupid son of a bitch,” Dodgson said. “There’s only one thing I want from you now. It’s very simple. Are you listening?” James swallowed. “I’m listening.” Dodgson leaned across the table. “Find him,” he said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0009.txt", "text": "Berkeley In his cluttered office, Malcolm looked up from his desk as his assistant, Beverly, came into the room. She was followed by a man from DHL, carrying a small box. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Dr. Malcolm, but you have to sign these forms.… It’s that sample from Costa Rica.” Malcolm stood, and walked around the desk. He didn’t use his cane. In recent weeks, he had been working steadily to walk without the cane. He still had occasional pain in his leg, but he was determined to make progress. Even his physical therapist, a perpetually cheery woman named Cindy, had commented on it. “Gee, after all these years, suddenly you’re motivated, Dr. Malcolm,” she had said. “What’s going on?” “Oh, you know,” Malcolm had said to her. “Can’t rely on a cane forever.” The truth was rather different. Confronted by Levine’s relentless enthusiasm for the lost-world hypothesis, his excited telephone calls at all hours of the day and night, Malcolm had begun to reconsider his own views. And he had come to believe that it was quite possible—even probable—that extinct animals existed in a remote, previously unsuspected location. Malcolm had his own reasons for thinking so, which he had only hinted at to Levine. But the possibility of another island location was what led him to walk unaided. He wanted to prepare for a future visit to this island. And so he had begun to make the effort, day after day. He and Levine had narrowed their search down to a string of islands along the Costa Rican coast, and Levine was as always very intense in his excitement. But to Malcolm it remained hypothetical. He refused to get excited until there was hard evidence—photographs, or actual tissue samples—to demonstrate the existence of new animals. And so far, Malcolm had seen nothing at all. He was not sure whether he was disappointed or relieved. But in any case, Levine’s sample had arrived. Malcolm took the clipboard from the delivery man and quickly signed the top form: “Delivery of Excluded Materials / Samples: Biological Research.” The delivery man said, “You have to check the boxes, sir.” Malcolm looked at the list of questions running down the page, with a check box beside each. Was the specimen alive. Was the specimen cultures of bacteria, fungi, viruses, or protozoa. Was the specimen registered under an established research protocol. Was the specimen contagious. Was the specimen taken from a farm or animal-husbandry site. Was the specimen plant matter, propagative seeds, or bulbs. Was the specimen insect or insect-related.… He checked off “No” to everything. “And the next page, too, sir,” the delivery man said. He was looking around the office, at the stacks of papers heaped untidily about, the maps on the walls with the colored pins stuck in them. “You do medical research here?” Malcolm flipped the page, scrawled his signature on the next form. “No.” “And one more, sir.…” The third form was a release of liability to the carrier."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0009.txt", "text": "Malcolm signed it as well. The delivery man said, “Have a good day,” and left. Immediately Malcolm sagged, resting his weight on the edge of the desk. He winced. “Still hurt?” Beverly said. She took the specimen to the side table, pushed some papers away, and began to unwrap it. “I’m okay.” He looked over at the cane, resting beside his chair behind the desk. Then he took a breath, and crossed the room, slowly. Beverly had the wrapping off the package, revealing a small stainless-steel cylinder the size of his fist. A triple-bladed biohazard sign was taped across the screwtop lid. Attached to the cylinder was a second small canister with a metal valve; it contained the refrigerant gas. Malcolm swung the light over the cylinder, and said, “Let’s see what he was so excited about.” He broke the taped seal and unscrewed the lid. There was a hiss of gas, and a faint white puff of condensation. The exterior of the cylinder frosted over. Peering in, he saw a plastic baggie, and a sheet of paper. He upended the cylinder, dumping the contents onto the table. The baggie contained a ragged piece of greenish flesh about two inches square, with a small green plastic tag attached to it. He held it up to the light, examined it with a magnifying glass, then set it down again. He looked at the green skin, the pebbled texture. Maybe, he thought. Maybe … “Beverly,” he said, “call Elizabeth Gelman, over at the zoo. Tell her I have something I want her to look at. And tell her it’s confidential.” Beverly nodded, and went out of the room to phone. Alone, Malcolm unrolled the strip of paper that had come with the sample. It was a piece of paper torn from a yellow legal pad. In block printing, it said: I WAS RIGHT AND YOU WERE WRONG. Malcolm frowned. That son of a bitch, he thought. “Beverly? After you call Elizabeth, get Richard Levine at his office. I need to talk to him right away.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0010.txt", "text": "The Lost World Richard Levine pressed his face to the warm rock cliff, and paused to catch his breath. Five hundred feet below, the ocean surged, waves thundering brilliant white against the black rocks. The boat that had brought him was already heading east again, a small white speck on the horizon. It had to return, for there was no safe harbor anywhere on this desolate, inhospitable island. For now, they were on their own. Levine took a deep breath, and looked down at Diego, twenty feet below him on the cliff face. Diego was burdened with the backpack that contained all their equipment, but he was young and strong. He smiled cheerfully, and nodded his head upward. “Have courage. It is not far now, señor.” “I hope so,” Levine said. When he had examined the cliff through binoculars from the boat, this had seemed like a good place to make the ascent. But in fact, the cliff face was nearly vertical, and incredibly dangerous because the volcanic rock was crumbling and friable. Levine raised his arms, fingers extending upward, reaching for the next handhold. He clung to the rock; small pebbles broke free and his hand slipped down. He gripped again, then pulled himself upward. He was breathing hard, from exertion and fear. “Just twenty meters more, señor,” Diego said encouragingly. “You can do it.” “I’m sure I can,” Levine muttered. “Considering the alternative.” As he neared the top of the cliff, the wind blew harder, whistling in his ears, tugging at his clothes. It felt as if it was trying to suck him away from the rock. Looking up, he saw the dense foliage that grew right to the edge of the cliff face. Almost there, he thought. Almost. And then, with a final heave, he pushed himself over the top and collapsed, rolling in soft wet ferns. Still gasping, he looked back and saw Diego come over lightly, easily; he squatted on the mossy grass, and smiled. Levine turned away, staring at the huge ferns overhead, releasing the accumulated tension of the climb in long shuddering breaths. His legs burned fiercely. But no matter—he was here! Finally! He looked at the jungle around him. It was primary forest, undisturbed by the hand of man. Exactly as the satellite images had shown. Levine had been forced to rely on satellite photographs, because there were no maps available of private islands such as this one. This island existed as a kind of lost world, isolated in the midst of the Pacific Ocean. Levine listened to the sound of the wind, the rustle of the palm fronds that dripped water onto his face. And then he heard another sound, distant, like the cry of a bird, but deeper, more resonant. As he listened, he heard it again. A sharp sizzle nearby made him look over. Diego had struck a match, was raising it to light a cigarette."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0010.txt", "text": "Quickly, Levine sat up, pushed the younger man’s hand away, and shook his head, no. Diego frowned, puzzled. Levine put his finger to his lips. He pointed in the direction of the bird sound. Diego shrugged, his expression indifferent. He was unimpressed. He saw no reason for concern. That was because he didn’t understand what they were up against, Levine thought, as he unzipped the dark-green backpack, and began to assemble the big Lindstradt rifle. The rifle had been specially manufactured for him in Sweden, and represented the latest in animal-control technology. He screwed the barrel into the stock, locked in the Fluger clip, checked the gas charge, and handed the rifle to Diego. Diego took it with another shrug. Meanwhile, Levine removed the black anodized Lindstradt pistol in its holster, and buckled it around his waist. He removed the pistol, checked the safety twice, and put the pistol back in the holster. Levine got to his feet, gestured for Diego to follow him. Diego zipped up the backpack, and shouldered it again. The two men started down the sloping hillside, away from the cliff. Almost immediately, their clothes were soaked from the wet foliage. They had no views; they were surrounded on all sides by dense jungle, and could see only a few yards ahead. The fronds of the ferns were enormous, as long and broad as a man’s body, the plants twenty feet tall, with rough spiky stalks. And high above the ferns, a great canopy of trees blocked most of the sunlight. They moved in darkness, silently, on damp, spongy earth. Levine paused often, to consult his wrist compass. They were heading west, down a steep slope, toward the interior of the island. He knew that the island was the remains of an ancient volcanic crater, eroded and decomposed by centuries of weathering. The interior terrain consisted of a series of ridges that led down to the floor of the crater. But particularly here on the eastern side, the landscape was steep, rugged, and treacherous. The sense of isolation, of having returned to a primordial world, was palpable. Levine’s heart pounded as he continued down the slope, across a marshy stream, and then up again. At the top of the next ridge, there was a break in the foliage, and he felt a welcome breeze. From his vantage point, he was able to see to the far side of the island, a rim of hard black cliff, miles away. Between here and the cliffs they saw nothing but gently undulating jungle. Standing beside him, Diego said, “Fantástico.” Levine quickly shushed him. “But señor,” he protested, pointing to the view. “We are alone here.” Levine shook his head, annoyed. He had gone over all this with Diego, during the boat ride over. Once on the island, no speaking. No hair pomade, no cologne, no cigarettes. All food sealed tightly in plastic bags. Everything packed with great care. Nothing to produce a smell, or make a sound."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0010.txt", "text": "He had warned Diego, again and again, of the importance of all these precautions. But now it was obvious that Diego had paid no attention. He didn’t understand. Levine poked Diego angrily, and shook his head again. Diego smiled. “Señor, please. There are only birds here.” At that moment, they heard a deep, rumbling sound, an unearthly cry that arose from somewhere in the forest below them. After a moment, the cry was answered, from another part of the forest. Diego’s eyes widened. Levine mouthed: Birds? Diego was silent. He bit his lip, and stared out at the forest. To the south, they saw a place where the tops of the trees began to move, a whole section of forest that suddenly seemed to come alive, as if brushed by wind. But the rest of the forest was not moving. It was not the wind. Diego crossed himself quickly. They heard more cries, lasting nearly a minute, and then silence descended again. Levine moved off the ridge and headed down the jungle slope, going deeper into the interior. He was moving forward quickly, looking at the ground, watching for snakes, when he heard a low whistle behind him. He turned and saw Diego pointing to the left. Levine doubled back, pushed through the fronds, and followed Diego as he moved south. In a few moments, they came upon two parallel tracks in the dirt, long since overgrown with grass and ferns, but clearly recognizable as an old Jeep trail, leading off into the jungle. Of course they would follow it. He knew their progress would be much faster on a road. Levine gestured, and Diego took off the backpack. It was Levine’s turn; he shouldered the weight, adjusted the straps. In silence, they started down the road. In places, the Jeep track was hardly recognizable, so thickly had the jungle grown back. Clearly, no one had used this road for many years, and the jungle was always ready to return. Behind him, Diego grunted, swore softly. Levine turned and saw Diego lifting his foot gingerly; he had stepped to mid-ankle in a pile of green animal-droppings. Levine went back. Diego scraped his boot clean on the stem of a fern. The droppings appeared to be composed of pale flecks of hay, mixed with green. The material was light and crumbly—dried, old. There was no smell. Levine searched the ground carefully, until he found the remainder of the original spoor. The droppings were well formed, twelve centimeters in diameter. Definitely left behind by some large herbivore. Diego was silent, but his eyes were wide. Levine shook his head, continued on. As long as they saw signs of herbivora, he wasn’t going to worry. At least, not too much. Even so, his fingers touched the butt of his pistol, as if for reassurance. * * * They came to a stream, muddy banks on both sides. Here Levine paused. He saw clear three-toed footprints in the mud, some of them quite large."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0010.txt", "text": "The palm of his own hand, fingers spread wide, fitted easily inside one of the prints, with room to spare. When he looked up, Diego was crossing himself again. He held the rifle in his other hand. They waited at the stream, listening to the gentle gurgle of the water. Something shiny glinted in the stream, catching his eye. He bent over, and plucked it out. It was a piece of glass tubing, roughly the size of a pencil. One end was broken off. There were graduated markings along the side. He realized it was a pipette, of the kind used in laboratories everywhere in the world. Levine held it up to the light, turning it in his fingers. It was odd, he thought. A pipette like this implied— Levine turned, and caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. Something small and brown, scurrying across the mud of the riverbank. Something about the size of a rat. Diego grunted in surprise. Then it was gone, disappearing in foliage. Levine moved forward and crouched in the mud by the stream. He peered at the footprints left by the tiny animal. The footprints were three-toed, like the tracks of a bird. He saw more three-toed tracks, including some bigger ones, which were several inches across. Levine had seen such prints before, in trackways such as the Purgatoire River in Colorado, where the ancient shoreline was now fossilized, the dinosaur tracks frozen in stone. But these prints were in fresh mud. And they had been made by living animals. Sitting on his haunches, Levine heard a soft squeak coming from somewhere to his right. Looking over, he saw the ferns moving slightly. He stayed very still, waiting. After a moment, a small animal peeked out from among the fronds. It appeared to be the size of a mouse; it had smooth, hairless skin and large eyes mounted high on its tiny head. It was greenish-brown in color, and it made a continuous, irritable squeaking sound at Levine, as if to drive him away. Levine stayed motionless, hardly daring to breathe. He recognized this creature, of course. It was a mussaurus, a tiny prosauropod from the Late Triassic. Skeletal remains were found only in South America. It was one of the smallest dinosaurs known. A dinosaur, he thought. Even though he had expected to see them on this island, it was still startling to be confronted by a living, breathing member of the Dinosauria. Especially one so small. He could not take his eyes off it. He was entranced. After all these years, after all the dusty skeletons—an actual living dinosaur! The little mussaur ventured farther out from the protection of the fronds. Now Levine could see that it was longer than he had thought at first. It was actually about ten centimeters long, with a surprisingly thick tail. All told, it looked very much like a lizard. It sat upright, squatting on its hind legs on the frond."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0010.txt", "text": "He saw the rib cage moving as the animal breathed. It waved its tiny forearms in the air at Levine, and squeaked repeatedly. Slowly, very slowly, Levine extended his hand. The creature squeaked again, but did not run. If anything it seemed curious, cocking its head the way very small animals do, as Levine’s hand came closer. Finally Levine’s fingers touched the tip of the frond. The mussaur stood on its hind legs, balancing with its outstretched tail. Showing no sign of fear, it stepped lightly onto Levine’s hand, and stood in the creases of his palm. He hardly felt the weight, it was so light. The mussaur walked around, sniffed Levine’s fingers. Levine smiled, charmed. Then, suddenly, the little creature hissed in annoyance, and jumped off his hand, disappearing into the palms. Levine blinked, unable to understand why. Then he smelled a foul odor, and heard a heavy rustling in the bushes on the other side. There was a soft grunting sound. More rustling. For a brief moment, Levine remembered that carnivores in the wild hunted near streambeds, attacking animals when they were vulnerable, bending over to drink. But the recognition came too late; he heard a terrifying high-pitched cry, and when he turned he saw that Diego was screaming as his body was hauled away, into the bushes. Diego struggled; the bushes shook fiercely; Levine caught a glimpse of a single large foot, its middle toe bearing a short curving claw. Then the foot pulled back. The bushes continued to shake. Suddenly, the forest erupted in frightening animal roars all around him. He glimpsed a large animal charging him. Richard Levine turned and fled, feeling the adrenaline surge of pure panic, not knowing where to go, knowing only that it was hopeless. He felt a heavy weight suddenly tear at his backpack, forcing him to his knees in the mud, and he realized in that moment that despite all his planning, despite all his clever deductions, things had gone terribly wrong, and he was about to die."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0011.txt", "text": "School “When we consider mass extinction from a meteor impact,” Richard Levine said, “we must ask several questions. First, are there any impact craters on our planet larger than nineteen miles in diameter—which is the smallest size necessary to cause a worldwide extinction event? And second, do any craters match in time a known extinction? It turns out there are a dozen craters this large around the world, of which five coincide with known extinctions.…” Kelly Curtis yawned in the darkness of her seventh-grade classroom. Sitting at her desk, she propped her chin on her elbows, and tried to stay awake. She already knew this stuff. The TV set in front of the class showed a vast cornfield, seen in an aerial view, the curving outlines faintly visible. She recognized it as the crater in Manson. In the darkness, Dr. Levine’s recorded voice said, “This is the crater in Manson, Iowa, dating from sixty-five million years ago, just when dinosaurs became extinct. But was this the meteor that killed the dinosaurs?” No, Kelly thought, yawning. Probably the Yucatán peninsula. Manson was too small. “We now think this crater is too small,” Dr. Levine said aloud. “We believe it was too small by an order of magnitude, and the current candidate is the crater near Mérida, in the Yucatán. It seems difficult to imagine, but the impact emptied the entire Gulf of Mexico, causing two-thousand-foot-high tidal waves to wash over the land. It must have been incredible. But there are disputes about this crater, too, particularly concerning the meaning of the cenote ring structure, and the differential death rates of phytoplankton in ocean deposits. That may sound complicated, but don’t worry about it for now. We’ll go into it in more detail next time. So, that’s it for today.” The lights came up. Their teacher, Mrs. Menzies, stepped to the front of the class and turned off the computer which had been running the display, and the lecture. “Well,” she said, “I’m glad Dr. Levine gave us this recording. He told me he might not be back in time for today’s lecture, but he’ll be with us again for sure when we return from spring break next week. Kelly, you and Arby are working for Dr. Levine, is that what he told you?” Kelly glanced over at Arby, who was slouched low in his seat, frowning. “Yes, Mrs. Menzies,” Kelly said. “Good. All right, everyone, the assignment for the holidays is all of chapter seven”—there were groans from the class—“including all of the exercises at the end of part one, as well as part two. Be sure to bring that with you, completed, when we return. Have a good spring break. We’ll see you back here in a week.” The bell rang; the class got up, chairs scraping, the room suddenly noisy. Arby drifted over to Kelly. He looked up at her mournfully. Arby was a head shorter than Kelly; he was the shortest person in the class."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0011.txt", "text": "He was also the youngest. Kelly was thirteen, like the other seventh-graders, but Arby was only eleven. He had already been skipped two grades, because he was so smart. And there were rumors he would be skipped again. Arby was a genius, particularly with computers. Arby put his pen in the pocket of his white button-down shirt, and pushed his horn-rim glasses up on his nose. R. B. Benton was black; both his parents were doctors in San Jose, and they always made sure he was dressed very neatly, like a college kid or something. Which, Kelly reflected, he would probably be in a couple of years, the way he was going. Standing next to Arby, Kelly always felt awkward and gawky. Kelly had to wear her sister’s old clothes, which her mother had bought from Kmart about a million years ago. She even had to wear Emily’s old Reeboks, which were so scuffed and dirty that they never came clean, even after Kelly ran them through the washing machine. Kelly washed and ironed all her own clothes; her mother never had time. Her mother was never even home, most of the time. Kelly looked enviously at Arby’s neatly pressed khakis, his polished penny loafers, and sighed. Still, even though she was jealous, Arby was her only real friend—the only person who thought it was okay that she was smart. Kelly worried that he’d be skipped to ninth grade, and she wouldn’t see him any more. Beside her, Arby still frowned. He looked up at her and said, “Why isn’t Dr. Levine here?” “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe something happened.” “Like what?” “I don’t know. Something.” “But he promised he would be here,” Arby said. “To take us on the field trip. It was all arranged. We got permission and everything.” “So? We can still go.” “But he should be here,” Arby insisted stubbornly. Kelly had seen this behavior before. Arby was accustomed to adults being reliable. His parents were both very reliable. Kelly wasn’t troubled by such ideas. “Never mind, Arb,” she said. “Let’s just go see Dr. Thorne ourselves.” “You think so?” “Sure. Why not?” Arby hesitated. “Maybe I should call my mom first.” “Why?” Kelly said. “You know she’ll tell you that you have to go home. Come on, Arb. Let’s just go.” He hesitated, still troubled. Arby might be smart, but any change in plan always bothered him. Kelly knew from experience he would grumble and argue if she pushed for them to go alone. She had to wait, while he made up his own mind. “Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s go see Thorne.” Kelly grinned. “Meet you in front,” she said, “in five minutes.” As she went down the stairs from the second floor, the singsong chant began again. “Kelly is a brainer, Kelly is a brainer.…” She held her head high. It was that stupid Allison Stone and her stupid friends. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, taunting her."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0011.txt", "text": "“Kelly is a brainer.…” She swept past the girls, ignoring them. Nearby, she saw Miss Enders, the hall monitor, paying no attention as usual. Even though Mr. Canosa, the assistant principal, had recently made a special homeroom announcement about teasing kids. Behind her, the girls called: “Kelly is a brainer.… She’s the queen … of the screen … and it’s gonna turn her green.…” They collapsed in laughter. Up ahead, she saw Arby waiting by the door, a bundle of gray cables in his hand. She hurried forward. When she got to him, he said, “Forget it.” “They’re stupid jerkoffs.” “Right.” “I don’t care, anyway.” “I know. Just forget it.” Behind them, the girls were giggling. “Kel-ly and Ar-by … going to a party … take a bath, in their math.…” They went outside into the sunlight, the sounds of the girls thankfully drowned in the noise of everyone going home. Yellow school buses were in the parking lot. Kids were streaming down the steps to their parents’ cars, which were lined up all around the block. There was a lot of activity. Arby ducked a Frisbee that whooshed over his head, and glanced toward the street. “There he is again.” “Well, don’t look at him,” Kelly said. “I’m not, I’m not.” “Remember what Dr. Levine said.” “Jeez, Kel. I remember, okay?” Across the street was parked the plain gray Taurus sedan that they had seen, off and on, for the past two months. Behind the wheel, pretending to read a newspaper, was that same man with the scraggly growth of beard. This bearded man had been following Dr. Levine ever since he started to teach the class at Woodside. Kelly believed that man was the reason why Dr. Levine asked her and Arby to be his assistants in the first place. Levine had told them their job would be to help him by carrying equipment, Xeroxing class assignments, collecting homework, and routine things like that. They thought it would be a big honor to work for Dr. Levine—or anyway, interesting to work for an actual professional scientist—so they had agreed to do it. But it turned out there never was anything to be done for the class; Dr. Levine did all that himself. Instead, he sent them on lots of little errands. And he had told them to be careful to avoid this bearded man in the car. That wasn’t hard; the man never paid any attention to them, because they were kids. Dr. Levine had explained the bearded man was following him because of something to do with his arrest, but Kelly didn’t believe that. Her own mother had been arrested twice for drunk driving, and there was never anybody following her. So Kelly didn’t know why this man was following Levine, but clearly Levine was doing some secret research and he didn’t want anybody to find out about it. She knew one thing—Dr. Levine didn’t care much about this class he was teaching."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0011.txt", "text": "He usually gave the lecture off the top of his head. Other times he would walk in the front door of the school, hand them a taped lecture, and walk out the back. They never knew where he went, on those days. The errands he sent them on were mysterious, too. Once they went to Stanford and picked up five small squares of plastic from a professor there. The plastic was light, and sort of foamy. Another time they went downtown to an electronics store and picked up a triangular device that the man behind the counter gave them very nervously, as if it might be illegal or something. Another time they picked up a metal tube that looked like it contained cigars. They couldn’t help opening it, but they were uneasy to find four sealed plastic ampoules of straw-colored liquid. The ampoules were marked EXTREME DANGER! LETHAL TOXICITY! and had the three-bladed international symbol for biohazard. But mostly, their assignments were mundane. He often sent them to libraries at Stanford to Xerox papers on all sorts of subjects: Japanese sword-making, X-ray crystallography, Mexican vampire bats, Central American volcanoes, oceanic currents of El Niño, the mating behavior of mountain sheep, sea-cucumber toxicity, flying buttresses of Gothic cathedrals … Dr. Levine never explained why he was interested in these subjects. Often he would send them back day after day, to search for more material. And then, suddenly, he would drop the subject, and never refer to it again. And they would be on to something else. Of course, they could figure some of it out. A lot of the questions had to do with the vehicles that Dr. Thorne was building for Dr. Levine’s expedition. But most of the time, the subjects were completely mysterious. Occasionally, Kelly wondered what the bearded man would make of all this. She wondered whether he knew something they did not. But actually, the bearded man seemed kind of lazy. He never seemed to figure out that Kelly and Arby were doing errands for Dr. Levine. Right now, the bearded man glanced over at the entrance to the school, ignoring them. They walked to the end of the street, and sat on the bench to wait for the bus."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0012.txt", "text": "Tag The baby snow leopard spit the bottle out, and rolled over onto its back, paws in the air. It made a soft mewing sound. “She wants to be petted,” Elizabeth Gelman said. Malcolm reached out his hand, to stroke the belly. The cub spun around, and sunk its tiny teeth into his fingers. Malcolm yelled. “She does that, sometimes,” Gelman said. “Dorje! Bad girl! Is that any way to treat our distinguished visitor?” She reached out, took Malcolm’s hand. “It didn’t break the skin, but we should clean it anyway.” They were in the white research laboratory of the San Francisco Zoo, at three o’clock in the afternoon. Elizabeth Gelman, the youthful head of research, was supposed to report on her findings, but they had to delay for the afternoon feeding in the nursery. Malcolm had watched them feed a baby gorilla, which spit up like a human baby, and a koala, and then the very cute snow-leopard cub. “Sorry about that,” Gelman said. She took him to a side basin, and soaped his hand. “But I thought it was better that you come here now, when the regular staff is all at the weekly conference.” “Why is that?” “Because there’s a lot of interest in the material you gave us, Ian. A lot.” She dried his hand with a towel, inspected it again. “I think you’ll survive.” “What have you found?” Malcolm said to her. “You have to admit, it is very provocative. By the way, is it from Costa Rica?” Keeping his voice neutral, Malcolm said, “Why do you say that?” “Because there are all these rumors about unknown animals showing up in Costa Rica. And this is definitely an unknown animal, Ian.” She led him out of the nursery, and into a small conference room. He dropped into a chair, resting his cane on the table. She lowered the lights, and clicked on a slide projector. “Okay. Here’s a close-up of your original material, before we began our examination. As you see, it consists of a fragment of animal tissue in a state of very advanced necrosis. The tissue measures four centimeters by six centimeters. Attached to it is a green plastic tag, measuring two centimeters square. Tissue cut by a knife, but not a very sharp one.” Malcolm nodded. “What’d you use, Ian, your pocketknife?” “Something like that.” “All right. Let’s deal with the tissue sample first.” The slide changed; Malcolm saw a microscopic view. “This is a gross histologic section through the superficial epidermis. Those patchy, ragged gaps are where the postmortem necrotic change has eroded the skin surface. But what is interesting is the arrangement of epidermal cells. You’ll notice the density of chromatophores, or pigment-bearing cells. In the cut section you see the difference between melanophores here, and allophores, here. The overall pattern is suggestive of a lacerta or amblyrhynchus.” “You mean a lizard?” Malcolm said. “Yes,” she said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0012.txt", "text": "“It looks like a lizard—though the picture is not entirely consistent.” She tapped the left side of the screen. “You see this one cell here, which has this slight rim, in section? We believe that’s muscle. The chromatophore could open and close. Meaning that this animal could change color, like a chameleon. And over here you see this large oval shape, with a pale center? That’s the pore of a femoral scent gland. There is a waxy substance in the center which we are still analyzing. But our presumption is that this animal was male, since only male lizards have femoral glands.” “I see,” Malcolm said. She changed the slide. Malcolm saw what looked like a close-up of a sponge. “Going deeper. Here we see the structure of the subcutaneous layers. Highly distorted, because of gas bubbles from the clostridia infection that bloated the animal. But you can get a sense of the vessels—see, one here—and another here—which are surrounded by smooth muscle fibers. This is not characteristic of lizards. In fact, the whole appearance of this slide is wrong for lizards, or reptiles of any sort.” “You mean it looks warm-blooded.” “Right,” Gelman said. “Not really mammalian, but perhaps avian. This could be, oh, I don’t know, a dead pelican. Something like that.” “Uh-huh.” “Except no pelican has a skin like that.” “I see,” Malcolm said. “And there’s no feathers.” “Uh-huh.” “Now,” Gelman said, “we were able to extract a minute quantity of blood from the intra-arterial spaces. Not much, but enough to conduct a microscopic examination. Here it is.” The slide changed again. He saw a jumble of cells, mostly red cells, and an occasional misshapen white cell. It was confusing to look at. “This isn’t my area, Elizabeth,” he said. “Well, I’ll just give you the highlights,” she said. “First of all, nucleated red cells. That’s characteristic of birds, not mammals. Second, rather atypical hemoglobin, differing in several base pairs from other lizards. Third, aberrant white-cell structure. We don’t have enough material to make a determination, but we suspect this animal has a highly unusual immune system.” “Whatever that means,” Malcolm said, with a shrug. “We don’t know, and the sample doesn’t give us enough to find out. By the way, can you get more?” “I might be able to,” he said. “Where, from Site B?” Malcolm looked puzzled. “Site B?” “Well, that’s what’s embossed on the tag.” She changed the slide. “I must say, Ian, this tag is very interesting. Here at the zoo, we tag animals all the time, and we’re familiar with all the ordinary commercial brands sold around the world. Nobody’s seen this tag before. Here it is, magnified ten times. The actual object is roughly the size of your thumbnail. Uniform plastic outer surface, attaches to the animal by a Teflon-coated, stainless-steel clip on the other side. It’s a rather small clip, of the kind used to tag infants."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0012.txt", "text": "The animal you saw was adult?” “Presumably.” “So the tag was probably in place for a while, ever since the animal was young,” Gelman said. “Which makes sense, considering the degree of weathering. You’ll notice the pitting on the surface. That’s very unusual. This plastic is Duralon, the stuff they use to make football helmets. It’s extremely tough, and this pitting can’t have occurred through simple wear.” “Then what?” “It’s almost certainly a chemical reaction, such as exposure to acid, perhaps in aerosol form.” “Like volcanic fumes?” Malcolm said. “That could do it, particularly in view of what else we’ve learned. You’ll notice that the tag is rather thick—actually, it’s nine millimeters across. And it’s hollow.” “Hollow?” Malcolm said, frowning. “Yes. It contains an inner cavity. We didn’t want to open it, so we X-rayed it. Here.” The slide changed. Malcolm saw a jumble of white lines and boxes, inside the tag. “There appears to be substantial corrosion, again perhaps from acid fumes. But there’s no question what this once was. It’s a radio tag, Ian. Which means that this unusual animal, this warm-blooded lizard or whatever it was, was tagged and raised by somebody from birth. And that’s the part that’s got people around here upset. Somebody’s raising these things. Do you know how that happened?” “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Malcolm said. Elizabeth Gelman sighed. “You’re a lying son of a bitch.” He held out his hand. “May I have my sample back?” She said, “Ian. After all I’ve done for you.” “The sample?” “I think you owe me an explanation.” “And I promise, you’ll have one. In about two weeks. I’ll buy dinner.” She tossed a silver-foil package on the table. He picked it up, and slipped it in his pocket. “Thanks, Liz.” He got up to go. “I hate to run, but I’ve got to make a call right away.” He started for the door, and she said, “By the way, how did it die, Ian? This animal.” He paused. “Why do you ask?” “Because, when we teased up the skin cells, we found a few foreign cells under the outer epidermal layer. Cells belonging to another animal.” “Meaning what?” “Well, it’s the typical picture you see when two lizards fight. They rub against each other. Cells get pushed under the superficial layer.” “Yes,” he said. “There were signs of a fight on the carcass. The animal had been wounded.” “And you should also know there were signs of chronic vasoconstriction in the arterial vessels. This animal was under stress, Ian. And not just from the fight that wounded it. That would have disappeared in early postmortem changes. I’m talking about chronic, continuous stress. Wherever this creature lived, its environment was extremely stressful and dangerous.” “I see.” “So. How come a tagged animal has such a stressful life?” At the entrance to the zoo, he looked around to see if he was being followed, then stopped at a pay phone and dialed Levine."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0012.txt", "text": "The machine picked up; Levine wasn’t there. Typical, Malcolm thought. Whenever you needed him he wasn’t there. Probably off trying to get his Ferrari out of impound again. Malcolm hung up, and headed toward his car."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0013.txt", "text": "Thorne “Thorne Mobile Field Systems” was stenciled in black lettering on a large rolling metal garage door, at the far end of the Industrial Park. There was a regular door to the left. Arby pushed the buzzer on a small box with a grille. A gruff voice said, “Go away.” “It’s us, Dr. Thorne. Arby and Kelly.” “Oh. Okay.” There was a click as the door unlocked, and they walked inside. They found themselves in a large open shed. Workmen were making modifications on several vehicles; the air smelled of acetylene, engine oil, and fresh paint. Directly ahead Kelly saw a dark-green Ford Explorer with its roof cut open; two assistants stood on ladders, fitting a large flat panel of black solar cells over the top of the car. The hood of the Explorer was up, and the V-6 engine had been pulled out; workmen were now lowering a small, new engine in its place—it looked like a rounded shoebox, with the dull shine of aluminum alloy. Others were bringing the wide, flat rectangle of the Hughes converter that would be mounted on top of the motor. Over to the right, she saw the two RV trailers that Thorne’s team had been working on for the last few weeks. They weren’t the usual trailers you saw people driving for the weekends. One was enormous and sleek, almost as big as a bus, and outfitted with living and sleeping quarters for four people, as well as all sorts of special scientific equipment. It was called “Challenger” and it had an unusual feature: once you parked it, the walls could slide outward, expanding the inside dimensions. The Challenger trailer was made to connect up through a special accordion passageway to the second trailer, which was somewhat smaller, and was pulled by the first. This second RV contained laboratory equipment and some very high-tech refinements, though Kelly wasn’t sure exactly what. Right now, the second trailer was nearly hidden by the huge stream of sparks that spit out from a welder on the roof. Despite all the activity, the trailer looked mostly finished—although she could see people working inside, and all the upholstery, the chairs and seats, were lying around on the ground outside. Thorne himself was standing in the middle of the room, shouting at the welder on the roof of the camper. “Come on, come on, we’ve got to be finished today! Eddie, let’s go.” He turned, shouted again, “No, no, no. Look at the plans! Henry: you can’t place that strut laterally. It has to be crosswise, for strength. Look at the plans!” Doc Thorne was a gray-haired, barrel-chested man of fifty five. Except for his wire-frame glasses, he looked as if he might be a retired prizefighter. It was hard for Kelly to imagine Thorne as a university professor; he was immensely strong, and in continuous movement. “Damn it, Henry! Henry! Henry, are you listening to me?” Thorne swore again, and shook his fist in the air."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0013.txt", "text": "He turned to the kids. “These guys,” he said. “They’re supposed to be helping me.” From the Explorer, there was a white-hot crack like lightning. The two men leaning into the hood jumped away, as a cloud of acrid smoke rose above the car. “What’d I tell you?” Thorne shouted. “Ground it! Ground it before you do anything! We’ve got serious voltages here, guys! You’re going to get fried if you’re not careful!” He looked back at the kids and shook his head. “They just don’t get it,” he said. “That IUD is serious defense.” “IUD?” “Internal Ursine Deterrent—that’s what Levine calls it. It’s his idea of a joke,” Thorne said. “Actually, I developed this system a few years back for park rangers in Yellowstone, where bears break into trailers. Flip a switch, and you run ten thousand volts across the outer skin of the trailer. Wham-o! Takes the fight out of the biggest bear. But that kind of voltage’ll blow these guys right off the trailer. And then what? I get a workmen’s-compensation suit. For their stupidity.” He shook his head. “So? Where’s Levine?” “We don’t know,” Arby said. “What do you mean? Didn’t he teach your class today?” “No, he didn’t come.” Thorne swore again. “Well, I need him today, to go over the final revisions, before we do our field testing. He was supposed to be back today.” “Back from where?” Kelly said. “Oh, he went on one of his field trips,” Thorne said. “Very excited about it, before he went. I outfitted him myself—loaned him my latest field pack. Everything he could ever want in just forty-seven pounds. He liked it. Left last Monday, four days ago.” “For where?” “How should I know?” Thorne said. “He wouldn’t tell me. And I gave up asking. You know they’re all the same, now. Every scientist I deal with is secretive. But you can’t blame them. They’re all afraid of being ripped off, or sued. The modern world. Last year I built equipment for an expedition to the Amazon, we waterproofed it—which you’d want in the Amazon rain forest—soaking-wet electronics just don’t work—and the principal scientist was charged with misappropriating funds. For waterproofing! Some university bureaucrat said it was an ‘unnecessary expense.’ I’m telling you, it’s insane. Just insane. Henry—did you hear anything I said to you? Put it crosswise!” Thorne strode across the room, waving his arms. The kids followed behind him. “But now, look at this,” Thorne said. “For months we’ve been modifying his field vehicles, and finally we’re ready. He wants them light, I build them light. He wants them strong, I build them strong—light and strong both, why not, it’s just impossible, what he’s asking for, but with enough titanium and honeycarbon composite, we’re doing it anyway. He wants it off petroleum base, and off the grid, and we do that, too. So finally he’s got what he wanted, an immensely strong portable laboratory to go where there’s no gasoline and no electricity."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0013.txt", "text": "And now that it’s finished … I can’t believe it. He really didn’t show up for your class?” “No,” Kelly said. “So he’s disappeared,” Thorne said. “Wonderful. Perfect. What about our field test? We were going to take these vehicles out for a week, and put them through their paces.” “I know,” Kelly said. “We got permission from our parents and everything, so we could go, too.” “And now he’s not here,” Thorne fumed. “I suppose I should have expected it. These rich kids, they do whatever they want. A guy like Levine gives spoiled a bad name.” From the ceiling, a large metal cage came crashing down, landing next to them on the floor. Thorne jumped aside. “Eddie! Damn! Will you watch it?” “Sorry, Doc,” said Eddie Carr, high up in the rafters. “But specs are it can’t deform at twelve thousand psi. We had to test it.” “That’s fine, Eddie. But don’t test it when we’re under it!” Thorne bent to examine the cage, which was circular, constructed of inch-thick titanium-alloy bars. It had survived the fall without harm. And it was light; Thorne lifted it upright with one hand. It was about six feet high and four feet in diameter. It looked like an oversized bird cage. It had a swinging door, fitted with a heavy lock. “What’s that for?” Arby asked. “Actually,” Thorne said, “it’s part of that.” He pointed across the room, where a workman was putting together a stack of telescoping aluminum struts. “High observation platform, made to be assembled in the field. Scaffolding sets up into a rigid structure, about fifteen feet high. Fitted with a little shelter on top. Also collapsible.” “A platform to observe what?” Arby said. Thorne said, “He didn’t tell you?” “No,” Kelly said. “No,” Arby said. “Well, he didn’t tell me, either,” Thorne said, shaking his head. “All I know is he wants everything immensely strong. Light and strong, light and strong. Impossible.” He sighed. “God save me from academics.” “I thought you were an academic,” Kelly said. “Former academic,” Thorne said briskly. “Now I actually make things. I don’t just talk.” Colleagues who knew Jack Thorne agreed that retirement marked the happiest period in his life. As a professor of applied engineering, and a specialist in exotic materials, he had always demonstrated a practical focus and a love of students. His most famous course at Stanford, Structural Engineering 101a, was known among the students as “Thorny Problems,” because Thorne continually provoked his class to solve applied-engineering challenges he set for them. Some of these had long since entered into student folklore. There was, for example, the Toilet Paper Disaster: Thorne asked the students to drop a carton of eggs from Hoover Tower without injury. As padding, they could only use the cardboard tubes at the center of toilet paper rolls. There were spattered eggs all over the plaza below."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0013.txt", "text": "Then, another year, Thorne asked the students to build a chair to support a two-hundred-pound man, using only paper Q-tips and thread. And another time, he hung the answer sheet for the final exam from the classroom ceiling, and invited his students to pull it down, using whatever they could make with a cardboard shoebox containing a pound of licorice, and some toothpicks. When he was not in class, Thorne often served as an expert witness in legal cases involving materials engineering. He specialized in explosions, crashed airplanes, collapsed buildings, and other disasters. These forays into the real world sharpened his view that scientists needed the widest possible education. He used to say, “How can you design for people if you don’t know history and psychology? You can’t. Because your mathematical formulas may be perfect, but the people will screw it up. And if that happens, it means you screwed it up.” He peppered his lectures with quotations from Plato, Chaka Zulu, Emerson, and Chang-tzu. But as a professor who was popular with his students—and who advocated general education—Thorne found himself swimming against the tide. The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon. In this climate, being liked by your students was a sign of shallowness; and interest in real-world problems was proof of intellectual poverty and a distressing indifference to theory. But in the end, it was his fondness for Chang-tzu that pushed him out the door. In a departmental meeting, one of his colleagues got up and announced that “Some mythical Chinese bullshitter means fuck-all for engineering.” Thorne took early retirement a month later, and soon after started his own company. He enjoyed his work thoroughly, but he missed contact with the students, which was why he liked Levine’s two youthful assistants. These kids were smart, they were enthusiastic, and they were young enough so that the schools hadn’t destroyed all their interest in learning. They could still actually use their brains, which in Thorne’s view was a sure sign they hadn’t yet completed a formal education. “Jerry!” Thorne bellowed, to one of the welders on the RVs. “Balance the struts on both sides! Remember the crash tests!” Thorne pointed to a video monitor set on the floor, which showed a computer image of the RV crashing into a barrier. First it crashed end-on, then it crashed sideways, then it rolled and crashed again. Each time, the vehicle survived with very little damage. The computer program had been developed by the auto companies, and then discarded. Thorne acquired it, and modified it. “Of course the auto companies discarded it—it’s a good idea. Don’t want any good ideas coming out of a big company. Might lead to a good product!” He sighed. “Using this computer, we’ve crashed these vehicles ten thousand times: designing, crashing, modifying, crashing again. No theories, just actual testing. The way it ought to be.” Thorne’s dislike of theory was legendary."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0013.txt", "text": "In his view, a theory was nothing more than a substitute for experience put forth by someone who didn’t know what he was talking about. “And now look. Jerry? Jerry! Why’d we do all these simulations, if you guys aren’t going to follow the plans? Is everybody brain-dead around here?” “Sorry, Doc …” “Don’t be sorry! Be right!” “Well, we’re massively overbuilt anyway—” “Oh? Is that your decision? You’re the designer now? Just follow the plans!” Arby trotted alongside Thorne. “I’m worried about Dr. Levine,” he said. “Really? I’m not.” “But he’s always been reliable. And very well organized.” “That’s true,” Thorne said. “He’s also completely impulsive and does whatever he feels like.” “Maybe so,” Arby said, “but I don’t think he’d be missing without a good reason. I’m afraid he might be in trouble. Only last week, he had us go with him to visit Professor Malcolm in Berkeley, who had this map of the world in his office, and it showed—” “Malcolm!” Thorne snorted. “Spare me! Peas in a pod, those two. Each more impractical than the other. But I’d better get hold of Levine now.” He turned on his heel, and walked toward his office. Arby said, “You going to use the satphone?” Thorne paused. “The what?” “The satphone,” Arby said. “Didn’t Dr. Levine take a satphone with him?” “How could he?” Thorne said. “You know the smallest satellite phones are the size of a suitcase.” “Yeah, but they don’t have to be,” Arby said. “You could have made one very small.” “Could I? How?” Despite himself, Thorne was amused by this kid. You had to like him. “With that VLSI com board that we picked up,” Arby said. “The triangular one. It had two Motorola BSN-23 chip arrays, and they’re restricted technology developed for the CIA because they allow you to make a—” “Hey, hey,” Thorne said, interrupting him. “Where did you learn all this? I’ve warned you about hacking systems—” “Don’t worry, I’m careful,” Arby said. “But it’s true about the com board, isn’t it? You could use it to make a one-pound satphone. So: did you?” Thorne stared at him for a long time. “Maybe,” he said finally. “What of it?” Arby grinned. “Cool,” he said. Thorne’s small office was located in a corner of the shed. Inside, the walls were plastered with blueprints, order forms on clipboards, and three-dimensional cutaway computer drawings. Electronic components, equipment catalogs, and stacks of faxes were scattered across his desk. Thorne rummaged through them, and finally came up with a small gray handheld telephone. “Here we are.” He held it up for Arby to see. “Pretty good, huh? Designed it myself.” Kelly said, “It looks just like a cellular phone.” “Yes, but it’s not. A cellular phone uses a grid in place. A satellite phone links directly to communication satellites in space. With one of these I can talk anywhere in the world.” He dialed swiftly. “Used to be, they needed a three-foot dish."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Section0013.txt", "text": "Then it was a one-foot dish. Now no dish at all—just the handset. Not bad, if I say so myself. Let’s see if he’s answering.” He pushed the speakerphone. They heard the call dial through, hissing static. “Knowing Richard,” Thorne said, “he probably just missed his plane, or forgot that he was supposed to be back here today for final approvals. And we’re pretty much finished here. When you see we’re down to the exterior struts and the upholstery, the fact is, we’re done. He’s going to hold us up. It’s very inconsiderate of him.” The phone rang, repeated electronic beeps. “If I can’t get through to him, I’ll try Sarah Harding.” “Sarah Harding?” Kelly asked, looking up. Arby said, “Who’s Sarah Harding?” “Only the most famous young animal behaviorist in the world, Arb.” Sarah Harding was one of Kelly’s personal heroes. Kelly had read every article she could about her. Sarah Harding had been a poor scholarship student at the University of Chicago but now, at thirty-three, she was an assistant professor at Princeton. She was beautiful and independent, a rebel, who went her own way. She had chosen the life of a scientist in the field, living alone in Africa, where she studied lions and hyenas. She was famously tough. Once, when her Land Rover broke down, she walked twenty miles across the savannah all by herself, driving away lions by throwing rocks at them. In photographs, Sarah was usually posed in shorts and a khaki shirt, with binoculars around her neck, next to a Land Rover. With her short, dark hair and her strong, muscular body, she looked rugged but glamorous at the same time. At least, that was how she appeared to Kelly, who always studied the pictures intently, taking in every detail. “Never heard of her,” Arby said. Thorne said, “Spending too much time with computers, Arby?” Arby said, “No.” Kelly saw Arby’s shoulders hunch, and he sort of withdrew into himself, the way he always did when he felt criticized. Sulky, he said, “Animal behaviorist?” “That’s right,” Thorne said. “I know Levine’s talked to her several times in the last few weeks. She’s helping him with all this equipment, when it finally goes into the field. Or advising him. Or something. Or maybe the connection is with Malcolm. After all, she was in love with Malcolm.” “I don’t believe it,” Kelly said. “Maybe he was in love with her.…” Thorne looked at her. “You’ve met her?” “No. But I know about her.” “I see.” Thorne said no more. He could see all the signs of hero worship, and he approved. A girl could do worse than admire Sarah Harding. At least she wasn’t an athlete or a rock star. In fact, it was refreshing for a kid to admire somebody who actually tried to advance knowledge.… The phone continued to ring. There was no answer. “Well, we know Levine’s equipment is in order,” Thorne said. “Because the call is going through."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Section0013.txt", "text": "We know that much.” Arby said, “Can you trace it?” “Unfortunately, no. And if we keep this up, we’ll probably drain the field battery, which means—” There was a click, and they heard a man’s voice, remarkably distinct and clear: “Levine.” “Okay. Good. He’s there,” Thorne said, nodding. He pushed the button on his handset. “Richard? It’s Doc Thorne.” Over the speakerphone, they heard a sustained static hiss. Then a cough, and a scratchy voice said: “Hello? Hello? It’s Levine here.” Thorne pressed the button on his phone. “Richard. It’s Thorne. Do you read me?” “Hello?” Levine said, at the other end. “Hello?” Thorne sighed. “Richard. You have to press the ‘T’ button, for transmit. Over.” “Hello?” Another cough, deep and rasping. “This is Levine. Hello?” Thorne shook his head in disgust. “Obviously, he doesn’t know how to work it. Damn! I went over it very carefully with him. Of course he wasn’t paying attention. Geniuses never pay attention. They think they know everything. These things aren’t toys.” He pushed the send button. “Richard, listen to me. You must push the ‘T’ in order to—” “This is Levine. Hello? Levine. Please. I need help.” A kind of groan. “If you can hear me, send help. Listen, I’m on the island, I managed to get here all right, but—” A crackle. A hiss. “Uh-oh,” Thorne said. “What is it?” Arby said, leaning forward. “We’re losing him.” “Why?” “Battery,” Thorne said. “It’s going fast. Damn. Richard: where are you?” Over the speakerphone, they heard Levine’s voice: “—dead already—situation got—now—very serious—don’t know—can hear me, but if you—get help—” “Richard. Tell us where you are!” The phone hissed, the transmission getting steadily worse. They heard Levine say: “—have me surrounded, and—vicious—can smell them especially—night—” “What is he talking about?” Arby said. “—to—injury—can’t—not long—please—” And then there was a final, fading hiss. And suddenly the phone went dead. Thorne clicked off his own handset, and turned off the speakerphone. He turned to the kids, who were both pale. “We have to find him,” he said. “Right away.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0015.txt", "text": "Clues Thorne unlocked the door to Levine’s apartment, and flicked on the lights. They stared, astonished. Arby said, “It looks like a museum!” Levine’s two-bedroom apartment was decorated in a vaguely Asian style, with rich wooden cabinets, and expensive antiques. But the apartment was spotlessly clean, and most of the antiques were housed in plastic cases. Everything was neatly labeled. They walked slowly into the room. “Does he live here?” Kelly said. She found it hard to believe. The apartment seemed so impersonal to her, almost inhuman. And her own apartment was such a mess all the time.… “Yeah, he does,” Thorne said, pocketing the key. “It always looks like this. It’s why he can never live with a woman. He can’t stand to have anybody touch anything.” The living-room couches were arranged around a glass coffee table. On the table were four piles of books, each neatly aligned with the glass edge. Arby glanced at the titles. Catastrophe Theory and Emergent Structures. Inductive Processes in Molecular Evolution. Cellular Automata. Methodology of Non-Linear Adaptation. Phase Transition in Evolutionary Systems. There were also some older books, with titles in German. Kelly sniffed the air. “Something cooking?” “I don’t know,” Thorne said. He went into the dining room. Along the wall, he saw a hot plate with a row of covered dishes. They saw a polished wood dining table, with a place set for one, silver and cut glass. Soup steamed from a bowl. Thorne walked over and picked up a sheet of paper on the table and read: “Lobster bisque, baby organic greens, seared ahi tuna.” A yellow Post-it was attached. “Hope your trip was good! Romelia.” “Wow,” Kelly said. “You mean somebody makes dinner for him every day?” “I guess,” Thorne said. He didn’t seem impressed; he shuffled through a stack of unopened mail that had been set out beside the plate. Kelly turned to some faxes on a nearby table. The first one was from the Peabody Museum at Yale, in New Haven. “Is this German?” she said, handing it to Thorne. Dear Dr. Levine: Your requested document: “Geschichtliche Forschungsarbeiten über die Geologie Zentralamerikas, 1922–1929” has been sent by Federal Express today. Thank you. (signed) Dina Skrumbis, Archivist “I can’t read it,” Thorne said. “But I think it’s ‘Something Researches on the Geology of Central America.’ And it’s from the twenties—not exactly hot news.” “I wonder why he wanted it?” she said. Thorne didn’t answer her. He went into the bedroom. The bedroom had a spare, minimal look, the bed a black futon, neatly made. Thorne opened the closet doors, and saw racks of clothing, everything pressed, neatly spaced, much of it in plastic. He opened the top dresser drawer and saw socks folded, arranged by color. “I don’t know how he can live like this,” Kelly said. “Nothing to it,” Thorne said. “All you need is servants.” He opened the other drawers quickly, one after another. Kelly wandered over to the bedside table. There were several books there."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0015.txt", "text": "The one on top was very small, and yellowing with age. It was in German; the title was Die Fünf Todesarten. She flipped through it, saw colored pictures of what looked like Aztecs in colorful costumes. It was almost like an illustrated children’s book, she thought. Underneath were books and journal articles with the dark-red cover of the Santa Fe Institute: Genetic Algorithms and Heuristic Networks. Geology of Central America, Tessellation Automata of Arbitrary Dimension. The 1989 Annual Report of the InGen Corporation. And next to the telephone, she noticed a sheet of hastily scribbled notes. She recognized the precise handwriting as Levine’s. It said: “SITE B” Vulkanische Tacaño? Nublar? 1 of 5 Deaths? in mtns? No!!! maybe Gutierrez careful Kelly said, “What’s Site B? He has notes about it.” Thorne came over to look. “Vulkanische,” he said. “That means ‘volcanic,’ I think. And Tacaño and Nublar … They sound like place names. If they are, we can check that on an atlas.…” “And what’s this about one of five deaths?” Kelly said. “Damned if I know,” he said. They were staring at the paper when Arby walked into the bedroom and said, “What’s Site B?” Thorne looked up. “Why?” “You better see his office,” Arby said. Levine had turned the second bedroom into an office. It was, like the rest of the apartment, admirably neat. There was a desk with papers laid out in tidy stacks alongside a computer, covered in plastic. But behind the desk there was a large corkboard that covered most of the wall. And on this board, Levine had tacked up maps, charts, newspaper clippings, Landsat images, and aerial photographs. At the top of the board was a large sign that said “Site B?” Alongside that was a blurred, curling snapshot of a bespectacled Chinese man in a white lab coat, standing in the jungle beside a wooden sign that said “Site B.” His coat was unbuttoned, and he was wearing a tee shirt with lettering on it. Alongside the photo was a large blowup of the tee shirt, as seen in the original photograph. It was hard to read the lettering, which was partly covered on both sides by the lab coat, but the shirt seemed to say: nGen Site B esearch Facili In neat handwriting, Levine had noted: “InGen Site B Research Facility???? WHERE?? ?” Just below that was a page cut from the InGen Annual Report. A circled paragraph read: In addition to its headquarters in Palo Alto, where InGen maintains an ultra-modern 200,000 square foot research laboratory, the company runs three field laboratories around the world. A geological lab in South Africa, where amber and other biological specimens are acquired; a research farm in the mountains of Costa Rica, where exotic varieties of plants are grown; and a facility on the island of Isla Nublar, 120 miles west of Costa Rica. Next to that Levine had written: “No B!"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0015.txt", "text": "Liars!” Arby said, “He’s really obsessed with Site B.” “I’ll say,” Thorne said. “And he thinks it’s on an island somewhere.” Peering closely at the board, Thorne looked at the satellite images. He noticed that although they were printed in false colors, at various degrees of magnification, they all seemed to show the same general geographical area: a rocky coastline, and some islands offshore. The coastline had a beach, and encroaching jungle; it might be Costa Rica, but it was impossible to say for sure. In truth, it could be any of a dozen places in the world. “He said he was on an island,” Kelly said. “Yes.” Thorne shrugged. “But that doesn’t help us much.” He stared at the board. “There must be twenty islands here, maybe more.” Thorne looked at a memo, near the bottom. SITE B @#$#TO ALL DEPARTMENTS OF[]**** MINDER OF%$#@#!PRESS AVOIDAN****** Mr. Hammond wishes to remind all****after^*&^marketing *%**Long-term marketing plan*&^&^% Marketing of proposed resort facilities requires that full complexity of JP technology not be revealed announced made known. Mr. Hammond wishes to remind all departments that Production facility will not be topie subject of any press release or discussion at any time. Production/manufacturing facility cannot be#@#$# reference to production island loc Isla S. inhouse reference only strict press***^%$**guidelines “This is weird,” he said. “What do you make of this?” Arby came over, and looked at it thoughtfully. “All these missing letters and garbage,” Thorne said. “Does it make any sense to you?” “Yes,” Arby said. He snapped his fingers, and went directly to Levine’s desk. There, he pulled the plastic cover off the computer, and said, “I thought so.” The computer on Levine’s desk was not the modern machine that Thorne would have expected. This computer was several years old, large and bulky, its cover scratched in many places. It had a black stripe on the box that said “Design Associates, Inc.” And lower down, right by the power switch, a shiny little metal tag that said “Property International Genetics Technology, Inc., Palo Alto, CA.” “What’s this?” Thorne said. “Levine has an InGen computer?” “Yes,” Arby said. “He sent us to buy it last week. They were selling off computer equipment.” “And he sent you?” Thorne said. “Yeah. Me and Kelly. He didn’t want to go himself. He’s afraid of being followed.” “But this thing’s a CAD-CAM machine, and it must be five years old,” Thorne said. CAD-CAM computers were used by architects, graphic artists, and mechanical engineers. “Why would Levine want it?” “He never told us,” Arby said, flipping on the power switch. “But I know now.” “Yes?” “That memo,” Arby said, nodding to the wall. “You know why it looks that way? It’s a recovered computer file. Levine’s been recovering InGen files from this machine.” As Arby explained it, all the computers that InGen sold that day had had their hard drives reformatted to destroy any sensitive data on the disks. But the CAD-CAM machines were an exception."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0015.txt", "text": "These machines all had special software installed by the manufacturer. The software was keyed to individual machines, using individual code references. That made these computers awkward to reformat, because the software would have to be reinstalled individually, taking hours. “So they didn’t do it,” Thorne said. “Right,” Arby said. “They just erased the directory, and sold them.” “And that means the original files are still on the disk.” “Right.” The monitor glowed. The screen said: TOTAL RECOVERED FILES: 2,387 “Jeez,” Arby said. He leaned forward, staring intently, fingers poised over the keys. He pushed the directory button, and row after row of file names scrolled down. Thousands of files in all. Thorne said, “How are you going to—” “Give me a minute here,” Arby said, interrupting him. Then he began to type rapidly. “Okay, Arb,” Thorne said. He was amused by the imperious way Arby behaved whenever he was working with a computer. He seemed to forget how young he was, his usual diffidence and timidity vanished. The electronic world was really his element. And he knew he was good at it. Thorne said, “Any help you can give us will be—” “Doc,” Arby said. “Come on. Go and, uh, I don’t know. Help Kelly or something.” And he turned away, and typed."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0016.txt", "text": "Raptor The velociraptor was six feet tall and dark green. Poised to attack, it hissed loudly, its muscular neck thrust forward, jaws wide. Tim, one of the modelers, said, “What do you think, Dr. Malcolm?” “No menace,” Malcolm said, walking by. He was in the back wing of the biology department, on his way to his office. “No menace?” Tim said. “They never stand like this, flatfooted on two feet. Give him a book”—he grabbed a notebook from a desk, and placed it in the forearms of the animal—“and he might be singing a Christmas carol.” “Gee,” Tim said. “I didn’t think it was that bad.” “Bad?” Malcolm said. “This is an insult to a great predator. We should feel his speed and menace and power. Widen the jaws. Get the neck down. Tense the muscles, tighten the skin. And get that leg up. Remember, raptors don’t attack with their jaws—they use their toe-claws,” Malcolm said. “I want to see the claw raised up, ready to slash down and tear the guts out of its prey.” “You really think so?” Tim said doubtfully. “It might scare little kids.…” “You mean it might scare you.” Malcolm continued down the hallway. “And another thing: change that hissing sound. It sounds like somebody taking a pee. Give this animal a snarl. Give a great predator his due.” “Gee,” Tim said, “I didn’t know you had such personal feelings about it.” “It should be accurate,” Malcolm said. “You know, there is such a thing as accurate and inaccurate. Irrespective of whatever your feelings are.” He walked on, irritable, ignoring the momentary pain in his leg. The modeler annoyed him, although he had to admit Tim was just a representative of the current, fuzzy-minded thinking—what Malcolm called “sappy science.” Malcolm had long been impatient with the arrogance of his scientific colleagues. They maintained that arrogance, he knew, by resolutely ignoring the history of science as a way of thought. Scientists pretended that history didn’t matter, because the errors of the past were now corrected by modern discoveries. But of course their forebears had believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. They had been wrong then. And modern scientists were wrong now. No episode of science history proved it better than the way dinosaurs had been portrayed over the decades. It was sobering to realize that the most accurate perception of dinosaurs had also been the first. Back in the 1840s, when Richard Owen first described giant bones in England, he named them Dinosauria: terrible lizards. That was still the most accurate description of these creatures, Malcolm thought. They were indeed like lizards, and they were terrible. But since Owen, the “scientific” view of dinosaurs had undergone many changes. Because the Victorians believed in the inevitability of progress, they insisted that the dinosaurs must necessarily be inferior—why else would they be extinct? So the Victorians made them fat, lethargic, and dumb—big dopes from the past."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0016.txt", "text": "This perception was elaborated, so that by the early twentieth century, dinosaurs had become so weak that they could not support their own weight. Apatosaurs had to stand belly-deep in water or they would crush their own legs. The whole conception of the ancient world was suffused with these ideas of weak, stupid, slow animals. That view didn’t change until the 1960s, when a few renegade scientists, led by John Ostrom, began to imagine quick, agile, hot-blooded dinosaurs. Because these scientists had the temerity to question dogma, they were brutally criticized for years, even though it now seemed their ideas were correct. But in the last decade, a growing interest in social behavior had led to still another view. Dinosaurs were now seen as caring creatures, living in groups, raising their little babies. They were good animals, even cute animals. The big sweeties had nothing to do with their terrible fate, which was visited on them by Alvarez’s meteor. And that new sappy view produced people like Tim, who were reluctant to look at the other side of the coin, the other face of life. Of course, some dinosaurs had been social and cooperative. But others had been hunters—and killers of unparalleled viciousness. For Malcolm, the truest picture of life in the past incorporated the interplay of all aspects of life, the good and the bad, the strong and the weak. It was no good pretending anything else. Scaring little kids, indeed! Malcolm snorted irritably, as he walked down the hall. In truth, Malcolm was bothered by what Elizabeth Gelman had told him about the tissue fragment, and especially the tag. That tag meant trouble, Malcolm was sure of it. But he wasn’t sure what to do about it. He turned the corner, past the display of Clovis points, arrowheads made by early man in America. Up ahead, he saw his office. Beverly, his assistant, was standing behind her desk, tidying papers, getting ready to go home. She handed him his faxes and said, “I’ve left word for Dr. Levine at his office, but he hasn’t called back. They don’t seem to know where he is.” “For a change,” Malcolm said, sighing. It was so difficult working with Levine; he was so erratic, you never knew what to expect. Malcolm had been the one to post bail when Levine was arrested in his Ferrari. He riffled through the faxes: conference dates, requests for reprints … nothing interesting. “Okay. Thanks, Beverly.” “Oh. And the photographers came. They finished about an hour ago.” “What photographers?” he said. “From Chaos Quarterly. To photograph your office.” “What are you talking about?” Malcolm said. “They came to photograph your office,” she said. “For a series about workplaces of famous mathematicians. They had a letter from you, saying it was—” “I never sent any letter,” Malcolm said. “And I’ve never heard of Chaos Quarterly.” He went into his office and looked around. Beverly hurried in after him, her face worried. “Is it okay?"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0016.txt", "text": "Is everything here?” “Yes,” he said, scanning quickly. “It seems to be fine.” He was opening the drawers to his desk, one after another. Nothing appeared to be missing. “That’s a relief,” Beverly said, “because—” He turned, and looked at the far side of the room. The map. Malcolm had a large map of the world, with pins stuck in it for all the sightings of what Levine kept calling “aberrant forms.” By the most liberal count—Levine’s count—there had now been twelve in all, from Rangiroa in the west, to Baja California and Ecuador in the east. Few of them were verified. But now there was a tissue sample that confirmed one specimen, and that made all the rest more likely. “Did they photograph this map?” “Yes, they photographed everything. Does it matter?” Malcolm looked at the map, trying to see it with fresh eyes. To see what an outsider would make of it. He and Levine had spent hours in front of this map, considering the possibility of a “lost world,” trying to decide where it might be. They had narrowed it down to five islands in a chain, off the coast of Costa Rica. Levine was convinced that it was one of those islands, and Malcolm was beginning to think he was right. But those islands weren’t highlighted on the map.… Beverly said, “They were a very nice group. Very polite. Foreign—Swiss, I think.” Malcolm nodded, and sighed. The hell with it, he thought. It was bound to get out sooner or later. “It’s all right, Beverly.” “Are you sure?” “Yes, it’s fine. Have a good evening.” “Good night, Dr. Malcolm.” Alone in his office, he dialed Levine. The phone rang, and then the answering machine beeped. Levine was still not home. “Richard, are you there? If you are, pick up, it’s important.” He waited, nothing happened. “Richard, it’s Ian. Listen, we have a problem. The map is no longer secure. And I’ve had that sample analyzed, Richard, and I think it tells us the location of Site B, if my—” There was a click as the phone lifted. He heard the sound of breathing. “Richard?” he said. “No,” said the voice, “this is Thorne. And I think you better get over here right away.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0017.txt", "text": "The Five Deaths “I knew it,” Malcolm said, coming into Levine’s apartment, and glancing quickly around. “I knew he would do something like this. You know how impetuous he is. I said to him, don’t go until we have all the information. But I should have known. Of course, he went.” “Yes, he did.” “Ego,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. “Richard has to be first. Has to figure it out first, has to get there first. I’m very concerned, he could ruin everything. This impulsive behavior: you realize it’s a storm in the brain, neurons on the edge of chaos. Obsession is just a variety of addiction. But what scientist ever had self-control? They instruct them in school: it’s bad form to be balanced. They forget Neils Bohr was not only a great physicist but an Olympic athlete. These days they all try to be nerds. It’s the professional style.” Thorne looked at Malcolm thoughtfully. He thought he detected a competitive edge. He said, “Do you know which island he went to?” “No. I do not.” Malcolm was stalking around the apartment, taking things in. “The last time we talked, we had narrowed it down to five islands, all in the south. But we hadn’t decided which one.” Thorne pointed to the wallboard, the satellite images. “These islands here?” “Yes,” Malcolm said, looking briefly. “They’re strung out in an arc, all about ten miles offshore from the bay of Puerto Cortés. Supposedly they’re all uninhabited. Local people call them the Five Deaths.” “Why?” Kelly said. “Some old Indian story,” Malcolm said. “Something about a brave warrior captured by a king who offered him his choice of deaths. Burning, drowning, crushing, hanging, decapitation. The warrior said he would take them all, and he went from island to island, experiencing the various challenges. Sort of a New World version of the labors of Hercules—” “So that’s what it is!” Kelly said, and ran out of the room. Malcolm looked blank. He turned to Thorne, who shrugged. Kelly returned, carrying the German children’s book in her hand. She gave it to Malcolm. “Yes,” he said. “Die Fünf Todesarten. The Five Ways of Death. Interesting that it is in German.…” “He has lots of German books,” Kelly said. “Does he? That bastard. He never told me.” “That means something?” Kelly said. “Yes, it means a lot. Hand me that magnifying glass, would you?” Kelly gave him a magnifying glass from the desk. “What does it mean?” “The Five Deaths are ancient volcanic islands,” he said. “Which means that they are geologically very rich. Back in the twenties, the Germans wanted to mine them.” He peered at the images, squinting. “Ah. Yes, these are the islands, no question. Matanceros, Muerte, Tacaño, Sorna, Pena … All names of death and destruction … All right. I think we may be close."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0017.txt", "text": "Do we have any satellite pictures with spectrographic analyses of the cloud cover?” Arby said, “Is that going to help you find Site B?” “What?” Malcolm spun around. “What do you know about Site B?” Arby was sitting at the computer, still working. “Nothing. Just that Dr. Levine was looking for Site B. And it was the name in the files.” “What files?” “I’ve recovered some InGen files from this computer. And, searching through old records, I found references to Site B.… But they’re pretty confusing. Like this one.” He leaned back, to let Malcolm look at the screen. Summary: Plan Revisions #35 PRODUCTION (SITE B) AIR HANDLERS Grade 5 to Grade 7 LAB STRUCTURE 400 cmm to 510 cmm BIO SECURITY Level PK/3 to Level PK/5 CONVEYOR RATES 3 mpm to 2.5 mpm HOLDING PENS 13 hectares to 26 hectares STAFF Q 17 (4 admin) to 19 (4 admin) COMM PROTOCOL ET(VX) to RDT (VX) Malcolm frowned. “Curious, but not very helpful. It doesn’t tell us which island—or even if it’s on an island at all. What else have you got?” “Well …” Arby flicked keys. “Let’s see. There’s this.” SITE B ISLAND NETWORK NODAL POINTS ZONE 1 (RIVER) 1–8 ZONE 2 (COAST) 9–16 ZONE 3 (RIDGE) 17–24 ZONE 4 (VALLEY) 25–32 Malcolm said, “Okay, so it’s an island. And Site B has a network—but a network of what? Computers?” Arby said, “I don’t know. Maybe a radio network.” “For what purpose?” Malcolm said. “What would a radio network be used for? This isn’t very helpful.” Arby shrugged. He took it as a challenge. He began typing furiously again. Then said, “Wait!… Here’s another one … if I can just format it.… There! Got it!” He moved away from the screen, so the others could see. Malcolm looked and said, “Very good. Very good!” SITE B LEGENDS EAST WING LABORATORY OUTLYING CONVENIENCE STORE GAS STATION MGRS HOUSE SECURITY ONE RIVER DOCK SWAMP ROAD MTN VIEW ROAD WEST WING ASSEMBLY BAY MAIN CORE WORKER VILLAGE POOL/TENNIS JOG PATH SECURITY TWO BOATHOUSE RIVER ROAD CLIFF ROAD LOADING BAY ENTRANCE GEO TURBINE GEO CORE PUTTING GREENS GAS LINES THERMAL LINES SOLAR ONE RIDGE ROAD HOLDING PENS “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Malcolm said, scanning the listing. “Can you print this out?” “Sure.” Arby was beaming. “Is it really good?” “It really is,” Malcolm said. Kelly looked at Arby and said, “Arb. Those’re the text labels that go with a map.” “Yeah, I think so. Pretty neat, huh?” He pushed a button, sending the image to the printer. Malcolm peered at the listing some more, then turned his attention back to the satellite maps, looking closely at each one with the magnifying glass. His nose was just inches from the photographs. “Arb,” Kelly said, “don’t just sit there. Come on! Recover the map! That’s what we need!” “I don’t know if I can,” Arby said. “It’s a proprietary thirty-two-bit format.… I mean, it’s a big job.” “Stop whining, Arb."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0017.txt", "text": "Just do it.” “Never mind,” Malcolm said. He stepped away from the satellite images pinned on the wall. “It’s not important.” “It’s not?” Arby said, a little wounded. “No, Arby. You can stop. Because, from what you’ve already discovered, I am quite certain we can identify the island, right now.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0018.txt", "text": "James Ed James yawned, and pushed the earpiece tighter into his ear. He wanted to make sure he got all this. He shifted in the driver’s seat of his gray Taurus, trying to get comfortable, trying to stay awake. The small tape recorder was spinning in his lap, next to his notepad, and the crumpled papers from two Big Macs. James looked across the street at Levine’s apartment building. The lights were on in the third-floor apartment. And the bug he had placed there last week was working fine. Through his earpiece, he heard one of the kids say, “How?” And then the crippled guy, Malcolm, said, “The essence of verification is multiple lines of reasoning that converge at a single point.” “Meaning what?” the kid said. Malcolm said, “Just look at the Landsat pictures.” On his notepad, James wrote LANDSAT. “We already looked at those,” the girl said. James felt foolish not to have realized earlier that these two kids were working for Levine. He remembered them well, they were in the class Levine taught. There was a short black kid and a gawky white girl. Just kids: maybe eleven or twelve. He should have realized. Not that it mattered now, he thought. He was getting the information anyway. James reached across the dashboard and plucked out the last two French fries, and ate them, even though they were cold. “Okay,” he heard Malcolm say. “It’s this island here. This is the island Levine went to.” The girl said doubtfully, “You think so? This is … Isla Sorna.” James wrote ISLA SORNA. “That’s our island,” Malcolm said. “Why? Three independent reasons. First, it’s privately owned, so it hasn’t been thoroughly searched by the Costa Rican government. Second, privately owned by whom? By the Germans, who leased rights to mineral excavations, back in the twenties.” “All the German books!” “Exactly. Third, from Arby’s list—and from another independent source—it is clear that there is volcanic gas located at Site B. So, which islands have volcanic gas? Take the magnifying glass and look for yourself. Turns out, only one island does.” “You mean this here?” the girl said. “Right. That’s volcanic smoke.” “How do you know?” “Spectrographic analysis. See this spike here? That’s elementary sulfur in the cloud cover. There aren’t really any sources for sulfur except volcanic sources.” “What’s this other spike?” the girl said. “Methane,” Malcolm said. “Apparently there is a fairly large source of methane gas.” “Is that also volcanic?” Thorne said. “It might be. Methane is released from volcanic activity, but most commonly during active eruptions. The other possibility is, it might be organic.” “Organic? Meaning what?” “Large herbivores, and—” Then there was something that James couldn’t hear, and the kid said, “Do you want me to finish this recovery, or not?” He sounded annoyed. “No,” Thorne said. “Never mind now, Arby. We know what we have to do. Let’s go, kids!” James looked up at the apartment and saw the lights being turned off."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0018.txt", "text": "A few minutes later, Thorne and the kids appeared at the front entrance, on the street level. They got in a Jeep, and drove off. Malcolm went to his own car, climbed in awkwardly, and drove away in the opposite direction. James considered following Malcolm, but he had something else to do now. He turned on the car ignition, picked up the phone, and dialed."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0019.txt", "text": "Field Systems Half an hour later, when they got back to Thorne’s office, Kelly stared, stunned. Most of the workers were gone, and the shed had been cleaned up. The two trailers and the Explorer stood side by side, freshly painted dark green, and ready to go. “They’re finished!” “I told you they would be,” Thorne said. He turned to his chief foreman, Eddie Carr, a stocky young man in his twenties. “Eddie, where are we?” “Just wrapping up, Doc,” Eddie said. “Paint’s still wet in a few places, but it should be dry by morning.” “We can’t wait until morning. We’re moving out now.” “We are?” Arby and Kelly exchanged glances. This was news to them, too. Thorne said, “I’ll need you to drive one of these, Eddie. We’ve got to be at the airport by midnight.” “But I thought we were field testing.…” “No time for that. We’re going right to the location.” The front door buzzed. “That’ll be Malcolm, probably.” He pushed the button to unlock the door. “You’re not going to field test?” Eddie said, with a worried look. “I think you better shake them down, Doc. We made some pretty complex modifications here, and—” “There’s no time,” Malcolm said, coming in. “We have to go right away.” He turned to Thorne. “I’m very worried about him.” “Eddie!” Thorne said. “Did the exit papers come in?” “Oh sure, we’ve had them for the last two weeks.” “Well, get them, and call Jenkins, tell him to meet us at the airport, and do the details for us. I want to be off the ground in four hours.” “Jeez, Doc—” “Just do it.” Kelly said, “You’re going to Costa Rica?” “That’s right. We’ve got to get Levine. If it’s not too late.” “We’re coming with you,” Kelly said. “Right,” Arby said. “We are.” “Absolutely not,” Thorne said. “It’s out of the question.” “But we earned it!” “Dr. Levine talked to our parents!” “We already have permission!” “You have permission,” Thorne said severely, “to go on a field test in the woods a hundred miles from here. But we’re not doing that. We’re going someplace that might be very dangerous, and you’re not coming with us, and that’s final.” “But—” “Kids,” Thorne said. “Don’t piss me off. I’m going to go make a phone call. You get your stuff together. You’re going home.” And he turned and walked away. “Gee,” Kelly said. Arby stuck his tongue out at the departing Thorne and muttered, “What an asshole.” “Get with the program, Arby,” Thorne said, not looking back. “You two guys are going home. Period.” He went into his office and slammed the door. Arby stuck his hands in his pockets. “They couldn’t have figured it out without our help.” “I know, Arb,” she said. “But we can’t make him take us.” They turned to Malcolm. “Dr. Malcolm, can you please—” “Sorry,” Malcolm said. “I can’t.” “But—” “The answer is no, kids."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0019.txt", "text": "It’s just too dangerous.” Dejected, they drifted over to the vehicles, gleaming beneath the ceiling lights. The Explorer with the black photovoltaic panels on the roof and hood, the inside crammed with glowing electronic equipment. Just looking at the Explorer gave them a sense of adventure—an adventure they would not be part of. Arby peered into the larger trailer, cupping his eyes over the window. “Wow, look at this!” “I’m going in,” Kelly said, and she opened the door. She was momentarily surprised at how solid and heavy it was. Then she climbed up the steps into the trailer. Inside, the trailer was fitted out with gray upholstery and much more electronic equipment. It was divided into sections, for different laboratory functions. The main area was a biological lab, with specimen trays, dissecting pans, and microscopes that connected to video monitors. The lab also included biochemistry equipment, spectrometers, and a series of automated sample-analyzers. Next to it there was an extensive computer section, a bank of processors, and a communications section. All the lab equipment was miniaturized, and built into small tables that slid into the walls, and then bolted down. “This is cool,” Arby said. Kelly didn’t answer. She was looking closely at the lab. Dr. Levine had designed this trailer, apparently with a very specific purpose. There was no provision for geology, or botany, or chemistry, or lots of other things that a field team might be expected to study. It wasn’t a general scientific lab at all. There really seemed to be just a biology unit, and a large computer unit. Biology, and computers. Period. What had this trailer been built to study? Set in the wall was a small bookshelf, the books held in place with a Velcro strap. She scanned the titles: Modeling Adaptive Biological Systems, Vertebrate Behavioral Dynamics, Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems, Dinosaurs of North America, Preadaptation and Evolution.… It seemed like a strange set of books to take on a wilderness expedition; if there was a logic behind it, she didn’t see it. She moved on. At intervals along the walls, she could see where the trailer had been strengthened; dark carbon-honeycomb strips ran up the walls. She had overheard Thorne saying it was the same material used in supersonic jet fighters. Very light and very strong. And she noticed that all the windows had been replaced with that special glass with fine wire mesh inside it. Why was the trailer so strong? It made her a little uneasy, when she thought about it. She remembered the telephone call with Dr. Levine, earlier in the day. He had said he was surrounded. Surrounded by what? He had said: I can smell them, especially at night. What was he referring to? Who was them? Still uneasy, Kelly moved toward the back of the trailer, where there was a homey little living area, complete with gingham curtains on the windows. Compact kitchen, a toilet, and four beds."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0019.txt", "text": "Storage compartments above and below the beds. There was even a little walk-in shower. It was nice. From there, she went through the accordion pleating that connected the two trailers. It was a little bit like the connection between two railway cars, a short transitional passage. She emerged inside the second trailer, which seemed to be mostly utility storage: extra tires, spare parts, more lab equipment, shelves and cabinets. All the extra supplies that meant an expedition to some far-off place. There was even a motorcycle hanging off the back of the trailer. She tried some of the cabinets, but they were locked. But even here there were extra reinforcing strips as well. This section had also been built especially strong. Why? she wondered. Why so strong? “Look at this,” Arby said, standing before a wall unit. It was a complex of glowing LED displays and lots of buttons, and looked to Kelly like a complicated thermostat. “What does it do?” Kelly said. “Monitors the whole trailer,” he said. “You can do everything from here. All the systems, all the equipment. And look, there’s TV.…” He pushed a button, and a monitor glowed to life. It showed Eddie walking toward them, across the floor. “And, hey, what’s this?” Arby said. At the bottom of the display was a button with a security cover. He flipped the cover open. The button was silver and said DEF. “Hey, I bet this is that bear defense he was talking about.” A moment later, Eddie opened the trailer door and said, “You better stop that, you’ll drain the batteries. Come on, now. You heard what the doc said. Time for you kids to go home.” Kelly and Arby exchanged glances. “Okay,” Kelly said. “We’re going.” Reluctantly, they left the trailer. They walked across the shed to Thorne’s office to say goodbye. Arby said, “I wish he’d let us go.” “Me, too.” “I don’t want to stay home for break,” he said. “They’re just going to be working all the time.” He meant his parents. “I know.” Kelly didn’t want to go home, either. This idea of a field test during spring break was perfect for her, because it got her out of the house, and out of a bad situation. Her mother did data entry in an insurance company during the day, and at night she worked as a waitress at Denny’s. So her mom was always busy at her jobs, and her latest boyfriend, Phil, tended to hang around the house a lot at night. It had been okay when Emily was there, too, but now Emily was studying nursing at the community college, so Kelly was alone in the house. And Phil was sort of creepy. But her mother liked Phil, so she never wanted to hear Kelly say anything bad about him. She just told Kelly to grow up. So now Kelly went to Thorne’s office, hoping against hope that at the last minute he would relent."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0019.txt", "text": "He was on the phone, his back to them. On the screen of his computer, they saw one of the satellite images they had taken from Levine’s apartment. Thorne was zooming in on the image, successive magnifications. They knocked on the door, opened it a little. “Bye, Dr. Thorne.” “See you, Dr. Thorne.” Thorne turned, holding the phone to his ear. “Bye, kids.” He gave a brief wave. Kelly hesitated. “Listen, could we just talk to you for a minute about—” Thorne shook his head. “No.” “But—” “No, Kelly. I’ve got to place this call now,” he said. “It’s already four a.m. in Africa, and in a little while she’ll go to sleep.” “Who?” “Sarah Harding.” “Sarah Harding is coming, too?” she said, lingering at the door. “I don’t know.” Thorne shrugged. “Have a good vacation, kids. See you in a week. Thanks for your help. Now get out of here.” He looked across the shed. “Eddie, the kids are leaving. Show them to the door, and lock them out! Get me those papers! And pack a bag, you’re coming with me!” Then in a different voice he said, “Yes, operator, I’m still waiting.” And he turned away."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0020.txt", "text": "Harding Through the night-vision goggles, the world appeared in shades of fluorescent green. Sarah Harding stared out at the African savannah. Directly ahead, above the high grass, she saw the rocky outcrop of a kopje. Bright-green pinpoints glowed back from the boulders. Probably rock hyraxes, she thought, or some other small rodent. Standing up in her Jeep, wearing a sweatshirt against the cool night air, feeling the weight of the goggles, she turned her head slowly. She could hear the yelping in the night, and she was trying to locate the source. Even from her high vantage point, standing up in the vehicle, she knew the animals would be hidden from direct view. She turned slowly north, looking for movement in the grass. She saw none. She looked back quickly, the green world swirling momentarily. Now she faced south. And she saw them. The grass rippled in a complex pattern as the pack raced forward, yelping and barking, prepared to attack. She caught a glimpse of the female she called Face One, or F1. F1 was distinguished by a white streak between her eyes. F1 loped along, in the peculiar sideways gait of hyenas; her teeth were bared; she glanced back at the rest of the pack, noting their position. Sarah Harding swung the glasses through the darkness, looking ahead of the pack. She saw the prey: a herd of African buffalo, standing belly-deep in the grass, agitated. They were bellowing and stamping their feet. The hyenas yelped louder, a pattern of sound that would confuse the prey. They rushed through the herd, trying to break it up, trying to separate the calves from their mothers. African buffalo looked dull and stupid, but in fact they were among the most dangerous large African mammals, heavy powerful creatures with sharp horns and notoriously mean dispositions. The hyenas could not hope to bring down an adult, unless it was injured or sick. But they would try to take a calf. Sitting behind the wheel of the Jeep, Makena, her assistant, said, “You want to move closer?” “No, this is fine.” In fact, it was more than fine. Their Jeep was on a slight rise, and they had a better-than-average view. With any luck, she would record the entire attack pattern. She turned on the video camera, mounted on a tripod five feet above her head, and dictated rapidly into the tape recorder. “F1 south, F2 and F5 flanking, twenty yards. F3 center. F6 circling wide east. Can’t see F7. F8 circling north. F1 straight through. Disrupting. Herd moving, stamping. There’s F7. Straight through. F8 angling through from the north. Coming out, circling again.” This was classic hyena behavior. The lead animals ran through the herd, while others circled it, then came in from the sides. The buffalo couldn’t keep track of their attackers. She listened to the herd bellowing, even as the group panicked, broke its tight clustered formation. The big animals moved apart, turning, looking."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0020.txt", "text": "Harding couldn’t see the calves; they were below the grass. But she could hear their plaintive cries. Now the hyenas came back. The buffalo stamped their feet, lowered their big heads menacingly. The grass rippled as the hyenas circled, yelping and barking, the sounds more staccato. She caught a brief glimpse of female F8, her jaws already red. But Harding hadn’t seen the actual attack. The buffalo herd moved a short distance to the east, where it regrouped. One female buffalo now stood apart from the herd. She bellowed continuously at the hyenas. They must have taken her calf. Harding felt frustrated. It had happened so swiftly—too swiftly—which could only mean that the hyenas had been lucky, or the calf was injured. Or perhaps very young, even newborn; a few of the buffalo were still calving. She would have to review the videotape, to try and reconstruct what had happened. The perils of studying fast-moving nocturnal animals, she thought. But there was no question they had taken an animal. All the hyenas were clustered around a single area of grass; they yelped and jumped. She saw F3, and then F5, their muzzles bloody. Now the pups came up, squealing to get at the kill. The adults immediately made room for them, helped them to eat. Sometimes they pulled away flesh from the carcass, and held it so the young ones could eat. Their behavior was familiar to Sarah Harding, who had become in recent years the foremost expert on hyenas in the world. When she first reported her findings, she was greeted with disbelief and even outrage from colleagues, who disputed her results in very personal terms. She was attacked for being a woman, for being attractive, for having “an overbearing feminist perspective.” The university reminded her she was on tenure track. Colleagues shook their heads. But Harding had persisted, and slowly, over time, as more data accumulated, her view of hyenas had come to be accepted. Still, hyenas would never be appealing creatures, she thought, watching them feed. They were ungainly, heads too big and bodies sloping, coats ragged and mottled, gait awkward, vocalizations too reminiscent of an unpleasant laugh. In an increasingly urban world of concrete skyscrapers, wild animals were romanticized, classified as noble or ignoble, heroes or villains. And in this media-driven world, hyenas were simply not photogenic enough to be admirable. Long since cast as the laughing villains of the African plain, they were hardly thought worth a systematic study until Harding had begun her own research. What she had discovered cast hyenas in a very different light. Brave hunters and attentive parents, they lived in a remarkably complex social structure—and a matriarchy as well. As for their notorious yelping vocalizations, they actually represented an extremely sophisticated form of communication. She heard a roar, and through her night-vision goggles saw the first of the lions approaching the kill. It was a large female, circling closer."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0020.txt", "text": "The hyenas barked and snapped at the lioness, guiding their own pups off into the grass. Within a few moments, other lions appeared, and settled down to feed on the hyenas’ kill. Now, lions, she thought. There was a truly nasty animal. Although called the king of beasts, lions in truth were actually vile and— The phone rang. “Makena,” she said. The phone rang again. Who could be calling her now? She frowned. Through the goggles, she saw the lionesses look up, heads turning in the night. Makena was fumbling beneath the dashboard, looking for the phone. It rang three more times before he found it. She heard him say, “Jambo, mzee. Yes, Dr. Harding is here.” He handed the phone up to her. “It’s Dr. Thorne.” Reluctantly, she removed her night goggles, and took the phone. She knew Thorne well; he had designed most of the equipment in her Jeep. “Doc, this better be important.” “It is,” Thorne said. “I’m calling about Richard.” “What about him?” She caught his concern, but didn’t understand why. Lately, Levine had been a pain in the neck, telephoning her almost daily from California, picking her brains about field work with animals. He had lots of questions about hides, and blinds, data protocols, record-keeping, it went on and on.… “Did he ever tell you what he intended to study?” Thorne asked. “No,” she said. “Why?” “Nothing at all?” “No,” Harding said. “He was very secretive. But I gathered he’d located an animal population that he could use to make some point about biological systems. You know how obsessive he is. Why?” “Well, he’s missing, Sarah. Malcolm and I think he’s in some kind of trouble. We’ve located him on an island in Costa Rica, and we’re going to get him now.” “Now?” she said. “Tonight. We’re flying to San José in a few hours. Ian’s going with me. We want you to come, too.” “Doc,” she said. “Even if I took a flight out of Seronera tomorrow morning to Nairobi, it’d take me almost a day to get there. And that’s if I got lucky. I mean—” “You decide,” Thorne said, interrupting. “I’ll give you the details, and you decide what you want to do.” He gave her the information, and she wrote it on the notepad strapped to her wrist. Then Thorne rang off. She stood staring out at the African night, feeling the cool breeze on her face. Off in the darkness, she heard the growl of the lions at the kill. Her work was here. Her life was here. Makena said, “Dr. Harding? What do we do?” “Go back,” she said. “I have to pack.” “You’re leaving?” “Yes,” she said. “I’m leaving.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0021.txt", "text": "Message Thorne drove to the airport, the lights of San Francisco disappearing behind them. Malcolm sat in the passenger seat. He looked back at the Explorer driving behind them and said, “Does Eddie know what this is all about?” “Yes,” Thorne said. “But I’m not sure he believes it.” “And the kids don’t know?” “No,” Thorne said. There was a beeping alongside him. Thorne pulled out his little black Envoy, a radio pager. A light was flashing. He flipped up the screen, and handed it to Malcolm. “Read it for me.” “It’s from Arby,” Malcolm said. “Says, ‘Have a good trip. If you want us, call. We’ll be standing by if you need our help.’ And he gives his phone number.” Thorne laughed. “You got to love those kids. They never give up.” Then he frowned, as a thought occurred to him. “What’s the time on that message?” “Four minutes ago,” Malcolm said. “Came in via netcom.” “Okay. Just checking.” They turned right, toward the airport. They saw the lights in the distance. Malcolm stared forward gloomily. “It’s very unwise for us to be rushing off like this. It’s not the right way to go about it.” Thorne said, “We should be all right. As long as we have the right island.” “We do,” Malcolm said. “How do you know?” “The most important clue was something I didn’t want the kids to know about. A few days ago, Levine saw the carcass of one of the animals.” “Oh?” “Yes. He had a chance to look at it, before the officials burned it. And he discovered that it was tagged. He cut the tag off and sent it to me.” “Tagged? You mean like—” “Yes. Like a biological specimen. The tag was old, and it showed pitting from sulfuric acid.” “Must be volcanic,” Thorne said. “Exactly.” “And you say it was an old tag?” “Several years,” Malcolm said. “But the most interesting finding was the way the animal died. Levine concluded the animal had been injured while it was still alive—a deep slashing cut in the leg that went right down to the bone.” Thorne said, “You’re saying the animal was injured by another dinosaur.” “Yes. Exactly.” They drove a moment in silence. “Who else besides us knows about this island?” “I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “But somebody’s trying to find out. My office was broken into today, and photographed.” “Great.” Thorne sighed. “But you didn’t know where the island was, did you?” “No. I hadn’t put it together yet.” “Do you think anybody else has?” “No,” Malcolm said. “We’re on our own.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0022.txt", "text": "Exploitation Lewis Dodgson threw open the door marked ANIMAL QUARTERS, and immediately all the dogs began barking. Dodgson walked down the corridor between the rows of cages, stacked ten feet high on both sides. The building was large; the Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino, California, required an extensive animal-testing facility. Walking alongside him, Rossiter, the head of the company, gloomily brushed the lapels of his Italian suit. “I hate this fucking place,” he said. “Why did you want me to come here?” “Because,” Dodgson said. “We need to talk about the future.” “Stinks in here,” Rossiter said. He glanced at his watch. “Get on with it, Lew.” “We can talk in here.” Dodgson led him to a glass-walled superintendent’s booth, in the center of the building. The glass cut down the sound of the barking. But through the windows, they could look out at the rows of animals. “It’s simple,” Dodgson said, starting to pace. “But I think it’s important.” Lewis Dodgson was forty-five years old, bland-faced and balding. His features were youthful, and his manner was mild. But appearances were deceiving—the baby-faced Dodgson was one of the most ruthless and aggressive geneticists of his generation. Controversy had dogged his career: as a graduate student at Hopkins, he had been dismissed for planning human gene therapy without FDA permission. Later, after joining Biosyn, he had conducted a controversial rabies-vaccine test in Chile—the illiterate farmers who were the subjects were never informed they were being tested. In each case, Dodgson explained that he was a scientist in a hurry, and could not be held back by regulations drawn up for lesser souls. He called himself “results-oriented,” which really meant he did whatever he considered necessary to achieve his goal. He was also a tireless self-promoter. Within the company, Dodgson presented himself as a researcher, even though he lacked the ability to do original research, and had never done any. His intellect was fundamentally derivative; he never conceived of anything until someone else had thought of it first. He was very good at “developing” research, which meant stealing someone else’s work at an early stage. In this, he was without scruple and without peer. For many years he had run the reverse-engineering section at Biosyn, which in theory examined competitors’ products and determined how they were made. But in practice, “reverse engineering” involved a great deal of industrial espionage. Rossiter, of course, had no illusions about Dodgson. He disliked him, and avoided him as much as possible. Dodgson was always taking chances, cutting corners; he made Rossiter uneasy. But Rossiter also knew that modern biotechnology was highly competitive. To stay competitive, every company needed a man like Dodgson. And Dodgson was very good at what he did. “I’ll come right to the point,” Dodgson said, turning to Rossiter. “If we act quickly, I believe we have an opportunity to acquire the InGen technology.” Rossiter sighed. “Not again.…” “I know, Jeff. I know how you feel. I admit, there is some history here.” “History?"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0022.txt", "text": "The only history is you failed—time and again. We’ve tried this, back door and front door. Hell, we even tried to buy the company when it was in Chapter 11, because you told us it would be available. But it turned out it wasn’t. The Japanese wouldn’t sell.” “I understand, Jeff. But let’s not forget—” “What I can’t forget,” Rossiter said, “is that we paid seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to your friend Nedry, and have nothing to show for it.” “But Jeff—” “Then we paid five hundred thousand to that Dai-Ichi marriage broker. Nothing to show for that, either. Our attempts to acquire InGen technology have been a complete fucking failure. That’s what I can’t forget.” “But the point,” Dodgson said, “is that we kept trying for a good reason. This technology is vital to the future of the company.” “So you say.” “The world is changing, Jeff. I’m talking about solving one of the major problems this company faces in the twenty-first century.” “Which is?” Dodgson pointed out the window, at the barking dogs. “Animal testing. Let’s face it, Jeff: every year, we get more pressure not to use animals for testing and research. Every year, more demonstrations, more break-ins, more bad press. First it was just simple-minded zealots and Hollywood celebrities. But now it’s a bandwagon: even university philosophers are beginning to argue that it’s unethical for monkeys, and dogs, and even rats to be subjected to the indignities of laboratory research. We’ve even had some protests about our ‘exploitation’ of squid, even though they’re on dinner tables all over the world. I’m telling you, Jeff, there’s no end to this trend. Eventually, somebody’s going to say we can’t even exploit bacteria to make genetic products.” “Oh, come on.” “Just wait. It’ll happen. And it’ll shut us down. Unless we have a genuinely created animal. Consider—an animal that is extinct, and is brought back to life, is for all practical purposes not an animal at all. It can’t have any rights. It’s already extinct. So if it exists, it can only be something we have made. We made it, we patent it, we own it. And it is a perfect research testbed. And we believe that the enzyme and hormone systems of dinosaurs are identical to mammalian systems. In the future, drugs can be tested on small dinosaurs as successfully as they are now tested on dogs and rats—with much less risk of legal challenge.” Rossiter was shaking his head. “You think.” “I know. They’re basically big lizards, Jeff. And nobody loves a lizard. They’re not like these cute doggies that lick your hand and break your heart. Lizards have no personality. They’re snakes with legs.” Rossiter sighed. “Jeff. We’re talking about real freedom, here. Because, at the moment, everything to do with living animals is tied up in legal and moral knots."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0022.txt", "text": "Big-game hunters can’t shoot a lion or an elephant—the same animals their fathers and grandfathers used to shoot, and then pose proudly for a photo. Now there are forms, licenses, expenses—and plenty of guilt. These days, you don’t dare shoot a tiger and admit it afterward. In the modern world, it’s a much more serious transgression to shoot a tiger than to shoot your parents. Tigers have advocates. But now imagine: a specially stocked hunting preserve, maybe somewhere in Asia, where individuals of wealth and importance could hunt tyrannosaurs and triceratops in a natural setting. It would be an incredibly desirable attraction. How many hunters have a stuffed elk head on their wall? The world’s full of them. But how many can claim to have a snarling tyrannosaurus head, hanging above the wet bar?” “You’re not serious.” “I’m trying to make a point here, Jeff: these animals are totally exploitable. We can do anything we want with them.” Rossiter stood up from the table, put his hands in his pockets. He sighed, then looked up at Dodgson. “The animals still exist?” Dodgson nodded slowly. “And you know where they are?” Dodgson nodded. “Okay,” Rossiter said. “Do it.” He turned toward the door, then paused, looked back. “But, Lew,” he said. “Let’s be clear. This is it. This is absolutely the last time. Either you get the animals now, or it’s over. This is the last time. Got it?” “Don’t worry,” Dodgson said. “This time, I’ll get them.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0024.txt", "text": "Costa Rica There was a drenching downpour in Puerto Cortés. Rain drummed on the roof of the little metal shed beside the airfield. Dripping wet, Thorne stood and waited while the Costa Rican official went over the papers, again and again. Rodríguez was his name, and he was just a kid in his twenties, wearing an ill-fitting uniform, terrified of making a mistake. Thorne looked out at the runway, where, in the soft dawn light, the cargo containers were being clamped to the bellies of two big Huey helicopters. Eddie Carr was out there in the rain with Malcolm, shouting as the workmen secured the clamps. Rodríguez shuffled the papers. “Now, Señor Thorne, according to this, your destination is Isla Sorna.…” “That’s right.” “And your containers have only vehicles?” “Yes, that’s right. Research vehicles.” “Sorna is a primitive place. There is no petrol, no supplies, not even any roads to speak of.…” “Have you been there?” “Myself, no. People here have no interest in this island. It is a wild spot, rock and jungle. And there is no place for a boat to land, except in very special weather conditions. For example, today one cannot go there.” “I understand,” Thorne said. “I just wish that you will be prepared,” Rodríguez said, “for the difficulties you will find there.” “I think we’re prepared.” “You are taking adequate petrol for your vehicles?” Thorne sighed. Why bother to explain? “Yes, we are.” “And there are just three of you, Dr. Malcolm, yourself, and your assistant, Señor Carr?” “Correct.” “And your intended stay is less than one week?” “That’s correct. More like two days: with any luck, we expect to be off the island sometime tomorrow.” Rodríguez shuffled the papers again, as if looking for a hidden clue. “Well …” “Is there a problem?” Thorne said, glancing at his watch. “No problem, señor. Your permits are signed by the Director General of the Biological Preserves. They are in order.…” Rodríguez hesitated. “But it is very unusual, that such a permit would be granted at all.” “Why is that?” “I do not know the details, but there was some trouble on one of the islands a few years ago, and since then the Department of Biological Preserves has closed all the Pacific islands to tourists.” “We’re not tourists,” Thorne said. “I understand that, Señor Thorne.” More shuffling of papers. Thorne waited. Out on the runway, the container clamps locked in place, and the containers lifted off the ground. “Very well, Señor Thorne,” Rodríguez said finally, stamping the papers. “I wish you good luck.” “Thank you,” Thorne said. He tucked the papers in his pocket, ducked his head against the rain, and ran back out on the runway. Three miles offshore, the helicopters broke through the coastal cloud layer, into early-morning sunlight. From the cockpit of the lead Huey, Thorne could look up and down the coast. He saw five islands at various distances offshore—harsh rocky pinnacles, rising out of rough blue sea."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0024.txt", "text": "The islands were each several miles apart, undoubtedly part of an old volcanic chain. He pressed the speaker button. “Which is Sorna?” The pilot pointed ahead. “We call them the Five Deaths,” he said. “Isla Muerte, Isla Matanceros, Isla Pena, Isla Tacaño, and Isla Sorna, which is the big one farthest north.” “Have you been there?” “Never, señor. But I believe there will be a landing site.” “How do you know?” “Some years ago, there were some flights there. I have heard the Americans would come, and fly there, sometimes.” “Not Germans?” “No, no. There have been no Germans since … I do not know. The World War. They were Americans that came.” “When was that?” “I am not sure. Perhaps ten years ago.” The helicopter turned north, passing over the nearest island. Thorne glimpsed rugged, volcanic terrain, overgrown with dense jungle. There was no sign of life, or of human habitation. “To the local people, these islands are not happy places,” the pilot said. “They say, no good comes from here.” He smiled. “But they do not know. They are superstitious Indians.” Now they were over open water, with Isla Sorna directly ahead. It was clearly an old volcanic crater: bare, reddish-gray rock walls, an eroded cone. “Where do the boats land?” The pilot pointed to where the sea surged and crashed against the cliffs. “On the east side of this island, there are many caves, made by the waves. Some of the local people call this Isla Gemido. It means ‘groan,’ from the sound of the waves inside the caves. Some of the caves go all the way through to the interior, and a boat can pass through at certain times. But not in weather as you see it now.” Thorne thought of Sarah Harding. If she was coming, she would land later today. “I have a colleague who may be arriving this afternoon,” he said. “Can you bring her out?” “I am sorry,” the pilot said. “We have a job in Golfo Juan. We will not be back until tonight.” “What can she do?” The pilot squinted at the sea. “Perhaps she can come by boat. The sea changes by the hour. She might have luck.” “And you will come back for us tomorrow?” “Yes, Señor Thorne. We will come in the early morning. It is the best time, for the winds.” The helicopter approached from the west, rising several hundred feet, moving over the rocky cliffs to reveal the interior of Isla Gemido. It appeared just like the others: volcanic ridges and ravines, heavily overgrown with dense jungle. It was beautiful from the air, but Thorne knew it would be dauntingly difficult to move through that terrain. He stared down, looking for roads. The helicopter thumped lower, circling the central area of the island. Thorne saw no buildings, no roads. The helicopter descended toward the jungle. The pilot said, “Because of the cliffs, the winds here are very bad. Many gusts and updrafts."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0024.txt", "text": "There is only one place on the island where it is safe to land.” He peered out the window. “Ah. Yes. There.” Thorne saw an open clearing, overgrown with tall grass. “We land there,” the pilot said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0025.txt", "text": "Isla Sorna Eddie Carr stood in the tall grass of the clearing, turned away from the flying dust as the two helicopters lifted off the ground and rose into the sky. In a few moments they were small specks, their sound fading. Eddie shaded his eyes as he looked upward. In a forlorn voice he said, “When’re they coming back?” “Tomorrow morning,” Thorne said. “We’ll have found Levine by then.” “At least, we’d better,” Malcolm said. And then the helicopters were gone, disappearing over the high rim of the crater. Carr stood with Thorne and Malcolm in the clearing, enveloped in morning heat, and deep silence on the island. “Kind of creepy here,” Eddie said, pulling his baseball cap down lower over his eyes. Eddie Carr was twenty-four years old, raised in Daly City. Physically, he was dark-haired, compact and strong. His body was thick, the muscles bunched, but his hands were elegant, the fingers long and tapered. Eddie had a talent—Thorne would have said, a genius—for mechanical things. Eddie could build anything, and fix anything. He could see how things worked, just by looking at them. Thorne had hired him three years earlier, his first job out of community college. It was supposed to be a temporary job, earning money so he could go back to school and get an advanced degree. But Thorne had long since become dependent on Eddie. And Eddie, for his part, wasn’t much interested in going back to the books. At the same time, he hadn’t counted on anything like this, he thought, looking around him at the clearing. Eddie was an urban kid, accustomed to the action of the city, the honk of horns and the rush of traffic. This desolate silence made him uneasy. “Come on,” Thorne said, putting a hand on his shoulder, “let’s get started.” They turned to the cargo containers, left by the helicopter. They were sitting a few yards away, in the tall grass. “Can I help?” Malcolm said, a few yards away. “If you don’t mind, no,” Eddie said. “We’d better unpack these ourselves.” They spent half an hour unbolting the rear panels, lowering them to the ground, and entering the containers. After that, they took only a few minutes to release the vehicles. Eddie got behind the wheel of the Explorer and flicked on the ignition. There was hardly any sound, just a soft whirr of the vacuum pump starting up. Thorne said, “How’s your charge?” “Full,” Eddie said. “Batteries okay?” “Yeah. Seem fine.” Eddie was relieved. He had supervised the conversion of these vehicles to electric power, but it was a rush job, and they hadn’t had time to test them thoroughly afterward. And though it was true that electric cars employed less complex technology than the internal-combustion engine—that chugging relic of the nineteenth century—Eddie knew that taking untested equipment into the field was always risky. Especially when that equipment also used the latest technology."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0025.txt", "text": "That fact troubled Eddie more than he was willing to admit. Like most born mechanics, he was deeply conservative. He liked things to work—work, no matter what—and to him that meant using established, proven technology. Unfortunately, he had been voted down this time. Eddie had two particular areas of concern. One was the black photovoltaic panels, with their rows of octagonal silicon wafers, mounted on the roof and hood of the vehicles. These panels were efficient, and much less fragile than the old photovoltaics. Eddie had mounted them with special vibration-damping units of his own design. But the fact remained, if the panels were injured in any way, they would no longer be able to charge the vehicles, or run the electronics. All their systems would stop dead. His other concern was the batteries themselves. Thorne had selected the new lithium-ion batteries from Nissan, which were extremely efficient on a weight basis. But they were still experimental, which to Eddie was just a polite word for “unreliable.” Eddie had argued for backups; he had argued for a little gasoline-generator, just in case; he had argued for lots of things. And he had always been voted down. Under the circumstances, Eddie did the only sensible thing: he built in a few extras, and didn’t tell anybody about it. He was pretty sure Thorne knew he had done that. But Thorne never said anything. And Eddie never brought it up. But now that he was here, on this island in the middle of nowhere, he was glad he had. Because the fact was, you never knew. Thorne watched as Eddie backed the Explorer out of the container, and into the high grass. Eddie left the car in the middle of the clearing, where the sunlight would strike the panels and top up the charge. Thorne got behind the wheel of the first trailer, and backed it out. It was odd to drive a vehicle which was so quiet; the loudest sound was the tires on the metal container. And once it was on the grass, there was hardly any sound at all. Thorne climbed out, and linked up the two trailers, locking them together with the flexible steel accordion connector. Finally, he turned to the motorcycle. It, too, was electric; Thorne rolled it to the rear of the Explorer, lifted it onto brackets, hooked the power cord into the same system that ran the vehicle, and recharged the battery. He stepped back. “That does it.” In the hot, quiet clearing, Eddie stared toward the high circular rim of the crater, rising in the distance above the dense jungle. The bare rock shimmered in the morning heat, the walls forbidding and harsh. He had a sense of desolation, of entrapment. “Why would anyone ever come here?” he said. Malcolm, leaning on his cane, smiled. “To get away from it all, Eddie. Don’t you ever want to get away from it all?” “Not if I can help it,” Eddie said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0025.txt", "text": "“Me, I always like a Pizza Hut nearby, you know what I mean?” “Well, you’re a ways from one now.” Thorne returned to the back panel of the trailer, and pulled out a pair of heavy rifles. Beneath the barrel of each hung two aluminum canisters, side by side. He handed one rifle to Eddie, showed the other to Malcolm. “You ever seen these?” “Read about them,” Malcolm said. “This is the Swedish thing?” “Right. Lindstradt air gun. Most expensive rifle in the world. Rugged, simple, accurate, and reliable. Fires a subsonic Fluger impact-delivery dart, containing whatever compound you want.” Thorne cracked open the cartridge bank, revealing a row of plastic containers filled with straw-colored liquid. Each cartridge was tipped with a three-inch needle. “We’ve loaded the enhanced venom of Conus purpurascens, the South Sea cone shell. It’s the most powerful neurotoxin in the world. Acts within a two-thousandth of a second. It’s faster than the nerve-conduction velocity. The animal’s down before it feels the prick of the dart.” “Lethal?” Thorne nodded. “No screwing around here. Just remember, you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot with this, because you’ll be dead before you realize that you’ve pulled the trigger.” Malcolm nodded. “Is there an antidote?” “No. But what’s the point? There’d be no time to administer it if there was.” “That makes things simple,” Malcolm said, taking the gun. “Just thought you ought to know,” Thorne said. “Eddie? Let’s get going.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0026.txt", "text": "The Stream Eddie climbed into the Explorer. Thorne and Malcolm climbed into the cab of the trailer. A moment later, the radio clicked. Eddie said, “You putting up the database, Doc?” “Right now,” Thorne said. He plugged the optical disk into the dashboard slot. On the small monitor facing him, he saw the island appear, but it was largely obscured behind patches of cloud. “What good is that?” Malcolm said. “Just wait,” Thorne said. “It’s a system. It’s going to sum data.” “Data from what?” “Radar.” In a moment, a satellite radar image overlaid the photograph. The radar could penetrate the clouds. Thorne pressed a button, and the computer traced the edges, enhancing details, highlighting the faint spidery track of the road system. “Pretty slick,” Malcolm said. But to Thorne, he seemed tense. “I’ve got it,” Eddie said, on the radio. Malcolm said, “He can see the same thing?” “Yes. On his dashboard.” “But I don’t have the GPS,” Eddie said, anxiously. “Isn’t it working?” “You guys,” Thorne said. “Give it a minute. It’s reading the optical. Waystations are coming up.” There was a cone-shaped Global Positioning Sensor mounted in the roof of the trailer. Taking radio data from orbiting navigation satellites thousands of miles overhead, the GPS could calculate the position of the vehicles within a few yards. In a moment, a flashing red X appeared on the map of the island. “Okay,” Eddie said, on the radio. “I got it. Looks like a road leading out of the clearing to the north. That where we’re going?” “I’d say so,” Thorne said. According to the map, the road twisted several miles across the interior of the island, before finally reaching a place where all the roads seemed to meet. There was the suggestion of buildings there, but it was hard to be sure. “Okay, Doc. Here we go.” Eddie drove past him, and took the lead. Thorne stepped on the accelerator, and the trailer hummed forward, following the Explorer. Beside him, Malcolm was silent, fiddling with a small notebook computer on his lap. He never looked out the window. In a few moments, they had left the clearing behind, and were moving through dense jungle. Thorne’s panel lights flashed: the vehicle switched to its batteries. There wasn’t enough sunlight coming through the trees to power the trailer any more. They drove on. “How you doing, Doc?” Eddie said. “You holding charge?” “Just fine, Eddie.” “He sounds nervous,” Malcolm said. “Just worried about the equipment.” “The hell,” Eddie said. “I’m worried about me.” Although the road was overgrown and in poor condition, they made good progress. After about ten minutes, they came to a small stream, with muddy banks. The Explorer started across it, then stopped. Eddie got out, stepping over rocks in the water, walking back. “What is it?” “I saw something, Doc.” Thorne and Malcolm got out of the trailer, and stood on the banks of the stream. They heard the distant cries of what sounded like birds."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0026.txt", "text": "Malcolm looked up, frowning. “Birds?” Thorne said. Malcolm shook his head, no. Eddie bent over, and plucked a strip of cloth out of the mud. It was dark-green Gore-Tex, with a strip of leather sewn along one edge. “That’s from one of our expedition packs,” he said. “The one we made for Levine?” “Yes, Doc.” “You put a sensor in the pack?” Thorne asked. They usually sewed location sensors inside their expedition packs. “Yes.” “May I see that?” Malcolm asked. He took the strip of cloth and held it up to the light. He fingered the torn edge thoughtfully. Thorne unclipped a small receiver from his belt. It looked like an oversized pager. He stared at the liquid-crystal readout. “I’m not getting any signal.…” Eddie stared at the muddy bank. He bent over again. “Here’s another piece of cloth. And another. Seems like the pack was ripped into shreds, Doc.” Another bird cry floated toward them, distant, unworldly. Malcolm stared off in the distance, trying to locate its source. And then he heard Eddie say, “Uh-oh. We have company.” There were a half-dozen bright-green lizard-like animals, standing in a group near the trailer. They were about the size of chickens, and they chirped animatedly. They stood upright on their hind legs, balancing with their tails straight out. When they walked, their heads bobbed up and down in nervous little jerks, exactly like a chicken. And they made a distinctive squeaking sound, very reminiscent of a bird. Yet they looked like lizards with long tails. They had quizzical, alert faces, and they cocked their heads when they looked at the men. Eddie said, “What is this, a salamander convention?” The green lizards stood, watched. Several more appeared, from beneath the trailer, and from the foliage nearby. Soon there were a dozen lizards, watching and chittering. “Compys,” Malcolm said. “Procompsognathus triassicus, is the actual name.” “You mean these are—” “Yes. They’re dinosaurs.” Eddie frowned, stared. “I didn’t know they came so small,” he said finally. “Dinosaurs were mostly small,” Malcolm said. “People always think they were huge, but the average dinosaur was the size of a sheep, or a small pony.” Eddie said, “They look like chickens.” “Yes. Very bird-like.” “Is there any danger?” Thorne said. “Not really,” Malcolm said. “They’re small scavengers, like jackals. They feed on dead animals. But I wouldn’t get close. Their bite is mildly poisonous.” “I’m not getting close,” Eddie said. “They give me the creeps. It’s like they’re not scared.” Malcolm had noticed that, too. “I imagine it’s because there haven’t been any human beings on this island. These animals don’t have any reason to fear man.” “Well, let’s give them a reason,” Eddie said. He picked up a rock. “Hey!” Malcolm said. “Don’t do that! The whole idea is—” But Eddie had already thrown the rock. It landed near a cluster of compys, and the lizards ducked away. But the others hardly moved. A few of them hopped up and down, showing agitation."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0026.txt", "text": "But the group stayed where they were. They just chittered, and cocked their heads. “Weird,” Eddie said. He sniffed the air. “You notice that smell?” “Yes,” Malcolm said. “They have a distinctive odor.” “Rotten, is more like it,” Eddie said. “They smell rotten. Like something dead. And you ask me, it’s not natural, animals that don’t show fear like that. What if they have rabies or something?” “They don’t,” Malcolm said. “How do you know?” “Because only mammals carry rabies.” But even as he said it, he wondered if that was right. Warm-blooded animals carried rabies. Were the compys warm-blooded? He wasn’t sure. There was a rustling sound from above. Malcolm looked up at the canopy of trees overhead. He saw movement in the high foliage, as unseen small animals jumped from branch to branch. He heard squeaks and chirps, distinctly animal sounds. “Those aren’t birds, up there,” Thorne said. “Monkeys?” “Maybe,” Malcolm said. “I doubt it.” Eddie shivered. “I say we get out of here.” He returned to the stream, and climbed into the Explorer. Malcolm walked cautiously with Thorne back to the trailer entrance. The compys parted around them, but still did not run away. They stood all around their legs, chittering excitedly. Malcolm and Thorne climbed into the trailer and closed the doors, being careful not to shut them on the little creatures. Thorne sat behind the wheel, and turned on the motor. Ahead, they saw that Eddie was already driving the Explorer through the stream, and heading up the sloping ridge on the far side. “The, uh, procomso-whatevers,” Eddie said, over the radio. “They’re real, aren’t they?” “Oh yes,” Malcolm said softly. “They’re real.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0027.txt", "text": "The Road Thorne was uneasy. He was beginning to understand how Eddie felt. He had built these vehicles, and he had an uncomfortable sense of isolation, of being in this faraway place with untested equipment. The road continued steeply upward through dark jungle for the next fifteen minutes. Inside the trailer, it grew uncomfortably warm. Sitting beside him, Malcolm said, “Air conditioning?” “I don’t want to drain the battery.” “Mind if I open the window?” “If you think it’s all right,” Thorne said. Malcolm shrugged. “Why not?” He pushed the button, and the power window rolled down. Warm air blew into the car. He glanced back at Thorne. “Nervous, Doc?” “Sure,” Thorne said. “Damned right I am.” Even with the window open, he felt sweat running down his chest as he drove. Over the radio, Eddie was saying, “I’m telling you, we should have tested first, Doc. Should have done it by the book. You don’t come to a place with poisonous chickens if you’re not sure your vehicles will hold up.” “The cars are fine,” Thorne said. “How’s your levels?” “High normal,” Eddie said. “Just great. Of course, we’ve only gone five miles. It’s nine in the morning, Doc.” The road swung right, then left, following a series of switchbacks as the terrain became steeper. Hauling the big trailers, Thorne had to concentrate on his driving; it was a relief to focus his attention. Ahead of them, the Explorer turned left, going higher up the road. “I don’t see any more animals,” Eddie said. He sounded relieved. Finally the road flattened out as it turned, following the crest of the ridge. According to the GPS display, they were now heading northwest, toward the interior of the island. But the jungle still hemmed them in on all sides; they could not see much beyond the dense walls of foliage. They came to a Y intersection in the road, and Eddie pulled over to the side. Thorne saw that in the crook of the Y was a faded wooden sign, with arrows pointing in both directions. To the left, the sign said “To Swamp.” To the right was another arrow, and the words, “To Site B.” Eddie said, “Guys? Which way?” “Go to Site B,” Malcolm said. “You got it.” The Explorer started down the right fork. Thorne followed. Off to the right, sulfurous yellow steam issued from the ground, bleaching the nearby foliage white. The smell was strong. “Volcanic,” Thorne said to Malcolm, “just as you predicted.” Driving past, they glimpsed a bubbling pool in the earth, crusted thick yellow around the edges. “Yeah,” Eddie said, “but that’s active. In fact, I’d say that—holy shit!” Eddie’s brake lights flashed on, and his car slammed to a stop. Thorne had to swerve, scraping jungle ferns on the side of the trailer, to miss him. He pulled up alongside the Explorer, and glared at Eddie. “Eddie, for Pete’s sake, will you—” But Eddie wasn’t listening."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0027.txt", "text": "He was staring straight forward, his mouth wide open. Thorne turned to look. Directly ahead, the trees along the road had been beaten down, creating a gap in the foliage. They could see all the way from the ridge road across the entire island to the west. But Thorne hardly registered the panoramic view. Because all he saw was a large animal, the size of a hippopotamus, ambling across the road. Except it wasn’t a hippopotamus. This animal was pale brown, its skin covered with large plate-like scales. Around its head, it had a curving bony crest, and rising from this crest were two blunted horns. A third horn protruded above its snout. Over the radio, he heard Eddie breathing in shallow gasps. “You know what that is?” “That’s a triceratops,” Malcolm said. “A young one, by the looks of it.” “Must be,” Eddie said. Ahead of them, a much larger animal now crossed the road. It was easily twice the size of the first, and its horns were long, curving, and sharp. “Because that’s his mom.” A third triceratops appeared, then a fourth. There was a whole herd of creatures, ambling slowly across the road. They paid no attention to the vehicles as they crossed, passed through the gap, and descended down the hill, disappearing from view. Only then were the men able to see through the gap itself. Thorne had a view across a vast marshy plain, with a broad river coursing through the center. On either side of the river, animals grazed. There was a herd of perhaps twenty medium-sized, dark-green dinosaurs to the south, their large heads intermittently poking up above the grass along the river. Nearby, Thorne saw eight duck-billed dinosaurs with large tube-like crests rising above their heads; they drank and lifted their heads, honking mournfully. Directly ahead, he saw a lone stegosaurus, with its curved back and its vertical rows of plates. The triceratops herd moved slowly past the stegosaur, which paid no attention to them. And to the west, rising above a clump of trees, they saw a dozen long, graceful necks of apatosaurs, their bodies hidden by the foliage that they lazily ate. It was a tranquil scene—but it was a scene from another world. “Doc?” Eddie said. “What is this place?”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0028.txt", "text": "Site B Sitting in the cars, they stared out over the plain. They watched the dinosaurs move slowly through the deep grass. They heard the soft cry of the duckbills. The separate herds moved peacefully beside the river. Eddie said, “So what are we saying, this is a place that got bypassed by evolution? One of those places where time stands still?” “Not at all,” Malcolm said. “There’s a perfectly rational explanation for what you are seeing. And we are going to—” From the dashboard, there was a high-pitched beeping. On the GPS map, a blue grid was overlaid, with a flashing triangular point marked LEVN. “It’s him!” Eddie said. “We got the son of a bitch!” “You’re reading that?” Thorne said. “It’s pretty weak.…” “It’s fine—it’s got enough signal strength to transmit the ID tab. That’s Levine, all right. Looks like it is coming from the valley over there.” He started the Explorer, and it lurched forward up the road. “Let’s go,” Eddie said. “I want to get the hell out of here.” With the flick of a switch, Thorne turned on the electric motor for the trailer, and heard the chug of the vacuum pump, the low whine of the automatic transmission. He put the trailer in gear, and followed behind. The impenetrable jungle closed in around them again, close and hot. The trees overhead blocked nearly all the sunlight. As he drove, he heard the beeping become irregular. He glanced at the monitor, saw the flashing triangle was disappearing, then coming back again. “Are we losing him, Eddie?” Thorne said. “Doesn’t matter if we do,” Eddie said. “We’ve got a location on him now, and we can go right there. In fact, it should be just down this road here. Right past this guardhouse or whatever it is, dead ahead.” Thorne looked past the Explorer, and saw a concrete structure and a tilting steel road-barrier. It did indeed look like a guardhouse. It was in disrepair, and overgrown with vines. They drove on, coming onto paved road. It was clear the foliage on either side had once been cut far back, fifty feet on either side. Pretty soon they came to a second guardhouse, and a second checkpoint. They continued on another hundred yards, the road still curving slowly along the ridge. The surrounding foliage became sparser; through gaps in the ferns Thorne could see wooden outbuildings, all painted identical green. They seemed to be utility structures, perhaps sheds for equipment. He had the sense of entering a substantial complex. And then, suddenly, they rounded a curve, and saw the entire complex spread out below them. It was about a half-mile away. Eddie said, “What the hell is that?” Thorne stared, astonished. In the center of the clearing he saw the flat roof of an enormous building. It covered several acres, stretching away into the distance. It was the size of two football fields."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0028.txt", "text": "Beyond the vast roof was a large blocky building with a metal roof, which had the functional look of a power plant. But if so, it was as big as the power plant for a small town. At the far end of the main building, Thorne saw loading docks, and turnarounds for trucks. Over to the right, partially hidden in foliage, there were a series of small structures that looked like cottages. But from a distance it was hard to be sure. Taken together, the whole complex had a utilitarian quality that reminded Thorne of an industrial site, or a fabrication plant. He frowned, trying to put it together. “Do you know what this is?” Thorne said to Malcolm. “Yes,” Malcolm said, nodding slowly. “It’s what I suspected for some time now.” “Yes?” “It’s a manufacturing plant,” Malcolm said. “It’s a kind of factory.” “But it’s huge,” Thorne said. “Yes,” Malcolm said. “It had to be.” Over the radio, Eddie said, “I’m still getting a reading from Levine. And guess what? It seems to be coming from that building.” They drove past the covered front entrance to the main building, beneath the sagging portico. The building was of modern design, concrete and glass, but the jungle had long ago grown up around it. Vines hung from the roof. Panes of glass were broken; ferns sprouted between cracks in the concrete. Thorne said, “Eddie? Got a reading?” Eddie said, “Yeah. Inside. What do you want to do?” “Set up base camp in that field over there,” Thorne said, pointing a half-mile to the left, where once, it seemed, there had been an extensive lawn. It was still an open clearing in the jungle; there would be sunlight for the photovoltaics. “Then we’ll have a look around.” Eddie parked his Explorer, turning it around to face back the way they had come. Thorne maneuvered the trailers alongside the car, and cut the engine. He climbed out into the still, hot morning air. Malcolm got out and stood with him. Here in the center of the island, it was completely silent, except for the buzz of insects. Eddie came over, slapping himself. “Great place, huh? No shortage of mosquitoes. You want to go get the son of a bitch now?” Eddie unclipped a receiver from his belt, and cupped his hand over the display, trying to see it in the sunlight. “Still right over there.” He pointed to the main building. “What do you say?” “Let’s go get him,” Thorne said. The three men turned, climbed into the Explorer, and, leaving the trailers behind, drove in hot sunlight toward the giant, ruined building."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0029.txt", "text": "Trailer Inside the trailer, the sound of the car engine faded away, and there was silence. The dashboard glowed, the GPS map remained visible on the monitor; the flashing X marking their position. A small window in the monitor, titled “Active Systems,” indicated the battery charge, photovoltaic efficiency, and usage over the past twelve hours. The electronic readouts all glowed bright green. In the living section, where the kitchen and beds were located, the recirculating water supply in the sink gurgled softly. Then there was a thumping sound, coming from the upper storage compartment, located near the ceiling. The thumping was repeated, and then there was silence. After a moment, a credit card appeared through the crack of the compartment door. The card slid upward, lifting the panel latch, unhooking it. The door swung open, and a white bundle of padding fell out, landing with a dull thud on the floor. The padding unrolled, and Arby Benton groaned, stretching his small body. “If I don’t pee, I’m going to scream,” he said, and he hurried on shaky legs into the tiny bathroom. He sighed in relief. It had been Kelly’s idea for them to go, but she left it to Arby to figure out the details. And he had figured everything out perfectly, he thought—at least, almost everything. Arby had correctly anticipated it would be freezing cold in the cargo plane, and that they would have to bundle up; he’d stuffed their compartments with every blanket and sheet in the trailer. He’d anticipated they would be there at least twelve hours, and he put aside some cookies and bottles of water. In fact, he’d anticipated everything except the fact that, at the last minute, Eddie Carr would go through the trailer and latch all the storage compartments from the outside. Locking them in, so that, for the next twelve hours, he wouldn’t be able to go to the bathroom. For twelve hours! He sighed again, his body relaxing. A steady stream of urine still flowed into the basin. No wonder! Agony! And he’d still be locked in there, he thought, if he hadn’t finally figured out— Behind him, he heard muffled shouts. He flushed the toilet and went back, crouching down by the storage compartment beneath the bed. He quickly unlatched it; another padded bundle unrolled, and Kelly appeared beside him. “Hey, Kel,” he said proudly. “We made it!” “I have to go,” she said, dashing. She pulled the door shut behind her. Arby said, “We did it! We’re here!” “Just a minute, Arb. Okay?” For the first time, he looked out the window of the trailer. All around them was a grassy clearing, and beyond that, the ferns and high trees of the jungle. And high above the tops of the trees, he saw the curving black rock of the volcanic rim. So this was Isla Sorna, all right. All right! Kelly came out of the bathroom. “Ohhh."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0029.txt", "text": "I thought I was going to die!” She looked at him, gave him a high five. “By the way, how’d you get your door unlatched?” “Credit card,” he said. She frowned. “You have a credit card?” “My parents gave it to me, for emergencies,” he said. “And I figured this was an emergency.” He tried to make a joke out of it, to treat it lightly. Arby knew Kelly was sensitive about anything to do with money. She was always making comments about his clothes and things like that. And how he always had money for a taxi or a Coke at Larson’s Deli after school, or whatever. Once he said to her that he didn’t think money was so important, and she said, “Why would you?” in a funny voice. And ever since then he had tried to avoid the subject. Arby wasn’t always clear about the right thing to do around people. Everyone treated him so weird, anyway. Because he was younger, of course. And because he was black. And because he was what the other kids called a brainer. He found himself engaged in a constant effort to be accepted, to blend in. Except he couldn’t. He wasn’t white, he wasn’t big, he wasn’t good at sports, and he wasn’t dumb. Most of his classes at school were so boring Arby could hardly stay awake in them. His teachers sometimes got annoyed with him, but what could he do? School was like a video played at super-slow speed. You could glance at it once an hour and not miss anything. And when he was around the other kids, how could he be expected to show interest in TV shows like “Melrose Place,” or the San Francisco 49ers, or the Shaq’s new commercial. He couldn’t. That stuff wasn’t important. But Arby had long ago discovered it was unpopular to say so. It was better to keep your mouth shut. Because nobody understood him, except Kelly. She seemed to know what he was talking about, most of the time. And Dr. Levine. At least the school had an advanced-placement track, which was moderately interesting to Arby. Not very interesting, of course, but better than the other classes. And when Dr. Levine had decided to teach the class, Arby had found himself excited by school for the first time in his life. In fact— “So this is Isla Sorna, huh?” Kelly said, looking out the window at the jungle. “Yeah,” Arby said. “I guess so.” “You know, when they stopped the car earlier,” Kelly said, “could you hear what they were talking about?” “Not really. All the padding.” “Me neither,” Kelly said. “But they seemed pretty worked up about something.” “Yeah, they did.” “It sounded like they were talking about dinosaurs,” Kelly said. “Did you hear anything like that?” Arby laughed, shaking his head. “No, Kel,” he said. “Because I thought they did.” “Come on, Kel.” “I thought Thorne said ‘triceratops.’ ” “Kel,” he said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0029.txt", "text": "“Dinosaurs have been extinct for sixty-five million years.” “I know that.…” He pointed out the window. “You see any dinosaurs out there?” Kelly didn’t answer. She went to the other side of the trailer, and looked out the opposite window. She saw Thorne, Malcolm, and Eddie disappearing into the main building. “They’re going to be pretty annoyed when they find us,” Arby said. “How do you think we should tell them?” “We can let it be a surprise.” “They’ll be mad,” he said. “So? What can they do about it?” Kelly said. “Maybe they’ll send us back.” “How? They can’t.” “Yeah. I guess.” Arby shrugged casually, but he was more troubled by this line of thought than he wanted to admit. This was all Kelly’s idea. Arby had never liked to break the rules, or to get into any kind of trouble. Whenever he had even had a mild reprimand from a teacher, he would get flushed and sweaty. And for the last twelve hours, he had been thinking about how Thorne and the others would react. “Look,” Kelly said. “The thing is, we’re here to help find our friend Dr. Levine, that’s all. We’ve helped Dr. Thorne already.” “Yes …” “And we’ll be able to help them again.” “Maybe …” “They need our help.” “Maybe,” Arby said. He didn’t feel convinced. Kelly said, “I wonder what they have to eat here.” She opened the refrigerator. “You hungry?” “Starving,” Arby said, suddenly aware that he was. “So what do you want?” “What is there?” He sat on the padded gray couch and stretched, as he watched Kelly poke through the refrigerator. “Come and look,” she said, annoyed. “I’m not your stupid housekeeper.” “Okay, okay, take it easy.” “Well, you expect everybody to wait on you,” she said. “I do not,” he said, getting quickly off the couch. “You’re such a brat, Arby.” “Hey,” he said. “What’s the big deal? Take it easy. You nervous about something?” “No, I am not,” she said. She took a wrapped sandwich out of the refrigerator. Standing beside her, he looked briefly inside, grabbed the first sandwich he saw. “You don’t want that,” she said. “Yes, I do.” “It’s tuna salad.” Arby hated tuna salad. He put it back quickly, looked around again. “That’s turkey on the left,” she said. “In the bun.” He brought out a turkey sandwich. “Thanks.” “No problem.” Sitting on the couch, she opened her own sandwich, wolfed it down hungrily. “Listen, at least I got us here,” he said, unwrapping his own carefully. He folded the plastic neatly, set it aside. “Yeah. You did. I admit it. You did that part all right.” Arby ate his sandwich. He thought he had never tasted anything so good in his entire life. It was better even than his mother’s turkey sandwiches. The thought of his mother gave him a pang. His mother was a gynecologist and very beautiful."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0029.txt", "text": "She had a busy life, and wasn’t home very much, but whenever he saw her, she always seemed so peaceful. And Arby felt peaceful around her, too. They had a special relationship, the two of them. Even though lately she sometimes seemed uneasy about how much he knew. One night he had come into her study; she was going over some journal articles about progesterone levels and FSH. He looked over her shoulder at the columns of numbers and suggested that she might want to try a nonlinear equation to analyze the data. She gave him a funny look, a kind of separate look, thoughtful and distant from him, and at that moment he had felt— “I’m getting another one,” Kelly said, going back to the refrigerator. She came out with two sandwiches, one in each hand. “You think there’s enough?” “Who cares? I’m starving,” she said, tearing off the wrapping on the first. “Maybe we shouldn’t eat—” “Arb, if you’re going to worry like this, we should have stayed home.” He decided that was right. He was surprised to see that he had somehow finished his own sandwich. So he took the other one Kelly offered him. Kelly ate, and stared out the window. “I wonder what that building is, that they went into? It looks abandoned.” “Yeah. For years.” “Why would somebody build a big building here, on some deserted island in Costa Rica?” she said. “Maybe they were doing something secret.” “Or dangerous,” she said. “Yeah. Or that.” The idea of danger was both titillating and unnerving. He felt far from home. “I wonder what they were doing?” she said. Still eating, she got up off the couch and went to look out the window. “Sure is a big place. Huh,” she said. “That’s weird.” “What is?” “Look out here. That building is all overgrown, like nobody’s been there for years and years. And this field is all grown up, too. The grass is pretty high.” “Yes …” “But right down here,” she said, pointing near the trailer, “there’s a clear path.” Chewing, Arby came over and looked. She was right. Just a few yards from their trailer, the grass had been trampled down, and was yellowed. In many places, bare earth showed through. It was a narrow but distinct trail, coming in from the left, going off to the right, across the open clearing. “So,” Kelly said. “If nobody’s been here for years, what made the trail?” “Has to be animals,” he said. It was all he could think of. “Must be a game trail.” “Like what animals?” “I don’t know. Whatever’s here. Deer or something.” “I haven’t seen any deer.” He shrugged. “Maybe goats. You know, wild goats, like they have in Hawaii.” “The trail’s too wide for deer or goats.” “Maybe there’s a whole herd of wild goats.” “Too wide,” Kelly said. She shrugged, and turned away from the window. She went back to the refrigerator."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0029.txt", "text": "“I wonder if there’s anything for dessert.” Mention of dessert gave him a sudden thought. He went to the compartment above the bed, climbed up, and poked around. “What’re you doing?” she said. “Checking my pack.” “For what?” “I think I forgot my toothbrush.” “So?” “I won’t be able to brush my teeth.” “Arb,” she said. “Who cares?” “But I always brush my teeth.…” “Be daring,” Kelly said. “Live a little.” Arby sighed. “Maybe Dr. Thorne brought an extra one.” He came back and sat down on the couch beside Kelly. She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. “No dessert?” “Nothing. Not even frozen yogurt. Adults. They never plan right.” “Yeah. That’s true.” Arby yawned. It was warm in the trailer. He felt sleepy. Lying huddled in that compartment for the last twelve hours, shivering and cramped, he hadn’t slept at all. Now he was suddenly tired. He looked at Kelly, and she yawned, too. “Want to go outside? Wake us up?” “We should probably wait here,” he said. “If I do, I’m afraid I’ll go to sleep,” Kelly said. Arby shrugged. Sleep was overtaking him fast. He went back to the living compartment, and crawled onto the mattress beside the window. Kelly followed him back. “I’m not going to sleep,” she said. “Fine, Kel.” His eyes were heavy. He realized he couldn’t keep them open. “But”—she yawned again—“maybe I’ll just lie down for a minute.” He saw her stretch out on the bed opposite him, and then his eyes closed, and he was immediately asleep. He dreamed he was back in the airplane, feeling the gentle rocking motion, hearing the deep rumble of the engines. He slept lightly, and at one moment woke up, convinced that the trailer actually was rocking, and that there really was a low rumbling sound, coming from right outside the window. But almost immediately he was asleep again, and now he dreamed of dinosaurs, Kelly’s dinosaurs, and in his light sleep there were two animals, so huge that he could not see their heads through the window, only their thick scaly legs as they thumped on the ground and walked past the trailer. But in his dream the second animal paused, and bent over, and the big head peered in curiously through the window, and Arby realized that he was seeing the giant head of a Tyrannosaurus rex, the great jaws working, the white teeth glinting in the sunlight, and in his dream he watched it all calmly, and slept on."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0030.txt", "text": "Interior Two large swinging glass doors at the front of the main building led into a darkened lobby beyond. The glass was scratched and dirty, the chrome door-handles pitted with corrosion. But it was clear that the dust, debris, and dead leaves in front of the doorway had been disturbed in twin arcs. “Somebody’s opened these doors recently,” Eddie said. “Yes,” Thorne said. “Somebody wearing Asolo boots.” He opened the door. “Shall we?” They stepped into the building. Inside, the air was hot and still and fetid. The lobby was small and unimpressive. A reception counter directly ahead was once covered with gray fabric, now overgrown with a dark, lichen-like growth. On the wall behind was a row of chrome letters that said “We Make The Future,” but the words were obscured by a tangle of vines. Mushrooms and fungi sprouted from the carpet. Over to the right, they saw a waiting area, with a coffee table, and two long couches. One of the couches was speckled with crusty brown mold; the other had been covered with a plastic tarp. Next to this couch was what was left of Levine’s green backpack, with several deep tears in the fabric. On the coffee table were two empty plastic Evian bottles, a satellite phone, a pair of muddy hiking shorts, and several crumpled candy-bar wrappers. A bright-green snake slithered quickly away as they approached. “So this is an InGen building?” Thorne said, looking at the wall sign. “Absolutely,” Malcolm said. Eddie bent over Levine’s backpack, ran his fingers along the tears in the fabric. As he did so, a large rat jumped out from the pack. “Jesus!” The rat scurried away, squeaking. Eddie looked cautiously inside the pack. “I don’t think anybody’s going to want the rest of these candy bars,” he said. He turned to the pile of clothes. “You getting a reading from this?” Some of the expedition clothes had micro-sensors sewn into them. “No,” Thorne said, moving his hand monitor. “I have a reading, but … it seems to be coming from there.” He pointed to a set of metal doors beyond the reception desk, leading into the building beyond. The doors had once been bolted shut and locked with rusted padlocks. But the padlocks now lay on the floor, broken open. “Let’s go get him,” Eddie said, heading for the doors. “What kind of a snake do you think that was?” “I don’t know.” “Was it poisonous?” “I don’t know.” The doors opened with a loud creak. The three men found themselves in a blank corridor, with broken windows along one wall, and dried leaves and debris on the floor. The walls were dirty and darkly stained in several places with what looked like blood. They saw several doors opening off the corridor. None appeared to be locked. Plants were growing up through rips in the carpeted floor. Near the windows, where it was light, vines grew thickly over the cracked walls."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0030.txt", "text": "More vines hung down from the ceiling. Thorne and the others headed down the hallway. There was no sound except their feet crunching on the dried leaves. “Getting stronger,” Thorne said, looking at his monitor. “He must be somewhere in this building.” Thorne opened the first door he came to, and saw a plain office: a desk and chair, a map of the island on the wall. A desk lamp, toppled over from the weight of tangled vines. A computer monitor, with a film of mold. At the far end of the room, light filtered through a grimy window. They went down the hall to the second door, and saw an almost identical office: similar desk and chair, similar window at the far side of the room. Eddie grunted. “Looks like we’re in an office building,” he said. Thorne went on. He opened the third door, and then the fourth. More offices. Thorne opened the fifth door, and paused. He was in a conference room, dirty with leaves and debris. There were animal droppings on the long wooden table in the center of the room. The window on the far side was dusty. Thorne was drawn to a large map, which covered one whole wall of the conference room. There were pushpins of various colors stuck in the map. Eddie came in, and frowned. Beneath the map was a chest of drawers. Thorne tried to open them, but they were all locked. Malcolm walked slowly into the room, looking around, taking it in. “What’s this map mean?” Eddie said. “You have any idea what the pins are?” Malcolm glanced at it. “Twenty pins in four different colors. Five pins of each color. Arranged in a pentagon, or anyway a five-pronged pattern of some kind, going to all parts of the island. I’d say it looks like a network.” “Didn’t Arby say there was a network on this island?” “Yes, he did.… Interesting …” “Well, never mind that now,” Thorne said. He went back into the hallway again, following the signal from his hand unit. Malcolm closed the door behind them, and they continued on. They saw more offices, but no longer opened the doors. They followed the signal from Levine. At the end of the corridor was a pair of sliding glass doors marked NO ADMITTANCE AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Thorne peered through the glass, but he could not see much beyond. He had the sense of a large space, and complex machinery, but the glass was dusty and streaked with grime. It was difficult to see. Thorne said to Malcolm, “You really think you know what this building was for?” “I know exactly what it was for,” Malcolm said. “It’s a manufacturing plant for dinosaurs.” “Why,” Eddie said, “would anybody want that?” “Nobody would,” Malcolm said. “That’s why they kept it a secret.” “I don’t get it,” Eddie said. Malcolm smiled. “Long story,” he said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0030.txt", "text": "He slipped his hands between the doors, and tried to pull them open, but they remained shut fast. He grunted, straining with effort. And then suddenly, with a metallic screech, they slid apart. They stepped into the darkness beyond. Their flashlights shone down an inky corridor, as they moved forward. “To understand this place, you have to go back ten years, to a man named John Hammond, and an animal called the quagga.” “The what?” “The quagga,” Malcolm said, “is an African mammal, rather like a zebra. It became extinct in the last century. But in the 1980s, somebody used the latest DNA-extraction techniques on a piece of quagga hide, and recovered a lot of DNA. So much DNA that people began to talk about bringing the quagga back to life. And if you could bring the quagga back to life, why not other extinct animals? The dodo? The saber-toothed tiger? Or even a dinosaur?” “Where could you get dinosaur DNA?” Thorne said. “Actually,” Malcolm said, “paleontologists have been finding fragments of dinosaur DNA for years. They never said much about it, because they never had enough material to use it as a classification tool. So it didn’t seem to have any value; it was just a curiosity.” “But to re-create an animal, you’d need more than DNA fragments,” Thorne said. “You’d need the whole strand.” “That’s right,” Malcolm said. “And the man who figured out how to get it was a venture capitalist named John Hammond. He reasoned that, when dinosaurs were alive, insects probably bit them, and sucked their blood, just as insects do today. And some of those insects would afterward land on a branch, and be trapped in sticky sap. And some of that sap would harden into amber. Hammond decided that, if you drilled into insects preserved in amber, and extracted the stomach contents, you would eventually get some dino-DNA.” “And did he?” “Yes. He did. And he started InGen, to develop this discovery. Hammond was a hustler, and his true talent was raising money. He figured out how to get enough money to do the research to go from a DNA strand to a living animal. Sources of funding weren’t immediately apparent. Because, although it would be exciting to re-create a dinosaur, it wasn’t exactly a cure for cancer. “So he decided to make a tourist attraction. He planned to recover the cost of the dinosaurs by putting them in a kind of zoo or theme park, where he would charge admission.” “Are you joking?” Thorne said. “No. Hammond actually did it. He built his park on an island called Isla Nublar, north of here, and he planned to open it to the public in late 1989. I went to see the place myself, shortly before it was scheduled to open. But it turned out Hammond had problems,” Malcolm said. “The park systems broke down, and the dinosaurs got free. Some visitors were killed."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0030.txt", "text": "Afterward, the park and all its dinosaurs were destroyed.” They passed a window where they could look out over the plain, at the herds of dinosaurs browsing by the river. Thorne said, “If they were all destroyed, what’s this island?” “This island,” Malcolm said, “is Hammond’s dirty little secret. It’s the dark side of his park.” They continued down the corridor. “You see,” Malcolm said, “visitors to Hammond’s park at Isla Nublar were shown a very impressive genetics lab, with computers and gene sequencers, and all sorts of facilities for hatching and growing young dinosaurs. Visitors were told that the dinosaurs were created right there at the park. And the laboratory tour was entirely convincing. “But actually, Hammond’s tour skipped several steps in the process. In one room, he showed you dinosaur DNA being extracted. In the next room, he showed you eggs about to hatch. It was very dramatic, but how had he gotten from DNA to a viable embryo? You never saw that critical step. It was just presented as having happened, between rooms. “The fact was, Hammond’s whole show was too good to be true. For example, he had a hatchery where the little dinosaurs pecked their way out of the eggs, while you watched in amazement. But there were never any problems in the hatchery. No stillbirths, no deformities, no difficulties of any sort. In Hammond’s presentation, this dazzling technology was carried off without a hitch. “And if you think about it, it couldn’t possibly be true. Hammond was claiming to manufacture extinct animals using cutting-edge technology. But with any new manufacturing technology, initial yields are low: on the order of one percent or less. So in fact, Hammond must have been growing thousands of dinosaur embryos to get a single live birth. That implied a giant industrial operation, not the spotless little laboratory we were shown.” “You mean this place,” Thorne said. “Yes. Here, on another island, in secret, away from public scrutiny, Hammond was free to do his research, and deal with the unpleasant truth behind his beautiful little park. Hammond’s little genetic zoo was a showcase. But this island was the real thing. This is where the dinosaurs were made.” “If the animals at the zoo were destroyed,” Eddie said, “how come they weren’t destroyed on this island, too?” “A critical question,” Malcolm said. “We should know the answer in a few minutes.” He shone his light down the tunnel; it glinted off glass walls. “Because, if I am not mistaken,” he said, “the first of the manufacturing bays is just ahead.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0031.txt", "text": "Arby Arby awoke, sitting upright in bed, blinking his eyes in the morning light that streamed in through the trailer windows. In the next bunk, Kelly was still asleep, snoring loudly. He looked out the window at the entrance to the big building, and saw that the adults were gone. The Explorer was standing by the entrance, but there was no one inside the car. Their trailer sat isolated in the clearing of tall grass. Arby felt entirely alone—frighteningly alone—and a sudden sense of panic made his heart pound. He never should have come here, he thought. The whole idea was stupid. And worst of all, it had been his plan. The way they had huddled together in the trailer, and then had gone back to Thorne’s office. And Kelly had talked to Thorne, so that Arby could steal the key. The way he had set up a delayed radio message to be transmitted to Thorne so that Thorne would think they were still in Woodside. Arby had felt very clever at the time, but now he regretted it all. He decided that he had to call Thorne immediately. He had to turn himself in. He was filled with an overwhelming desire to confess. He needed to hear somebody’s voice. That was the truth. He walked from the back of the trailer, where Kelly was sleeping, to the front, and turned on the ignition key in the dashboard. He picked up the radio handset and said, “This is Arby. Is anybody there? Over. This is Arby.” But nobody answered. After a moment, he looked at the dashboard systems monitor, which registered all the systems that were operative. He didn’t see anything about communications. It occurred to him that the communications system was probably hooked into the computer. He decided to turn the computer on. So he went back to the middle of the trailer, unstrapped the keyboard, plugged it in, and turned the computer on. There was a menu screen that said “Thorne Field Systems” and underneath that a listing of subsystems inside the trailer. One of them was radio communications. So he clicked on that, and turned it on. The computer screen showed a scrambled hash of static. At the bottom was a command line that read: “Multiple Frequency Inputs Received. Do you want to Autotune?” Arby didn’t know what that meant, but he was fearless around computers. Autotune sounded interesting. Without hesitation, he typed “Yes.” The static scramble remained on the screen, while numbers rolled at the bottom. He guessed he was seeing frequencies in megahertz. But he didn’t really know. And then, suddenly, the screen went blank, except for a single flashing word in the upper-left corner: LOGIN: He paused, frowning. That was odd. Apparently he was required to log into the trailer’s computer system. That meant he would need a password. He tried: THORNE. Nothing happened. He waited a moment, then tried Thorne’s initials: JT. Nothing. LEVINE. Nothing. THORNE FIELD SYSTEMS. Nothing. TFS. Nothing. FIELD. Nothing."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0031.txt", "text": "USER. Nothing. Well, he thought, at least the system hadn’t dumped him out. Most networks logged you off after three wrong tries. But apparently Thorne hadn’t designed any security features into this one. Arby would never have made it this way. The system was too patient and helpful. He tried: HELP. The cursor moved to another line. There was a pause. The drives whirred. “Action,” he said, rubbing his hands."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0032.txt", "text": "Laboratory As Thorne’s eyes adjusted to the low light, he saw they were standing inside an enormous space, consisting of row after row of rectangular stainless-steel boxes, each fitted with a tangled maze of plastic tubing. Everything was dusty; many of the boxes were knocked over. “The first rows,” Malcolm said, “are Nishihara gene sequencers. And beyond are the automatic DNA synthesizers.” “It’s a factory,” Eddie said. “It’s like agribusiness or something.” “Yes, it is.” At the corner of the room was a printer, with some loose sheets of yellowing paper lying beside it. Malcolm picked up one, and glanced at it. “It’s a reference to a computer database,” Malcolm said. “For some dinosaur blood factor. Something to do with red cells.” “And is that the sequence?” “No,” Malcolm said. He started shuffling through the papers. “No, the sequence should be a series of nucleotides.… Here.” He picked up another sheet of paper. SEQUENCE “Does this have something to do with why the animals survived?” Thorne said. “I’m not sure,” Malcolm said. Was this sheet related to the final days of the manufacturing facility? Or was it just something that a worker printed out years ago, and somehow left behind? He looked around by the printer, and found a shelved stack of sheets. Pulling them out, he discovered that they were memos. They were on faded blue paper, and they were all brief. From: CC/D-P. Jenkins To: H. Wu Excess dopamine in Alpha 5 means D1 receptor still not functioning with desired avidity. To minimize aggressive behavior in finished orgs must try alternate genetic backgrounds. We need to start this today. And again: From: CC/D To: H. Wu/Sup Isolated glycogen synthase kinase-3 from Xenopus may work better than mammalian GSK-3 alpha/beta currently in use. Anticipate more robust establishment of dorsoventral polarity and less early embryo wastage. Agree? Malcolm looked at the next one: From: Backes To: H. Wu/Sup Short protein fragments may be acting as prions. Sourcing doubtful but suggest halt all exogenous protein for carniv. orgs until origin is cleared up. Disease cannot continue! Thorne looked over his shoulder. “Seems like they had problems,” he said. “Undoubtedly they did,” Malcolm said. “It would be impossible not to have them. But the question is …” He drifted off, staring at the next memo, which was longer. INGEN PRODUCTION UPDATE 10/10/88 From: Lori Ruso To: All Personnel Subject: Low Production Yields Recent episodes of wastage of successful live births in the period 24–72 hours post-hatching have been traced to contamination from Escherichia coli bacteria. These have cut production yields by 60%, and arise from inadequate sterile precautions by floor personnel, principally during Process H (Egg Maintenance Phase, Hormone Enhancement 2G/H). Komera swing arms have been replaced and re-sleeved on robots 5A and 7D, but needle replacement must still be done daily in accordance with sterile conditions (General Manual: Guideline 5–9). During the next production cycle (10/12–10/26) we will sacrifice every tenth egg at H Step to test for contamination."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0032.txt", "text": "Begin set-asides at once. Report all errors. Stop the line whenever necessary until this is cleared up. “They had problems with infection, and contamination of the production line,” Malcolm said. “And maybe other sources of contamination as well. Look at this.” He handed Thorne the next memo: INGEN PRODUCTION UPDATE 12/18/88 From: H. Wu To: All Personnel Subject: DX: TAG AND RELEASE Live births will be fitted with the new Grumbach field tags at the earliest viable interval. Formula or other feeding within the laboratory confines will no longer be done. The release program is now fully operational and tracking networks are activated to monitor. Thorne said, “Does this mean what I think it means?” “Yes,” Malcolm said. “They were having trouble keeping the newborn animals alive, so they tagged them and released them.” “And kept track of them on some kind of network?” “Yes. I think so.” “They set dinosaurs loose on this island?” Eddie said. “They must have been crazy.” “Desperate, is more like it,” Malcolm said. “Just imagine: here’s this huge expensive high-tech process, and in the end the animals are getting sick and dying. Hammond must have been furious. So they decided to get the animals out of the laboratory, and into the wild.” “But why didn’t they find the cause of the sickness, why didn’t they—” “Commercial process,” Malcolm said. “It’s all about results. And I’m sure they thought they were keeping track of the animals, they could get them back anytime they wanted. And don’t forget, it must have worked. They must have put the animals into the field, then collected them after a while, when they were older, and shipped them to Hammond’s zoo.” “But not all of them.…” “We don’t know everything yet,” Malcolm said. “We don’t know what happened here.” They went through the next doorway, and found themselves in a small, bare room, with a central bench, and lockers on the walls. Signs said OBSERVE STERILE PRECAUTIONS and MAINTAIN SK4 STANDARDS. At the end of the room was a cabinet with stacks of yellowing gowns and caps. Eddie said, “It’s a changing room.” “Looks like it,” Malcolm said. He opened a locker; it was empty, except for a pair of men’s shoes. He opened several other lockers. They were all empty. Inside one, a sheet of paper was taped: Safety Is Everybody’s Business! Report Genetic Anomalies! Dispose of Biowaste Properly! Halt the Spread of DX Now! “What’s DX?” Eddie said. “I think,” Malcolm said, “it’s the name for this mysterious disease.” At the far end of the changing room were two doors. The right-hand door was pneumatic, operated by a rubber foot-panel set in the floor. But that door was locked, so they went through the left door, which opened freely. They found themselves in a long corridor, with floor-to-ceiling glass panels along the right wall. The glass was scratched and dirty, but they peered through it into the room beyond, which was unlike anything Thorne had ever seen."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0032.txt", "text": "The space was vast, the size of a football field. Conveyor belts crisscrossed the room at two levels, one very high, the other at waist level. At various stations around the room, clusters of large machinery, with intricate tubing and swing arms, stood beside the belts. Thorne shone his light on the conveyor belts. “An assembly line,” he said. “But it looks untouched, like it’s still ready to go,” Malcolm said. “There are a couple of plants growing through the floor over there, but, overall, remarkably clean.” “Too clean,” Eddie said. Thorne shrugged. “If it’s a clean-room environment, then it’s probably air-sealed,” he said. “I guess it just stayed the way it was years ago.” Eddie shook his head. “For years? Doc, I don’t think so.” “Then what do you think explains it?” Malcolm frowned, peering through the glass. How was it possible for a room this size to remain clean after so many years? It didn’t make any— “Hey!” Eddie said. Malcolm saw it, too. It was in the far corner of the room, a small blue box halfway up the wall, cables running into it. It was obviously some kind of electrical junction box. Mounted on the box was a tiny red light. It was glowing. “This place has power!” Thorne moved close to the glass, looking through with them. “That’s impossible. It must be some kind of stored charge, or a battery.…” “After five years? No battery can last that long,” Eddie said. “I’m telling you, Doc, this place has power!” Arby stared at the monitor as white lettering slowly printed across the screen: ARE YOU FIRST-TIME USER OF THE NETWORK? He typed: YES. There was another pause. He waited. More letters slowly appeared: YOUR FULL NAME? He typed in his name. DO YOU WANT A PASSWORD ISSUED TO YOU? You’re kidding, he thought. This was going to be a snap. It was almost disappointing. He really thought Dr. Thorne would have been more clever. He typed: YES. After a moment: YOUR NEW PASSWORD IS VIG/&*849/. PLEASE MAKE A NOTE OF IT. Sure thing, Arby thought. You bet I will. There was no paper on the desk in front of him; he patted his pockets, found a scrap of paper, and wrote it down. PLEASE RE-ENTER YOUR PASSWORD NOW. He typed in the series of characters and numbers. There was another pause, and then more printing appeared across the screen. The speed of the printing was oddly slow, and halting at times. After all this time, maybe the system wasn’t working very— THANK YOU. PASSWORD CONFIRMED. The screen flashed, and suddenly turned dark blue. There was an electronic chime. And then Arby’s jaw dropped open as he stared at the screen, which read: INTERNATIONAL GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES SITE B LOCAL NODE NETWORK SERVICES It didn’t make any sense. How could there be a Site B network? InGen had closed Site B years ago. Arby had already read the documents. And InGen was out of business, long since bankrupt."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0032.txt", "text": "What network? he thought. And how had he managed to get on it? The trailer wasn’t connected to anything. There were no cables or anything. So it must be a radio network, already on the island. Somehow he’d managed to log onto it. But how could it exist? A radio network needed power, and there was no power here. Arby waited. Nothing happened. The words just sat there on the screen. He waited for a menu to come up, but one never did. Arby began to think that perhaps the system was defunct. Or hung up. Maybe it just let you log on, and then nothing happened after that. Or maybe, he thought, he was supposed to do something. He did the simplest thing, which was to press RETURN. He saw: REMOTE NETWORK SERVICES AVAILABLE CURRENT WORKFILES Last Modified R/Research 10/02/89 P/Production 10/05/89 F/Field Rec 10/09/89 M/Maintenance 11/12/89 A/Administration 11/11/89 STORED DATAFILES R1/Research (AV-AD) 11/01/89 R2/Research (GD-99) 11/12/89 P/Production (FD-FN) 11/09/89 VIDEO NETWORK A, 1-20 CCD NDC.1.1 So it really was an old system: files hadn’t been modified for years. Wondering if it still worked, he clicked on VIDEO NETWORK. And to his amazement, he saw the screen begin to fill with tiny video images. There were fifteen in all, crowding the screen, showing views of various parts of the island. Most of the cameras seemed to be mounted high up, in trees or something, and they showed— He stared. They showed dinosaurs. He squinted. It wasn’t possible. These were movies or something he was seeing. Because in one corner he saw a herd of triceratops. In an adjacent square, some green lizard-looking things, in high grass, with just their heads sticking up. In another, a single stegosaurus, ambling along. They must be movies, he thought. The dinosaur channel. But then, in another image, Arby saw the two connected trailers standing in the clearing. He could see the black photovoltaic panels glistening on the roof. He almost imagined he could see himself, through the window of the trailer. Oh, my God, he thought. And in another image, he saw Thorne and Malcolm and Eddie get quickly into the green Explorer, and drive around the back of the laboratory. And he realized with a shock: The pictures were all real."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0033.txt", "text": "Power They drove the Explorer to the back of the main building, heading for the power station. On the way, they passed a little village to their right. Thorne saw six plantation-style cottages and a larger building marked “Manager’s Residence.” It was clear that the cottages had once been nicely landscaped, but they were now overgrown, partially retaken by the jungle. In the center of the complex, they saw a tennis court, a drained swimming pool, a small gas pump in front of what looked like a little general store. Thorne said, “I wonder how many people they had here?” Eddie said, “How do you know they’re all gone?” “What do you mean?” “Doc—they have power. After all these years. There has to be an explanation for it.” Eddie steered the car around the back of the loading bays, and drove toward the power station, directly ahead. The power station was a windowless, featureless concrete blockhouse, marked only by a corrugated-steel rim for ventilation around the top. The steel vents were long since rusted a uniform brown, with flecks of yellow. Eddie drove the car around the block, looking for a door. He found it at the back. It was a heavy steel door, with a peeling, painted sign that said: CAUTION HIGH VOLTAGE DO NOT ENTER. Eddie jumped out of the car, and the others followed. Thorne sniffed the air. “Sulfur,” he said. “Very strong,” Malcolm said, nodding. Eddie tugged at the door. “Guys, I got a feeling …” The door opened suddenly with a clang, banging against the concrete wall. Eddie peered into darkness inside. Thorne saw a dense maze of pipes, a trickle of steam coming out of the floor. The room was extremely hot. There was a loud, constant whirring sound. Eddie said, “I’ll be damned.” He walked forward, looking at the gauges, many of which were unreadable, the glass thickly coated with yellow. The joints of the pipes were also rimmed with yellow crust. Eddie wiped away some of the crust with his finger. “Amazing,” he said. “Sulfur?” “Yeah, sulfur. Amazing.” He turned toward the source of the sound, saw a large circular vent, a turbine inside. The turbine blades, spinning rapidly, were dull yellow. “And that’s sulfur, too?” Thorne said. “No,” Eddie said. “That must be gold. Those turbine blades are gold alloy.” “Gold?” “Yeah. It would have to be very inert.” He turned to Thorne. “You realize what all this is? It’s incredible. So compact and efficient. Nobody has figured out how to do this. The technology is—” “You’re saying it’s geothermal?” Malcolm said. “That’s right,” Eddie said. “They’ve tapped a heat source here, probably gas or steam, which is piped up through the floor over there. Then the heat is used to boil water in a closed cycle—that’s the network of pipes up there—and turn the turbine—there—which makes electric power. Whatever the heat source, geothermal’s almost always corrosive as hell. Most places, maintenance is brutal. But this plant still works."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0033.txt", "text": "Amazing.” Along one wall was a main panel, which distributed power to the entire laboratory complex. The panel was flecked with mold, and dented in several spots. “Doesn’t look like anybody’s been in here in years,” he said. “And a lot of the power grid is dead. But the plant itself is still going—incredible.” Thorne coughed in the sulfurous air, and walked back into the sunlight. He looked up at the rear of the laboratory. One of the loading bays seemed in good shape, but the other had collapsed. The glass at the rear of the building was shattered. Malcolm came to stand beside him. “I wonder if an animal hit the building.” “You think an animal could do that much damage?” Malcolm nodded. “Some of these dinosaurs weigh forty, fifty tons. A single animal has the mass of a whole herd of elephants. That could easily be damage from an animal, yes. You notice that path, running there? That’s a game trail going past the loading bays, and down the hill. It could have been animals, yes.” Thorne said, “Didn’t they think of that when they released the animals in the first place?” “Oh, I’m sure they just planned to release them for a few weeks or months, then round them up when they were still juvenile. I doubt they ever thought they—” They were interrupted by a crackling electrical hiss, like static. It was coming from inside the Explorer. Behind them, Eddie hurried toward the car, with a worried look. “I knew it,” Eddie said. “Our communications module is frying. I knew we should have put in the other one.” He opened the door to the Explorer and climbed in the passenger side, picked up the handset, pressed the automatic tuner. Through the windshield, he saw Thorne and Malcolm coming back toward the car. And then the transmission locked. “—into the car!” said a scratchy voice. “Who is this?” “Dr. Thorne! Dr. Malcolm! Get in the car!” As Thorne arrived, Eddie said, “Doc. It’s that damn kid.” “What?” Thorne said. “It’s Arby.” Over the radio, Arby was saying, “Get in the car! I can see it coming!” “What’s he talking about?” Thorne said, frowning. “He’s not here, is he? Is he on this island?” The radio crackled. “Yes, I’m here! Dr. Thorne!” “But how the hell did he—” “Dr. Thorne! Get in the car!” Thorne turned purple with anger. He bunched his fists. “How did that little son of a bitch manage to do this?” He grabbed the handset from Eddie. “Arby, God damn it—” “It’s coming!” Eddie said, “What’s he talking about? He sounds completely hysterical.” “I can see it on the television! Dr. Thorne!” Malcolm looked around at the jungle. “Maybe we should get in the car,” he said quietly. “What does he mean, television?” Thorne said. He was furious. Eddie said, “I don’t know, Doc, but if he’s got a feed in the trailer, we can see it too.” He flicked on the dashboard monitor."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0033.txt", "text": "He watched as the screen glowed to life. “That damn kid,” Thorne said. “I’m going to wring his neck.” “I thought you liked that kid,” Malcolm said. “I do, but—” “Chaos at work,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. Eddie was looking at the monitor. “Oh shit,” he said. On the tiny dashboard monitor, they had a view looking straight down at the powerful body of a Tyrannosaurus rex, as it moved up the game trail toward them. Its skin was a mottled reddish brown, the color of dried blood. In dappled sunlight, they could clearly see the powerful muscles of its haunches. The animal moved quickly, without any sign of fear or hesitation. Staring, Thorne said, “Everybody in the car.” The men climbed hurriedly in. On the monitor, the tyrannosaur moved out of view of the camera. But, sitting in the Explorer, they could hear it coming. The earth was shaking beneath them, swaying the car slightly. Thorne said, “Ian? What do you think we should do?” Malcolm didn’t answer. He was frozen, staring forward, eyes blank. “Ian?” Thorne said. The radio clicked. Arby said, “Dr. Thorne, I’ve lost him on the monitor. Can you see him yet?” “Jesus,” Eddie said. With astonishing speed the Tyrannosaurus rex burst into view, emerging from the foliage to the right of the Explorer. The animal was immense, the size of a two-storey building, its head rising high above them, out of sight. Yet for such a large creature it moved with incredible speed and agility. Thorne stared in stunned silence, waiting to see what would happen. He felt the car vibrate with each thundering footstep. Eddie moaned softly. But the tyrannosaur ignored them. Continuing at the same rapid pace, it moved swiftly past the front of the Explorer. They hardly had a chance to see it before its big head and body disappeared into the foliage to the left. Now they saw only the thick counterbalancing tail, some seven feet in the air, swinging back and forth with each footstep as the animal moved on. So fast! Thorne thought. Fast! The giant animal had emerged, blocked their vision, and then was gone again. He was not accustomed to seeing something that big move so fast. Now there was only the tip of the tail swinging back and forth as the animal hurried away. Then the tail banged against the front of the Explorer, with a loud metallic clang. And the tyrannosaur stopped. They heard a low, uncertain growl from the jungle. The tail swung back and forth in the air again, more tentatively. Soon enough, the tail brushed lightly against the radiator a second time. Now they saw the foliage to the left rustling and bending, and the tail was gone. Because the tyrannosaur, Thorne realized, was coming back. Re-emerging from the jungle, it moved toward the car, until it was standing directly in front of them."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0033.txt", "text": "It growled again, a deep rumbling sound, and turned its head slightly from side to side to look at this strange new object. Then it bent over, and Thorne could see that the tyrannosaur had something in its mouth; he saw the legs of a creature dangling on both sides of the jaws. Flies buzzed in a thick cloud around the tyrannosaur’s head. Eddie moaned. “Oh, fuck.” “Quiet,” Thorne whispered. The tyrannosaurus snorted, and looked at the car. It bent lower, and sniffed repeatedly, moving its head slightly to the left and right with each inhalation. Thorne realized it was smelling the radiator. It moved laterally, and sniffed the tires. Then it lifted its huge head slowly, until its eyes rose above the surface of the hood. It stared at them through the windshield. Its eyes blinked. The gaze was cold and reptilian. Thorne had the distinct impression that the tyrannosaur was looking at them: its eyes shifted from one person to the next. With its blunt nose, it pushed at the side of the car, rocking it slightly, as if testing its weight, measuring it as an opponent. Thorne gripped the steering wheel tightly and held his breath. And then, abruptly, the tyrannosaur stepped away, and walked to the front of the car. It turned its back on them, lifting its big tail high. The tyrannosaur backed up toward them. They heard the tail scraping across the roof of the car. The rear haunches came closer … And then the tyrannosaur sat down on the hood, tilting the vehicle, pushing the bumper into the ground with its enormous weight. At first, it did not move, but simply sat there. Then, after a moment, it began to wriggle its hips back and forth in a quick motion, making the metal squeak. “What the hell?” Eddie said. The tyrannosaur stood again, the car sprang back up, and Thorne saw thick white paste smeared across the hood. The tyrannosaur immediately moved away, heading down the game trail, disappearing into the jungle. Behind them, they saw it emerge into the open again, stalk across the open compound. It lumbered behind the convenience store, passed between two of the cottages, and then disappeared from sight again. Thorne glanced at Eddie, who jerked his head toward Malcolm. Malcolm had not turned to watch the departing tyrannosaur. He was still staring forward, his body tense. “Ian?” Thorne said. He touched him on the shoulder. Malcolm said, “Is he gone?” “Yes. He’s gone.” Ian Malcolm’s body relaxed, his shoulders dropping. He exhaled slowly. His head sagged to his chest. He took a deep breath, and raised his head again. “You’ve got to admit,” he said. “You don’t see that every day.” “Are you okay?” Thorne said. “Yeah, sure. I’m fine.” He put his hand on his chest, feeling his heart. “Of course I’m fine. After all, that was just a small one.” “Small?” Eddie said. “You call that thing small—” “Yes, for a tyrannosaur."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0033.txt", "text": "Females are quite a bit larger. There’s sexual dimorphism in tyrannosaurs—the females are bigger than the males. And it’s generally thought they did most of the hunting. But we may find that out for ourselves.” “Wait a minute,” Eddie said. “What makes you so sure he was a male?” Malcolm pointed to the hood of the car, where the white paste now gave off a pungent odor. “He scent-marked territory.” “So? Maybe females can also mark—” “Very likely they can,” Malcolm said. “But anal scent glands are found only among males. And you saw how he did it.” Eddie stared unhappily at the hood. “I hope we can get that stuff off,” he said. “I brought some solvents, but I wasn’t expecting, you know … dino musk.” The radio clicked. “Dr. Thorne,” Arby said. “Dr. Thorne? Is everything all right?” “Yes, Arby. Thanks to you,” he said. “Then why are you waiting? Dr. Thorne? Didn’t you see Dr. Levine?” “Not yet, no.” Thorne reached for his sensor unit, but it had fallen to the floor. He bent over, and picked it up. Levine’s coordinates had changed. “He’s moving.…” “I know he’s moving. Dr. Thorne?” “Yes, Arby,” Thorne said. And then he said, “Wait a minute. How do you know he’s moving?” “Because I can see him,” Arby said. “He’s riding a bicycle.” Kelly came into the front of the trailer, yawning and pushing her hair back from her face. “Who’re you talking to, Arb?” She stared at the monitor and said, “Hey, pretty neat.” “I got onto the Site B network,” he said. “What network?” “It’s a radio LAN, Kel. For some reason it’s still up.” “Is that right? But how did—” “Kids,” Thorne said, over the radio. “If you don’t mind. We’re looking for Levine.” Arby picked up the handset. “He’s riding a bicycle down a path in the jungle. It’s pretty steep and narrow. I think he’s following the same path as the tyrannosaur.” Kelly said, “As the what?” * * * Thorne put the car in gear, driving away from the power station, toward the worker compound. He went past the gas station, and then between the cottages. He followed the same path the tyrannosaur had taken. The game trail was fairly wide, easy to follow. “We shouldn’t have those kids here,” Malcolm said, gloomily. “It’s not safe.” “Not much we can do about it now,” Thorne said. He clicked the radio. “Arby, do you see Levine now?” The car bounced through what had once been a flower bed, and around the back of the Manager’s Residence. It was a large two-storey building built in a tropical colonial style, with hardwood balconies all around the upper floor. Like the other houses, it was overgrown. The radio clicked. “Yes, Dr. Thorne. I see him.” “Where is he?” “He’s following the tyrannosaur. On his bicycle.” “Following the tyrannosaur.” Malcolm sighed. “I should never have gotten involved with him.” “We all agree on that,” Thorne said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Section0033.txt", "text": "He accelerated, driving past a section of broken stone wall which seemed to mark the outer perimeter of the compound. The car plunged on into jungle, following the game trail. Over the radio, Arby said, “Do you see him yet?” “Not yet.” The trail became progressively narrower, twisting as it ran down the hillside. They came around a curve, and suddenly saw a fallen tree blocking the path. The tree had been denuded in the center, its branches stripped and broken—presumably because large animals had repeatedly stepped over it. Thorne braked to a stop in front of the tree. He got out, and walked around to the back of the Explorer. “Doc,” Eddie said. “Let me do it.” “No,” Thorne said. “If anything happens, you’re the only one who can repair the equipment. You’re more important, especially now that we have the kids.” Standing behind the car, Thorne lifted the motorcycle off the carrier hooks. He swung it down, checked the battery charge, and rolled it to the front of the car. He said to Malcolm, “Give me that rifle,” and slung the rifle around his shoulder. Thorne took a headset from the dashboard, and put it over his head. He clipped the battery pack to his belt, placed the microphone alongside his cheek. “You two go back to the trailer,” Thorne said. “Take care of the kids.” “But Doc …” Eddie began. “Just do it,” Thorne said, and lifted the motorcycle over the fallen tree. He set it down on the other side, and climbed over himself. Then he saw the same pungent, pale secretions on the trunk; it had smeared on his hands. He glanced back at Malcolm, questioningly. “Marking territory,” Malcolm said. “Great,” Thorne said. “Just great.” He wiped his hands on his trousers. Then he got on the motorcycle, and drove off. Foliage slapped at Thorne’s shoulders and legs as he drove down the game trail, following the tyrannosaur. The animal was somewhere up ahead, but he couldn’t see it. He was driving fast. The radio headset crackled. Arby said, “Dr. Thorne? I can see you now.” “Okay,” Thorne said. It crackled again. “But I can’t see Dr. Levine any more,” Arby said. He sounded worried. The electric motorcycle made hardly any noise, particularly going downhill. Up ahead, the game trail divided in two. Thorne stopped, leaned over the bike, looking at the muddy path. He saw the footprints of the tyrannosaur, going off to the left. And he saw the thin line of the bicycle tires. Also going off to the left. He took the left fork, but now he drove more slowly. Ten yards ahead, Thorne passed the partially eaten leg of a creature, which lay at the side of the path. The leg was old; it was crawling with white maggots and flies. In the morning heat, the sharp smell was nauseating."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Section0033.txt", "text": "He continued, but soon saw the skull of a large animal, some of the flesh and green skin still adhering to the bone. It, too, was covered with flies. Speaking into the microphone, he said, “I’m passing some partial carcasses.…” The radio crackled. Now he heard Malcolm say, “I was afraid of that.” “Afraid of what?” “There may be a nest,” Malcolm said. “Did you notice the carcass that the tyrannosaur had in his jaws? It was scavenged, but he hadn’t eaten it. There’s a good chance he was taking the food home, to a nest.” “A tyrannosaur nest …” Thorne said. “I’d be cautious,” Malcolm said. Thorne slipped the bike into neutral, and rolled the rest of the way down the hill. When the ground leveled out, he climbed off the motorcycle. He could feel the earth vibrate beneath his feet, and from the bushes ahead, he heard a deep rumbling sound, like the purr of a large jungle cat. Thorne looked around. He didn’t see any sign of Levine’s bicycle. Thorne unshouldered the rifle, and gripped it in sweating hands. He heard the purring growl again, rising and falling. There was something odd about the sound. It took Thorne a moment to realize what it was. It came from more than one source: more than one big animal, purring beyond the foliage directly ahead. Thorne bent over, picked up a handful of grass, and released it in the air. The grass blew back toward his legs: he was downwind. He slipped forward through the foliage. The ferns around him were huge and dense, but up ahead he could see sunlight shining through, from a clearing beyond. The sound of purring was very loud now. There was another sound as well—an odd, squeaking sound. It was high-pitched, and at first sounded almost mechanical, like a squeaking wheel. Thorne hesitated. Then, very slowly, he lowered a frond. And he stared."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0034.txt", "text": "Nest In the midmorning light, two enormous tyrannosaurs—each twenty feet high—loomed above him. Their reddish skin had a leathery appearance. Their huge heads were fierce-looking, with heavy jaws and large sharp teeth. But somehow here the animals conveyed no sense of menace to Thorne. They moved slowly, almost gently, bending repeatedly over a large circular rampart of dried mud, nearly four feet high. The two adults held bits of red flesh in their jaws as they ducked their heads below the mud wall. This movement was greeted by a frantic high-pitched squeaking sound, which stopped almost immediately. Then, when the adults lifted their heads again, the flesh was gone. There was no question: this was the nest. And Malcolm had been right: one tyrannosaur was noticeably larger than the other. In a few moments, the squeaking resumed. It sounded to Thorne like baby birds. The adults continued to duck their heads, feeding the unseen babies. A bit of torn flesh landed on the top of the mud mound. As he watched, Thorne saw an infant tyrannosaur rise into view above the rampart, and start to scramble over the side. The infant was about the size of a turkey, with a large head and very large eyes. Its body was covered with a fluffy red down, which gave it a scraggly appearance. A ring of pale-white down circled its neck. The infant squeaked repeatedly and it crawled awkwardly toward the meat, using its weak forearms. But when it finally reached the carrion, it jabbed, biting the flesh decisively with tiny, sharp teeth. It was busily eating the food when it screeched in alarm and started to slide down the outer wall of dried mud. Immediately, the mother tyrannosaur dropped her head and intercepted the baby’s fall, then gently nudged the animal back inside the nest. Thorne was impressed by the delicacy of her movements, the attentive way she cared for her young. The father, meanwhile, continued to tear small pieces of meat. Both animals kept up a continuous purring growl, as if to reassure the infants. As Thorne watched, he shifted his position. His foot stepped on a branch: there was a sharp crack. Immediately, both adults jerked their heads up. Thorne froze; he held his breath. The tyrannosaurs scanned the area around the nest, looking intently in every direction. Their bodies were tense, their heads alert. Their eyes flicked back and forth, accompanied by little head jerks. After a moment, they seemed to relax again. They bobbed their heads up and down, and rubbed their snouts against each other. It seemed to be some kind of ritual movement, almost a dance. Only then did they resume feeding the infants. When they had calmed down, Thorne slipped away, moving quietly back to the motorcycle. Arby whispered over the headset, “Dr. Thorne. I can’t see you.” Thorne didn’t answer. He tapped the microphone with his finger, to signal that he had heard. Arby whispered, “I think I know where Dr. Levine is."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0034.txt", "text": "He’s off to your left.” Thorne tapped the mike again, and turned. To his left, among ferns, he saw a rusted bicycle. It said “Prop. InGen Corp.” It was leaning against a tree. * * * Not bad, Arby thought, sitting in the trailer and watching the remote videos as he clicked on them. He now had the monitor divided into quarters; it was a good compromise between lots of views, and images large enough to see. One of the views looked down from above on the two tyrannosaurs in the secluded clearing. It was midmorning; the sun shone brightly on the muddy, trampled grass of the clearing. In the center he saw a round steep-walled nest of mud. Inside the nest were four mottled white eggs, about the size of footballs. There were also some broken egg fragments, and two baby tyrannosaurs, looking exactly like featherless, squeaking birds. They sat in the nest with their heads turned up like baby birds, mouths gaping wide, waiting to be fed. Kelly watched the screen and said, “Look how cute they are.” And then she added, “We should be out there.” Arby didn’t answer her. He was not at all sure he wanted to be any closer. The adults were being very cool about it, but Arby found the idea of these dinosaurs very unnerving in some deep way that he couldn’t analyze. Arby had always found it reassuring to organize, to create order in his life—even arranging the images neatly on the computer monitor was calming to him. But this island was a place where everything was unknown and unexpected. Where you didn’t know what would happen. He found that troubling. On the other hand, Kelly was excited. She kept making comments about the tyrannosaurs, how big they were, the size of their teeth. She seemed entirely enthusiastic, without any fear at all. Arby felt annoyed with her. “Anyway,” she said, “what makes you think you know where Dr. Levine is?” Arby pointed to the image of the nest, on the monitor. “Watch.” “I see it.” “No. Watch, Kel.” As they stared at the screen, the image moved slightly. It panned to the left, then centered again. “See that?” Arby said. “So what? Maybe the wind is blowing the camera or something.” Arby shook his head. “No, Kel. He’s up in the tree. Levine’s moving the camera.” “Oh.” A pause. She watched again. “You might be right.” Arby grinned. That was about all he could expect to get from Kelly. “Yeah, I think so.” “But what’s Dr. Levine doing in the tree?” “Maybe he’s adjusting the camera.” They listened to Thorne’s breathing over the radio. Kelly stared at the four video images, each showing a different view of the island. She sighed. “I can’t wait to get out there,” she said. “Yeah, me too,” Arby said. But he didn’t mean it. He glanced out the window of the trailer and saw the Explorer coming back, with Eddie and Malcolm."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0034.txt", "text": "Secretly, he was glad to see them return. Thorne stood at the base of the tree, looking up. He couldn’t see Levine through the leaves, but he knew he must be somewhere up above, because he was making what seemed to Thorne like a lot of noise. Thorne glanced nervously back at the clearing, screened by intervening foliage. He could still hear the purring; it remained steady, uninterrupted. Thorne waited. What the hell was Levine doing up in a tree, anyway? He heard rustling in the branches above, and then silence. A grunt. Then more rustling. And then Levine said aloud, “Oh, shit!” Then a loud crashing sound, the crack of branches, and a howl of pain. And then Levine crashed down on the ground in front of Thorne, landing hard on his back. He rolled over, clutching his shoulder. “Damn!” he said. Levine wore muddy khakis that were torn in several places. Behind a three-day growth of beard, his face was haggard and spattered with mud. He looked up as Thorne moved toward him, and grinned. “You’re the last person I expected to see, Doc,” Levine said. “But your timing is flawless.” Thorne extended his hand, and Levine started to reach for it, when, from the clearing behind them, the tyrannosaurs gave a deafening roar. “Oh, no!” Kelly said. On the monitor, the tyrannosaurs were agitated, moving swiftly in circles, raising their heads and bellowing. “Dr. Thorne! What’s happening?” Arby said. They heard Levine’s voice, tinny and scratchy on the radio, but they couldn’t make out the words. Eddie and Malcolm came into the trailer. Malcolm took one look at the monitor and said, “Tell them to get out of there right now!” On the monitor, the two tyrannosaurs had turned their backs to each other, so they were facing outward in a posture of defense. The babies were protected in the center. The adults swung their heavy tails back and forth over the nest, above the babies’ heads. But the tension was palpable. And then one of the adults bellowed, and charged out of the clearing. “Dr. Thorne! Dr. Levine! Get out of there!” Thorne swung his leg over the bike and gripped the rubber handles. Levine jumped on behind, clutched him around the waist. Thorne heard a chilling roar, and looked back to see one of the tyrannosaurs crash through the foliage and charge them. The animal was running at full speed—head low, jaws open, in an unmistakable posture of attack. Thorne twisted the throttle. The electric motor whirred, the back wheel spun in the mud, not moving. “Go!” Levine shouted. “Go!” The tyrannosaur rushed toward them, roaring. Thorne could feel the ground shake. The roar was so loud it hurt his ears. The tyrannosaur was nearly on them, the big head lunging forward, jaws wide open— Thorne kicked back with his heels, pushing the bike forward. Suddenly the rear wheel caught, throwing up a plume of mud, and the bike roared up the muddy track."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0034.txt", "text": "He accelerated fast. The motorcycle fished and swerved treacherously on the trail. Behind him Levine was shouting something, but Thorne didn’t listen. His heart was pounding. The bike jumped across a rut in the path and they almost lost their balance, then regained it, accelerating again. Thorne did not dare look back. He could smell the odor of rotten flesh, could hear the rasping breath of the giant animal in pursuit.… “Doc! Take it easy!” Levine shouted. Thorne ignored him. The bike roared up the hill. The foliage slapped at them; mud spit up on their faces and chests. He was pulled over into a rut, then brought the bike back to the center of the trail. He heard another roar, and imagined it was a bit fainter, but— “Doc!” Levine shouted, leaning close to his ear. “What’re you trying to do, kill us? Doc! We’re alone!” Thorne came to a flat part of the path, and risked a glance back over his shoulder. Levine was right. They were alone. He saw no sign of the pursuing tyrannosaur, though he still heard it roaring, somewhere in the distance. He slowed the bike. “Take it easy,” Levine said, shaking his head. His face was ashen, frightened. “You’re a terrible driver, do you know that? You ought to take some lessons. You almost got us killed there.” “He was attacking us,” Thorne said angrily. He was familiar with Levine’s critical manner, but right now— “That’s absurd,” Levine said. “He wasn’t attacking at all.” “It sure as hell looked like it,” Thorne said. “No, no, no,” Levine said. “He wasn’t attacking us. The rex was defending his nest. There’s a big difference.” “I didn’t see any difference,” Thorne said. He pulled the bike to a stop, and glared at Levine. “In point of fact,” Levine said, “if the rex had decided to chase you, we’d be dead right now. But he stopped almost immediately.” “He did?” Thorne said. “There’s no question about it,” Levine said, in his pedantic manner. “The rex only intended to scare us off, and defend his territory. He’d never leave the nest unguarded, unless we took something, or disrupted the nest. I’m sure he’s back there with his mate right now, hovering over the eggs, not going anywhere.” “Then I guess we’re lucky he’s a good parent,” Thorne said, gunning the motor. “Of course he’s a good parent,” Levine continued. “Any fool could tell that. Didn’t you see how thin he was? He’s been neglecting his own nourishment to feed his offspring. Probably been doing it for weeks. A Tyrannosaurus rex is a complex animal, with complex hunting behavior. And he has complex childrearing behavior as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if adult tyrannosaurs have an extended parenting role that lasts for months. He may teach his offspring to hunt, for example. Start by bringing in small wounded animals, and letting the youngsters finish them off. That kind of thing."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0034.txt", "text": "It’ll be interesting to find out exactly what he does. Why are we waiting here?” Through Thorne’s earpiece, the radio crackled. Malcolm said, “It would never occur to him to thank you for saving his life.” Thorne grunted. “Evidently not,” he said. Levine said, “Who are you talking to? Is it Malcolm? Is he here?” “Yes,” Thorne said. “He’s agreeing with me, isn’t he,” Levine said. “Not exactly,” Thorne said, shaking his head. “Look, Doc,” Levine said, “I’m sorry if you got upset. But there was no reason for it. The truth is, we were never in danger—except from your bad driving.” “Fine. That’s fine.” Thorne’s heart was still pounding in his chest. He took a deep breath, swung the bike to the left, and headed down a wider path, back toward their camp. Sitting behind him, Levine said, “I’m very glad to see you, Doc. I really am.” Thorne didn’t answer. He followed the path downward, through foliage. They descended to the valley, picking up speed. Soon they saw the trailers in the clearing below. Levine said, “Good. You brought everything. And the equipment’s working? Everything in good condition?” “It all seems to be fine.” “Perfect,” Levine said. “Then this is just perfect.” “Maybe not,” Thorne said. Through the back window of the trailer, Kelly and Arby were waving cheerfully through the glass. “You’re kidding,” Levine said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0036.txt", "text": "Levine They came running across the clearing, shouting, “Dr. Levine! Dr. Levine! You’re safe!” They hugged Levine, who smiled despite himself. He turned to Thorne. “Doc,” Levine said. “This was very unwise.” “Why don’t you explain that to them?” Thorne said. “They’re your students.” Kelly said, “Don’t be mad, Dr. Levine.” “It was our decision,” Arby explained to Levine. “We came on our own.” “On your own?” Levine said. “We thought you’d need help,” Arby said. “And you did.” He turned to Thorne. Thorne nodded. “Yes. They’ve helped us.” “And we promise, we won’t get in the way,” Kelly said. “You go ahead and do whatever you have to do, and we will just—” “The kids were worried about you,” Malcolm said, coming up to Levine. “Because they thought you were in trouble.” “Anyway, what’s the big rush?” Eddie said. “I mean, you build all these vehicles, and then you leave without them—” “I had no choice,” Levine said. “The government has an outbreak of some new encephalitis on its hands. They’ve decided it’s related to the occasional dinosaur carcass that washes up there. Of course, the whole idea is idiotic, but that won’t stop them from destroying every animal on this island the minute they find out about it. I had to get here first. Time is short.” “So you came here alone,” Malcolm said. “Nonsense, Ian. Stop pouting. I was going to call you, as soon as I verified this was the island. And I didn’t come here alone. I had a guide named Diego, a local man who swore he had been on this island as a kid, years before. And he seemed entirely knowledgeable. He led me up the cliff without any problem. And everything was going just fine, until we were attacked at the stream, and Diego—” “Attacked?” Malcolm said. “By what?” “I didn’t really see what it was,” Levine said. “It happened extremely fast. The animal knocked me down, and tore the backpack, and I don’t really know what happened after that. Possibly the shape of my pack confused it, because I got up and started running again, and it didn’t chase me.” Malcolm was staring at him. “You were damn lucky, Richard.” “Yes, well, I ran for a long time. When I looked back, I was alone in the jungle. And lost. I didn’t know what to do, so I climbed a tree. That seemed like a good idea—and then, around nightfall, the velociraptors showed up.” “Velociraptors?” Arby said. “Small carnivores,” Levine said. “Basic theropod body shape, long snout, binocular vision. Roughly two meters tall, weighing perhaps ninety kilos. Very fast, intelligent, nasty little dinosaurs, and they travel in packs. And last night there were eight of them, jumping all around my tree, trying to get to me. All night long, jumping and snarling, jumping and snarling … I didn’t get any sleep at all.” “Aw, that’s a shame,” Eddie said. “Look,” Levine said crossly."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0036.txt", "text": "“It’s not my problem if—” Thorne said, “You spent the night in the tree?” “Yes, and in the morning the raptors had gone. So I came down and started looking around. I found the lab, or whatever it is. Clearly, they abandoned it in a hurry, leaving some animals behind. I went through the building, and discovered that there is still power—some systems are still going, all these years later. And, most important, there is a network of security cameras. That’s a very lucky break. So I decided to check on those cameras, and I was hard at work when you people barged in—” “Wait a minute,” Eddie said. “We came here to rescue you.” “I don’t know why,” Levine said. “I certainly never asked you to.” Thorne said, “It sounded like you did, over the phone.” “That is a misunderstanding,” Levine said. “I was momentarily upset, because I couldn’t work the phone. You’ve made that phone too complicated, Doc. That’s the problem. So: shall we get started?” Levine paused. He looked at the angry faces all around him. Malcolm turned to Thorne. “A great scientist,” he said, “and a great human being.” “Look,” Levine said, “I don’t know what your problem is. The expedition was going to come to this island sooner or later. In this instance, sooner is better. Everything has turned out quite well, and, frankly, I don’t see any reason to discuss it further. This is not the time for petty bickering. We have important things to do—and I think we should get started. Because this island is an extraordinary opportunity, and it isn’t going to last forever.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0037.txt", "text": "Dodgson Lewis Dodgson sat hunched in a dark corner of the Chesperito Cantina in Puerto Cortés, nursing a beer. Beside him, George Baselton, the Regis Professor of Biology at Stanford, was enthusiastically devouring a plate of huevos rancheros. The egg yolks ran yellow across green salsa. It made Dodgson sick just to look at it. He turned away, but he could still hear Baselton licking his lips, noisily. There was no one else in the bar, except for some chickens clucking around the floor. Every so often, a young boy would come to the door, throw a handful of rocks at the chickens, and run away again, giggling. A scratchy stereo played an old Elvis Presley tape through corroded speakers above the bar. Dodgson hummed “Falling in Love With You,” and tried to control his temper. He had been sitting in this dump for damn near an hour. Baselton finished his eggs, and pushed the plate away. He brought out the small notebook he carried everywhere with him. “Now Lew,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about how to handle this.” “Handle what?” Dodgson said irritably. “There’s nothing to handle, unless we can get to that island.” While he spoke, he tapped a small photograph of Richard Levine on the edge of the bar table. Turned it over. Looked at the image upside down. Then right side up. He sighed. He looked at his watch. “Lew,” Baselton said patiently, “getting to the island is not the important part. The important part is how we present our discovery to the world.” Dodgson paused. “Our discovery,” he repeated. “I like that, George. That’s very good. Our discovery.” “Well, that’s the truth, isn’t it?” Baselton said, with a bland smile. “InGen is bankrupt, its technology lost to mankind. A tragic, tragic loss, as I have said many times on television. But under the circumstances, anyone who finds it again has made a discovery. I don’t know what else you would call it. As Henri Poincaré put it—” “Okay,” Dodgson said. “So we make a discovery. And then what? Hold a press conference?” “Absolutely not,” Baselton said, looking horrified. “A press conference would appear extremely crass. It would open us up to all sorts of criticism. No, no. A discovery of this magnitude must be treated with decorum. It must be reported, Lew.” “Reported?” “In the literature: Nature, I imagine. Yes.” Dodgson squinted. “You want to announce this in an academic publication?” “What better way to make it legitimate?” Baselton said. “It’s entirely proper to present our findings to our scholarly peers. Of course it will start a debate—but what will that debate consist of? An academic squabble, professors sniping at professors, which will fill the science pages of the newspapers for three days, until it is pushed aside by the latest news on breast implants. And in those three days, we will have staked our claim.” “You’ll write it?” “Yes,” Baselton said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0037.txt", "text": "“And later, I think, an article in American Scholar, or perhaps Natural History. A human-interest piece, what this discovery means for the future, what it tells us about the past, all that.…” Dodgson nodded. He could see that Baselton was correct, and he was reminded once again how much he needed him, and how wise he had been to add him to the team. Dodgson never thought about public reaction. And Baselton thought about nothing else. “Well, that’s fine,” Dodgson said. “But none of it matters, unless we get to that island.” He glanced at his watch again. He heard a door open behind him, and Dodgson’s assistant Howard King came in, pulling a heavyset Costa Rican man, with a mustache. The man had a weathered face and a sullen expression. Dodgson turned on his stool. “Is this the guy?” “Yes, Lew.” “What’s his name?” “Gandoca.” “Señor Gandoca.” Dodgson held up the photo of Levine. “You know this man?” Gandoca hardly glanced at the photo. He nodded. “Sí. Señor Levine.” “That’s right. Señor fucking Levine. When was he here?” “A few days ago. He left with Dieguito, my cousin. They are not back yet.” “And where did they go?” Dodgson asked. “Isla Sorna.” “Good.” Dodgson drained his beer, pushed the bottle away. “You have a boat?” He turned to King. “Does he have a boat?” King said, “He’s a fisherman. He has a boat.” Gandoca nodded. “A fishing boat. Sí.” “Good. I want to go to Isla Sorna, too.” “Sí, señor, but today the weather—” “I don’t care about the weather,” Dodgson said. “The weather will get better. I want to go now.” “Perhaps later—” “Now.” Gandoca spread his hands. “I am very sorry, señor—” Dodgson said, “Show him the money, Howard.” King opened a briefcase. It was filled with five thousand colon notes. Gandoca looked, picked up one of the bills, inspected it. He put it back carefully, shifted on his feet a little. Dodgson said, “I want to go now.” “Sí, señor,” Gandoca said. “We leave when you are ready.” “That’s more like it,” Dodgson said. “How long to get to the island?” “Perhaps two hours, señor.” “Fine,” Dodgson said. “That’ll be fine.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0038.txt", "text": "The High Hide “Here we go!” There was a click as Levine connected the flexible cable to the Explorer’s power winch, and flicked it on. The cable turned slowly in the sunlight. They had all moved down onto the broad grassy plain at the base of the cliff. The midday sun was high overhead, glaring off the rocky rim of the island. Below, the valley shimmered in midday heat. There was a herd of hypsilophodons a short distance away; the green gazelle-like animals raised their heads occasionally above the grass to look toward them, every time they heard the clink of metal, as Eddie and the kids laid out the aluminum strut assembly which had been the subject of so much speculation back in California. That assembly now looked like a jumble of thin struts—an oversized version of pickup sticks—lying in the grass of the plain. “Now we will see,” Levine said, rubbing his hands together. As the motor turned, the aluminum struts began to move, and slowly lifted into the air. The emerging structure appeared spidery and delicate, but Thorne knew that the cross-bracing would give it surprising strength. Struts unfolding, the structure rose ten feet, then fifteen feet, and finally it stopped. The little house at the top was now just beneath the lowest branches of the nearby trees, which almost concealed it from view. But the scaffolding itself gleamed bright and shiny in the sun. “Is that it?” Arby said. “That’s it, yes.” Thorne walked around the four sides, slipping in the locking pins, to hold it upright. “But it’s much too shiny,” Levine said. “We should have made it matte black.” Thorne said, “Eddie, we need to hide this.” “Want to spray it, Doc? I think I brought some black paint.” Levine shook his head. “No, then it’ll smell. How about those palms?” “Sure, we can do that.” Eddie walked to a stand of nearby palms, and began to hack away big fronds with his machete. Kelly stared up at the aluminum strut assembly. “It’s great,” she said. “But what is it?” “It’s a high hide,” Levine said. “Come on.” And he began to climb the scaffolding. * * * The structure at the top was a little house, its roof supported by aluminum bars spaced four feet apart. The floor of the house was also made of aluminum bars, but these were closer together, about six inches apart. Their feet threatened to slip through, so Levine took the first of the bundles of fronds that Eddie Carr was raising on a rope, and used them to make a more complete floor. The remaining fronds he tied to the outside of the house, concealing its structure. Arby and Kelly stared out at the animals. From their vantage point, they could look across the whole valley. There was a distant herd of apatosaurs, on the other side of the river. A cluster of triceratops browsed to the north."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0038.txt", "text": "Nearer the water, some duck-billed dinosaurs with long crests rising above their heads moved forward to drink. A low, trumpeting cry from the duckbills floated across the valley toward them: a deep, unearthly sound. A moment later, there was an answering cry, from the forest at the opposite side of the valley. “What was that?” Kelly said. “Parasaurolophus,” Levine said. “It’s trumpeting through its nuchal crest. Low-frequency sound carries a long distance.” To the south, there was a herd of dark-green animals, with large curved protruding foreheads, and a rim of small knobby horns. They looked a little like buffalo. “What do you call those?” Kelly said. “Good question,” Levine said. “They are most likely Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis. But it’s difficult to say for sure, because a full skeleton for these animals has never been recovered. Their foreheads are very thick bone, so we’ve found many domed cranial fragments. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen the whole animal.” “And those heads? What are they for?” Arby said. “Nobody knows,” Levine said. “Everyone has assumed they’re used for butting, for intraspecies fighting among males. Competition for females, that sort of thing.” Malcolm climbed up into the hide. “Yes, butting heads,” he said sourly. “Just as you see them now.” “All right,” Levine said, “so they’re not butting heads at the moment. Perhaps their breeding season is concluded.” “Or perhaps they don’t do it at all,” Malcolm said, staring at the green animals. “They look pretty peaceful to me.” “Yes,” Levine said, “but of course that doesn’t mean a thing. African buffalo appear peaceful most of the time, too—in fact, they usually just stand motionless. Yet they’re unpredictable and dangerous animals. We have to presume those domes exist for a reason—even if we’re not seeing it now”. Levine turned to the kids. “That’s why we made this structure. We want to make round-the-clock observations on the animals,” he said. “To the extent possible, we want a full record of their activities”. “Why?” Arby said. “Because,” Malcolm said, “this island presents a unique opportunity to study the greatest mystery in the history of our planet: extinction.” “You see,” Malcolm said, “when InGen shut down their facility, they did it hastily, and they left some live animals behind. That was five or six years ago. Dinosaurs mature rapidly; most species attain adulthood in four or five years. By now, the first generation of InGen dinosaurs—bred in a laboratory—has attained maturity, and has begun to breed a new generation, entirely in the wild. There is now a complete ecological system on this island, with a dozen or so dinosaur species living in social groups, for the first time in sixty-five million years.” Arby said, “So why is that an opportunity?” Malcolm pointed across the plain. “Well, think about it. Extinction is a very difficult research topic. There are dozens of competing theories. The fossil record is incomplete. And you can’t perform experiments."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0038.txt", "text": "Galileo could climb the tower of Pisa and drop balls to test his theory of gravity. He never actually did it, but he could have. Newton used prisms to test his theory of light. Astronomers observed eclipses to test Einstein’s theory of relativity. Testing occurs throughout science. But how can you test a theory of extinction? You can’t.” Arby said, “But here …” “Yes,” Malcolm said. “What we have here is a population of extinct animals artificially introduced into a closed environment, and allowed to evolve all over again. There’s never been anything like it in all history. We already know these animals became extinct once. But nobody knows why.” “And you expect to find out? In a few days?” “Yes,” Malcolm said. “We do.” “How? You don’t expect them to become extinct again, do you?” “You mean, right before our eyes?” Malcolm laughed. “No, no. Nothing like that. But the point is, for the first time we aren’t just studying bones. We’re seeing five animals, and observing their behavior. I have a theory, and I think that even in a short time, we will see evidence for that theory.” “What evidence?” Kelly said. “What theory?” Arby said. Malcolm smiled at them. “Wait,” he said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0039.txt", "text": "The Red Queen The apatosaurs had come down to the river in the heat of the day; their graceful curving necks were reflected in the water as they bent to drink. Their long, whip-like tails swung back and forth lazily. Several younger apatosaurs, much smaller than the adults, scampered about in the center of the herd. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Levine said. “The way it all fits together. Just beautiful.” He leaned over the side and shouted to Thorne, “Where’s my mount?” “Coming up,” Thorne said. The rope now brought up a heavy wide-based tripod, and a circular mount on top. There were five video cameras atop the mount, and dangling wires leading to solar panels. Levine and Malcolm began to set it up. “What happens to the video?” Arby said. “The data gets multiplexed, and we uplink it back to California. By satellite. We’ll also hook into the security network. So we’ll have lots of observation points.” “And we don’t have to be here?” “Right.” “And this is what you call a high hide?” “Yes. At least, that’s what scientists like Sarah Harding call it.” Thorne climbed up to join them. The little shelter was now quite crowded, but Levine didn’t seem to notice. He was entirely focused on the dinosaurs; he turned a pair of binoculars on the animals spread across the plain. “Just as we thought,” he said to Malcolm. “Spatial organization. Infants and juveniles in the center of the herd, protective adults on the periphery. The apatosaurs use their tails as defense.” “That’s the way it looks.” “Oh, there’s no question about it,” Levine said. He sighed. “It’s so agreeable to be proven right.” On the ground below, Eddie unpacked the circular aluminum cage, the same one they had seen in California. It was six feet tall and four feet in diameter, constructed of one-inch titanium bars. “What do you want me to do with this?” Eddie said. “Leave it down there,” Levine said. “That’s where it belongs.” Eddie set the cage upright in the corner of the scaffolding. Levine climbed down. “And what’s that for?” Arby said, looking down. “Catching a dinosaur?” “In point of fact, just the opposite.” Levine clipped the cage to the side of the scaffolding. He swung the door open and shut, testing it. There was a lock in the door. He checked the lock, too, leaving the key in place, with its dangling elastic loop. “It’s a predator cage, like a shark cage,” Levine said. “If you’re down here walking around and anything happens, you can climb in here, and you’ll be safe.” “In case what happens?” Arby said, with a worried look. “Actually, I don’t think anything will happen,” Levine said, climbing back up."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0039.txt", "text": "“Because I doubt the animals will pay any attention to us, or to this little house, once the structure’s been concealed.” “You mean they won’t see it?” “Oh, they’ll see it,” Levine said, “but they’ll ignore it.” “But if they smell us …” Levine shook his head. “We sited the hide so the prevailing wind is toward us. And you may have noticed these ferns have a distinct smell.” It was a mild, slightly tangy odor, almost like eucalyptus. Arby fretted. “But suppose they decide to eat the ferns?” “They won’t,” Levine said. “These are Dicranopterus cyatheoides. They’re mildly toxic and cause a rash in the mouth. In point of fact, there’s a theory that their toxicity first evolved back in the Jurassic, as a defense against dinosaur browsers.” “That’s not a theory,” Malcolm said. “It’s just idle speculation.” “There’s some logic behind it,” Levine said. “Plant life in the Mesozoic must have been severely challenged by the arrival of very large dinosaurs. Herds of giant herbivores, each animal consuming hundreds of pounds of plant matter each day, would have wiped out any plants that didn’t evolve some defense—a bad taste, or nettles, or thorns, or chemical toxicity. So perhaps cyatheoides evolved its toxicity back then. And it’s very effective, because contemporary animals don’t eat these ferns, anywhere on earth. That’s why they’re so abundant. You may have noticed.” “Plants have defenses?” Kelly said. “Of course they do. Plants evolve like every other form of life, and they’ve come up with their own forms of aggression, defense, and so on. In the nineteenth century, most theories concerned animals—nature red in tooth and claw, all that. But now scientists are thinking about nature green in root and stem. We realize that plants, in their ceaseless struggle to survive, have evolved everything from complex symbiosis with other animals, to signaling mechanisms to warn other plants, to outright chemical warfare.” Kelly frowned. “Signaling? Like what?” “Oh, there are many examples,” Levine said. “In Africa, acacia trees evolved very long, sharp thorns—three inches or so—but that only provoked animals like giraffes and antelope to evolve long tongues to get past the thorns. Thorns alone didn’t work. So in the evolutionary arms race, the acacia trees next evolved toxicity. They started to produce large quantities of tannin in their leaves, which sets off a lethal metabolic reaction in the animals that eat them. Literally kills them. At the same time, the acacias also evolved a kind of chemical warning system among themselves. If an antelope begins to eat one tree in a grove, that tree releases the chemical ethylene into the air, which causes other trees in the grove to step up the production of leaf tannin. Within five or ten minutes, the other trees are producing more tannin, making themselves poisonous.” “And then what happens to the antelope? It dies?” “Well, not any more,” Levine said, “because the evolutionary arms race continued. Eventually, antelopes learned that they could only browse for a short time."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0039.txt", "text": "Once the trees started to produce more tannin, they had to stop eating it. And the browsers developed new strategies. For example, when a giraffe eats an acacia tree, it then avoids all the trees downwind. Instead, it moves on to another tree that is some distance away. So the animals have adapted to this defense, too.” “In evolutionary theory, this is called the Red Queen phenomenon,” Malcolm said. “Because in Alice in Wonderland the Red Queen tells Alice she has to run as fast as she can just to stay where she is. That’s the way evolutionary spirals seem. All the organisms are evolving at a furious pace just to stay in the same balance. To stay where they are.” Arby said, “And this is common? Even with plants?” “Oh yes,” Levine said. “In their own way, plants are extremely active. Oak trees, for example, produce tannin and phenol as a defense when caterpillars attack them. A whole grove of trees is alerted as soon as one tree is infested. It’s a way to protect the entire grove—a kind of cooperation among trees, you might say.” Arby nodded, and looked out from the high hide at the apatosaurs, still by the river below. “So,” Arby said, “is that why the dinosaurs haven’t eaten all the trees off this island? Because those big apatosaurs must eat a lot of plants. They have long necks to eat the high leaves. But the trees hardly look touched.” “Very good,” Levine said, nodding. “I noticed that myself.” “Is that because of these plant defenses?” “Well, it might be,” Levine said. “But I think there is a very simple explanation for why the trees are preserved.” “What’s that?” “Just look,” Levine said. “It’s right before your eyes.” Arby picked up the binoculars and stared at the herds. “What’s the simple explanation?” “Among paleontologists,” Levine said, “there’s been an interminable debate about why sauropods have long necks. Those animals you see have necks twenty feet long. The traditional belief has been that sauropods evolved long necks to eat high foliage that could not be reached by smaller animals.” “So?” Arby said. “What’s the debate?” “Most animals on this planet have short necks,” Levine said, “because a long neck is, well, a pain in the neck. It causes all sorts of problems. Structural problems: how to arrange muscles and ligaments to support a long neck. Behavioral problems: nerve impulses must travel a long way from the brain to the body. Swallowing problems: food has to go a long way from the mouth to the stomach. Breathing problems: air has to be pulled down a long windpipe. Cardiac problems: blood has to be pumped way up to the head, or the animal faints. In evolutionary terms, all this is very difficult to do.” “But giraffes do it,” Arby said. “Yes, they do. Although giraffe necks are nowhere near this long. Giraffes have evolved large hearts, and very thick fascia around the neck."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0039.txt", "text": "In effect, the neck of a giraffe is like a blood-pressure cuff, going all the way up.” “Do dinosaurs have the same cuff?” “We don’t know. We assume apatosaurs have huge hearts, perhaps three hundred pounds or more. But there is another possible solution to the problem of pumping blood in a long neck.” “Yes?” “You’re looking at it right now,” Levine said. Arby clapped his hands. “They don’t raise their necks!” “Correct,” Levine said. “At least, not very often, or for long periods. Of course, right now the animals are drinking, so their necks are down, but my guess is that if we watch them for an extended period we’ll find they don’t spend much time with their necks raised high.” “And that’s why they don’t eat the leaves on the trees!” “Right.” Kelly frowned. “But if their long necks aren’t used for eating, then why did they evolve them in the first place?” Levine smiled. “There must be a good reason,” he said. “I believe it has to do with defense.” “Defense? Long necks?” Arby stared. “I don’t get it.” “Keep looking,” Levine said. “It’s really rather obvious.” Arby peered through binoculars. He said to Kelly, “I hate it when he tells us it’s obvious.” “I know,” she said, with a sigh. Arby glanced over at Thorne, and caught his eye. Thorne made a V with his fingers, and then pushed one finger, tilting it over. The movement forced the second finger to shift, too. So the two fingers were connected.… If it was a clue, he didn’t get it. He didn’t get it. He frowned. Thorne mouthed: “Bridge.” Arby looked, and watched the whip-like tails swing back and forth over the younger animals. “I get it!” Arby said. “They use their tails for defense. And they need long necks to counterbalance the long tails. It’s like a suspension bridge!” Levine squinted at Arby. “You did that very fast,” he said. Thorne turned away, hiding a smile. “But I’m right …” Arby said. “Yes,” Levine said, “your view is essentially correct. Long necks exist because the long tails exist. It’s a different situation in theropods, which stand on two legs. But in quadrupeds, there needs to be a counterbalance for the long tail, or the animal would simply tip over.” Malcolm said, “Actually, there is something much more puzzling about this apatosaur herd.” “Oh?” Levine said. “What’s that?” “There are no true adults,” Malcolm said. “Those animals we see are very large by our standards. But in fact, none of them has attained full adult size. I find that perplexing.” “Do you? It doesn’t trouble me in the least,” Levine said. “Unquestionably, it is simply because they haven’t had enough time to reach maturity. I’m sure apatosaurs grow more slowly than the other dinosaurs. After all, large mammals like elephants grow more slowly than small ones.” Malcolm shook his head. “That’s not the explanation,” he said. “Oh? Then what?” “Keep looking,” Malcolm said, pointing out over the plain."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0039.txt", "text": "“It’s really rather obvious.” The kids giggled. Levine gave a little shiver of displeasure. “What is obvious to me,” he said, “is that none of the species appear to have attained full adulthood. The triceratops, the apatosaurs, even the parasaurs are a bit smaller than one would expect. This argues for a consistent factor: some element of diet, the effects of confinement on a small island, perhaps even the way they were engineered. But I don’t consider it particularly remarkable or worrisome.” “Maybe you’re right,” Malcolm said. “And then again, maybe you’re not.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0040.txt", "text": "Puerto Cortés “No flights?” Sarah Harding said. “What do you mean, there are no flights?” It was eleven o’clock in the morning. Harding had been flying for the last fifteen hours, much of it spent on a U.S. military transport that she’d caught from Nairobi to Dallas. She was exhausted. Her skin felt grimy; she needed a shower and a change of clothes. Instead she found herself arguing with this very stubborn official in a ratty little town on the west coast of Costa Rica. Outside, the rain had stopped, but the sky was still gray, with low-hanging clouds over the deserted airfield. “I am sorry,” Rodríguez said. “No flights can be arranged.” “But what about the helicopter that took the men earlier?” “There is a helicopter, yes.” “Where is it?” “The helicopter is not here.” “I can see that. But where is it?” Rodríguez spread his hands. “It has gone to San Cristóbal.” “When will it be back?” “I do not know. I think tomorrow, or perhaps the day after.” “Señor Rodríguez,” she said firmly, “I must get to that island today.” “I understand your wish,” Rodríguez said. “But I cannot do anything to help this.” “What do you suggest?” Rodríguez shrugged. “I could not make a suggestion.” “Is there a boat that will take me?” “I do not know of a boat.” “This is a harbor,” Harding said. She pointed out the window. “I see all sorts of boats out there.” “I know. But I do not believe one will go to the islands. The weather is not so favorable.” “But if I were to go down to—” “Yes, of course.” Rodríguez sighed. “Of course you may ask.” Which was how she found herself, shortly after eleven o’clock on a rainy morning, walking down the rickety wooden dock, with her backpack on her shoulder. Four boats were tied up to the dock, which smelled strongly of fish. But all the boats seemed to be deserted. All the activity was at the far end of the dock, where a much larger boat was tied up. Beside the boat, a red Jeep Wrangler was being strapped for loading, along with several large steel drums and wooden crates of supplies. She admired the car in passing; it had been specially modified, enlarged to the size of the Land Rover Defender, the most desirable of all field vehicles. Changing this Jeep must have been an expensive alteration, she thought: only for researchers with lots of money. Standing on the dock, a pair of Americans in wide-brimmed sun hats were shouting and pointing as the Jeep lifted lopsidedly into the air, and was swung onto the deck of the boat with an ancient crane. She heard one of the men shout “Careful! Careful!” as the Jeep thudded down hard on the wooden deck. “Damn it, be careful!” Several workmen began to carry the boxes onto the ship. The crane swung back to pick up the steel drums."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0040.txt", "text": "Harding went over to the nearest man and said politely, “Excuse me, but I wonder if you could help me.” The man glanced at her. He was medium height, with reddish skin and bland features; he looked awkward in new khaki safari clothes. His manner was preoccupied and tense. “I’m busy now,” he said, and turned away. “Manuel! Watch it, that’s sensitive equipment!” “I’m sorry to bother you,” she continued, “but my name is Sarah Harding, and I’m trying—” “I don’t care if you’re Sarah Bernhardt, the—Manuel! Damn it!” The man waved his arms. “You there! Yes, you! Hold that box upright!” “I’m trying to get to Isla Sorna,” she said, finishing. At this, the man’s entire demeanor changed. He turned back to her slowly. “Isla Sorna?” he said. “You’re not associated with Dr. Levine by any chance, are you?” “Yes, I am.” “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, suddenly breaking into a warm smile. “What do you know!” He extended his hand. “I’m Lew Dodgson, from the Biosyn Corporation, back in Cupertino. This is my associate, Howard King.” “Hi,” the other man said, nodding. Howard King was younger and taller than Dodgson, and he was handsome in a clean-cut California way. Sarah recognized his type: a classic beta male animal, subservient to the core. And there was something odd about his behavior toward her: he moved a little away, and seemed as uncomfortable around her as Dodgson now seemed friendly. “And up there,” Dodgson continued, pointing onto the deck, “is our third, George Baselton.” Harding saw a heavyset man on the deck, bent over the boxes as they came on board. His shirtsleeves were soaked in sweat. She said, “Are you all friends of Richard?” “We’re on our way over to see him right now,” Dodgson said, “to help him out.” He hesitated, frowning at her. “But, uh, he didn’t tell us about you.…” She was suddenly aware then of how she must appear to him: a short woman in her thirties, wearing a rumpled shirt, khaki shorts, and heavy boots. Her clothes dirty, her hair unkempt after all the flights. She said, “I know Richard through Ian Malcolm. Ian and I are old friends.” “I see.…” He continued to stare at her, as if he was unsure of her in some way. She felt compelled to explain. “I’ve been in Africa. I decided to come here at the last minute,” she said. “Doc Thorne called me.” “Oh, of course. Doc.” The man nodded, and seemed to relax, as if everything now made sense to him. She said, “Is Richard all right?” “Well, I certainly hope so. Because we’re taking all this equipment to him.” “You’re going to Sorna now?” “We are, if this weather holds,” Dodgson said, glancing at the sky. “We should be ready to go in five or ten minutes. You know, you’re welcome to join us, if you need a ride,” he said cheerfully. “We could use the company."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0040.txt", "text": "Where’s your stuff?” “I’ve only got this,” she said, lifting her small backpack. “Traveling light, eh? Well, good, Ms. Harding. Welcome to the party.” He seemed entirely open and friendly now. It was such a marked change from his earlier behavior. But she noticed that the handsome man, King, remained distinctly uneasy. King turned his back to her, and acted very busy, shouting at the workmen to be careful with the last of the wooden crates, which were marked “Biosyn Corporation” in stenciled lettering. She had the impression he was avoiding looking at her. And she still hadn’t gotten a good look at the third man, on deck. It made her hesitate. “You’re sure it’s all right.…” “Of course it’s all right! We’d be delighted!” Dodgson said. “Besides, how else are you going to get there? There’s no planes, the helicopter is gone.” “I know, I checked.…” “Well, then, you know. If you want to get to the island, you’d better go with us.” She looked at the Jeep on the boat, and said, “I think Doc must already be there, with his equipment.” At the mention of that, the second man, King, snapped his head around in alarm. But Dodgson just nodded calmly and said, “Yes, I think so. He left last night, I believe.” “That’s what he said to me.” “Right.” Dodgson nodded. “So he’s already there. At least, I hope he is.” From on deck, there were shouts in Spanish, and a captain in greasy overalls came and looked over the side. “Señor Dodgson, we are ready.” “Good,” Dodgson said. “Excellent. Climb aboard, Ms. Harding. Let’s get going!”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0041.txt", "text": "King Spewing black smoke, the fishing boat chugged out of the harbor, heading toward open sea. Howard King felt the rumble of the ship’s engines beneath his feet, heard the creak of the wood. He listened to the shouts of the crewmen in Spanish. King looked back at the little town of Puerto Cortés, a jumble of little houses clustered around the water’s edge. He hoped this damn boat was seaworthy—because they were out in the middle of nowhere. And Dodgson was cutting corners. Taking chances again. It was the situation King feared most. Howard King had known Lewis Dodgson for almost ten years, ever since he had joined Biosyn as a young Berkeley Ph.D., a promising researcher with the energy to conquer the world. King had done his doctoral thesis on blood-coagulation factors. He had joined Biosyn at a time of intense interest in those factors, which seemed to hold the key to dissolving clots in patients with heart attacks. There was a race among biotech companies to develop a new drug that would save lives, and make a fortune as well. Initially, King worked on a promising substance called Hemaggluttin V-5, or HGV-5. In early tests it dissolved platelet aggregation to an astonishing degree. King became the most promising young researcher at Biosyn. His picture was prominently featured in the annual report. He had his own lab, and an operating budget of nearly half a million dollars. And then, without warning, the bottom fell out. In preliminary tests on human subjects, HGV-5 failed to dissolve clots in either myocardial infarctions or pulmonary embolisms. Worse, it produced severe side effects: gastrointestinal bleeding, skin rashes, neurological problems. After one patient died from convulsions, the company halted further testing. Within weeks, King lost his lab. A newly arrived Danish researcher took it over; he was developing an extract from the saliva of the Sumatran yellow leech, which showed more promise. King moved to a smaller lab, decided he was tired of blood factors, and turned his attention to painkillers. He had an interesting compound, the L-isomer of a protein from the African horny toad, which seemed to have narcotic effects. But he had lost his former confidence, and when the company reviewed his work, they concluded that his research was insufficiently documented to warrant seeking FDA approvals for testing. His horny-toad project was summarily canceled. King was then thirty-five, and twice a failure. His picture no longer graced the annual report. It was rumored that the company would probably let him go at the next review period. When he proposed a new research project, it was rejected at once. It was a dark time in his life. Then Lewis Dodgson suggested they have lunch. Dodgson had an unsavory reputation among the researchers; he was known as “The Undertaker,” because of the way he took over the work of others, and prettied it up as his own. In earlier years, King never would have been seen with him."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0041.txt", "text": "But now he allowed Dodgson to take him to an expensive seafood restaurant in San Francisco. “Research is hard,” Dodgson said, sympathetically. “You can say that again,” King said. “Hard, and risky,” Dodgson said. “The fact is, innovative research rarely pans out. But does management understand? No. If the research fails, you’re the one who’s blamed. It’s not fair.” “Tell me,” King said. “But that’s the name of the game.” Dodgson shrugged, and speared a leg of soft-shell crab. King said nothing. “Personally, I don’t like risk,” Dodgson continued. “And original work is risky. Most new ideas are bad, and most original work fails. That’s the reality. If you feel compelled to do original research, you can expect to fail. That’s all right if you work in a university, where failure is praised and success leads to ostracism. But in industry … no, no. Original work in industry is not a wise career choice. It’s only going to get you into trouble. Which is where you are right now, my friend.” “What can I do?” King said. “Well,” Dodgson said. “I have my own version of the scientific method. I call it focused research development. If only a few ideas are going to be good, why try to find them yourself? It’s too hard. Let other people find them—let them take the risk—let them go for the so-called glory. I’d rather wait, and develop ideas that already show promise. Take what’s good, and make it better. Or at least, make it different enough so that I can patent it. And then I own it. Then, it’s mine.” King was amazed at the straightforward way that Dodgson admitted he was a thief. He didn’t seem in the least embarrassed. King poked at his salad for a while. “Why are you telling me this?” “Because I see something in you,” Dodgson said. “I see ambition. Frustrated ambition. And I’m telling you, Howard, you don’t have to be frustrated. You don’t even have to be fired from the company at the next performance review. Which is exactly what’s going to happen. How old is your kid?” “Four,” King said. “Terrible, to be out of work, with a young family. And it won’t be easy to get another job. Who’s going to give you a chance now? By thirty-five, a research scientist has already made his mark, or he’s not likely to. I don’t say that’s right, but that’s how they think.” King knew that’s how they thought. At every biotechnology company in California. “But Howard,” Dodgson said, leaning across the table, lowering his voice, “a wonderful world awaits you, if you choose to look at things differently. There’s a whole other way to live your life. I really think you should consider what I’m saying.” Two weeks later, King became Dodgson’s personal assistant in the Department of Future Biogenic Trends, which was how Biosyn referred to its efforts at industrial espionage."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0041.txt", "text": "And in the years that followed, King had once again risen swiftly at Biosyn—this time because Dodgson liked him. Now King had all the accoutrements of success: a Porsche, a mortgage, a divorce, a kid he saw on weekends. All because King had proven to be the perfect second in command, working long hours, handling the details, keeping his fast-talking boss out of trouble. And in the process, King had come to know all the sides of Dodgson—his charismatic side, his visionary side, and his dark, ruthless side. King told himself that he could handle the ruthless side, that he could keep it in check, that over the years he had learned how to do that. But sometimes, he was not so sure. Like now. Because here they were, in some rickety stinking fishing boat, heading out into the ocean off some desolate village in Costa Rica, and in this tense moment Dodgson had suddenly decided to play some kind of game, meeting this woman and deciding to take her along. King didn’t know what Dodgson intended, but he could see the intense gleam in Dodgson’s eyes that he had seen only a few times before, and it was a look that always alarmed him. The woman Harding was now up on the foredeck, standing near the bow. She was looking off at the ocean. King saw Dodgson walking around the Jeep, and beckoned to him nervously. “Listen,” King said, “we have to talk.” “Sure,” Dodgson said, easily. “What’s on your mind?” And he smiled. That charming smile."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0042.txt", "text": "Harding Sarah Harding stared at the gray, menacing sky. The boat rolled in the heavy offshore swell. The deckhands scrambled to tie down the Jeep, which threatened repeatedly to break free. She stood in the bow, fighting seasickness. On the far horizon, dead ahead, she could just see the low black line that was their first glimpse of Isla Sorna. She turned and looked back, and saw Dodgson and King were huddled by the railing amidships, in intense conversation. King seemed to be upset, gesticulating rapidly. Dodgson was listening, and shaking his head. After a moment, he put his arm on King’s shoulder. He seemed to be trying to calm the younger man down. Both men ignored the activity around the Jeep. Which was odd, she thought, considering how worried they had been earlier about the equipment. Now they didn’t seem to care. As for the third man, Baselton, she had of course recognized him, and she was surprised to find him here on this little fishing boat. Baselton had shaken her hand in a perfunctory way, and he had disappeared belowdecks as soon as the ship pulled away from the dock. He had not reappeared. But perhaps he was seasick, too. As she continued to watch, she saw Dodgson break away from King, and hurry over to supervise the deckhands. Left alone, King went to check on the straps that lashed the boxes and barrels to the deck farther aft. The boxes marked “Biosyn.” Harding had never heard of the Biosyn Corporation. She wondered what connection Ian and Richard had with it. Whenever Ian was around her, he had always been critical, even contemptuous, of biotechnology companies. And these men seemed to be unlikely friends. They were too rigid, too … geeky. But then, she reflected, Ian did have strange friends. They were always showing up unexpectedly at his apartment—the Japanese calligrapher, the Indonesian gamalan troupe, the Las Vegas juggler in a shiny bolero jacket, that weird French astrologer who thought the earth was hollow.… And then there were his mathematician friends. They were really crazy. Or so they seemed to Sarah. They were so wild-eyed, so wrapped up in their proofs. Pages and pages of proofs, sometimes hundreds of pages. It was all too abstract for her. Sarah Harding liked to touch the dirt, to see the animals, to experience the sounds and the smells. That was real to her. Everything else was just a bunch of theories: possibly right, possibly wrong. Waves began to crash over the bow, and she moved a little astern, to keep dry. She yawned; she hadn’t slept much in the last twenty-four hours. Dodgson finished working on the Jeep, and came over to her. She said, “Everything all right?” “Oh yes,” Dodgson said, smiling cheerfully. “Your friend King seemed upset.” “He doesn’t like boats,” Dodgson said. He nodded to the waves. “But we’re making better time. It’ll only be an hour or so, until we land.” “Tell me,” she said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0042.txt", "text": "“What is the Biosyn Corporation? I’ve never heard of it.” “It’s a small company,” Dodgson said. “We make what are called consumer biologicals. We specialize in recreational and sports organisms. For example, we engineered new kinds of trout, and other game fish. We’re making new kinds of dogs—smaller pets for apartment dwellers. That sort of thing.” Exactly the sort of thing that Ian hated, she thought. “How do you know Ian?” “Oh, we go way back,” Dodgson said. She noticed his vagueness. “How far?” “Back to the days of the park.” “The park,” she said. He nodded. “Did he ever tell you how he hurt his leg?” “No,” she said. “He would never talk about it. He just said it happened on a consulting job that had … I don’t know. Some sort of trouble. Was it a park?” “Yes, in a way,” Dodgson said, staring out at the ocean. After a moment, he shrugged. “And what about you? How do you know him?” “He was one of my thesis readers. I’m an ethologist. I study large mammals in African grassland ecosystems. East Africa. Carnivores, in particular.” “Carnivores?” “I’ve been studying hyenas,” she said. “Before that, lions.” “For a long time?” “Almost ten years, now. Six years continuously, since my doctorate.” “Interesting,” Dodgson said, nodding. “And so did you come here all the way from Africa?” “Yes, from Seronera. In Tanzania.” Dodgson nodded vaguely. He looked past her shoulder toward the island. “What do you know. Looks like the weather may clear, after all.” She turned and saw streaks of blue in the thinning clouds overhead. The sun was trying to break through. The sea was calmer. And she was surprised to see the island was much closer. She could clearly see the cliffs, rising above the seas. The cliffs were reddish-gray volcanic rock, very sheer. “In Tanzania,” Dodgson said. “You run a large research team?” “No. I work alone.” “No students?” he said. “I’m afraid not. It’s because my work just isn’t very glamorous. The big savannah carnivores in Africa are primarily nocturnal. So my research is mostly conducted at night.” “Must be hard on your husband.” “Oh, I’m not married,” she said, with a little shrug. “I’m surprised,” he said. “After all, a beautiful woman like you …” “I never had time,” she said quickly. To change the subject, she said, “Where do you land on this island?” Dodgson turned to look. They were now close enough to the island to see the waves crashing, high and white, against the base of the cliffs. They were only a mile or two away. “It’s an unusual island,” Dodgson said. “This whole region of central America is volcanic. There are something like thirty active volcanoes between Mexico and Colombia. All these offshore islands were at one time active volcanoes, part of the central chain. But unlike the mainland, the islands are now dormant. Haven’t erupted for a thousand years or so.” “So we’re seeing the outside of the crater?” “Exactly."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0042.txt", "text": "The cliffs are all the result of erosion from rainfall, but the ocean erodes the base of the cliffs, too. Those flat sections on the cliff you see are where the ocean cut in at the bottom, and huge areas of the cliff face were undermined, and just cleaved, falling straight down into the sea. It’s all soft volcanic rock.” “And so you land …” “There are several places on the windward side where the ocean has cut caves into the cliff. And at two of those places, the caves meet rivers flowing out from the interior. So they’re passable.” He pointed ahead. “You see there, you can just now see one of the caves.” Sarah Harding saw a dark irregular opening cut into the base of the cliff. All around it, the waves crashed, plumes of white water rising fifty feet up into the air. “You’re going to take this boat into that cave there?” “If the weather holds, yes.” Dodgson turned away. “Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it looks. Anyway, you were saying. About Africa. When did you leave Africa?” “Right after Doc Thorne called. He said he was going with Ian to rescue Richard, and asked if I wanted to come.” “And what did you say?” “I said I’d think about it.” Dodgson frowned. “You didn’t tell him you were coming?” “No. Because I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I mean, I’m busy. I have my work. And it’s a long way.” “For an old lover,” Dodgson said, nodding sympathetically. She sighed. “Well. You know. Ian.” “Yes, I know Ian,” Dodgson said. “Quite a character.” “That’s one way to put it,” she said. There was an awkward silence. Dodgson cleared his throat. “I’m confused,” he said. “Who exactly did you tell you were coming here?” “Nobody,” she said. “I just jumped on the next plane and came.” “But what about your university, your colleagues …” She shrugged. “There wasn’t time. And as I said, I work alone.” She looked again at the island. The cliffs rose high above the boat. They were only a few hundred yards away. The cave appeared much larger now, but the waves crashed high on either side. She shook her head. “It looks pretty rough.” “Don’t worry,” Dodgson said. “See? The captain’s already making for it. We’ll be perfectly safe, once we’re passing through. And then … It should be very exciting.” The boat rolled and dipped in the sea, an uncertain motion. She gripped the railing. Beside her, Dodgson grinned. “See what I mean? Exciting, isn’t it?” He seemed suddenly energized, almost agitated. His body became tense; he rubbed his hands together. “No need to worry, Ms. Harding, I can’t allow anything to happen to—” She didn’t know what he was talking about, but before she could reply, the nose of the boat dipped again, kicking up spray, and she stumbled a little."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0042.txt", "text": "Dodgson bent over quickly—apparently to steady her—but it seemed as if something went wrong—his body struck against her legs, then lifted—and then another wave crashed over them and she felt her body twist and she screamed and clutched at the railing. But it was all happening too fast, the world upended and swirled around her, her head clanged once on the railing and then she was tumbling, falling through space. She saw the peeling paint on the hull of the boat sliding past her, she saw the green ocean rush up toward her, and then she was shocked with the sudden stinging cold as she plunged into the rough, heaving sea, and sank beneath the waves, into darkness."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0043.txt", "text": "The Valley “This is going extremely well,” Levine said, rubbing his hands together. “Far beyond my expectations, I must say. I couldn’t be more pleased.” He was standing in the high hide with Thorne, Eddie, Malcolm, and the kids, looking down on the valley floor below. Everyone was sweating inside the little observation hut; the midday air was still and hot. Around them, the grassy meadow was deserted; most of the dinosaurs had moved beneath the trees, into the cool of the shade. The exception was the herd of apatosaurs, which had left the trees to return to the river, where they were now drinking once again. The huge animals clustered fairly tightly around the water’s edge. In the same vicinity, but more spread out, were the high-crested parasaurolophasaurs; these somewhat smaller dinosaurs positioned themselves near the apatosaur herd. Thorne wiped sweat out of his eyes and said, “Why, exactly, are you pleased?” “Because of what we’re seeing here,” Malcolm said. He glanced at his watch, and wrote an entry in his notebook. “We’re getting the data that I hoped for. It’s very exciting.” Thorne yawned, sleepy in the beat. “Why is it exciting? The dinosaurs are drinking. What’s the big deal?” “Drinking again,” Levine corrected him. “For the second time in an hour. At midday. Such fluid intake is highly suggestive of the thermoregulatory strategies these large creatures employ.” “You mean they drink a lot to stay cool,” Thorne said, always impatient with jargon. “Yes. Clearly they do. Drink a lot. But in my view, their return to the river may have another significance entirely.” “Which is?” “Come, come,” Levine said, pointing. “Look at the herds. Look how they are arranged spatially. We are seeing something that no one has witnessed before, or even suspected, for dinosaurs. We’re seeing nothing less than inter-species symbiosis.” “We are?” “Yes,” Levine said. “The apatosaurs and the parasaurs are together. I saw them together yesterday, too. I’ll bet that they’re always together, when they’re out on the open plain. Undoubtedly you are wondering why.” “Undoubtedly,” Thorne said. “The reason,” Levine said, “is that the apatosaurs are very strong but weak-sighted, whereas the parasaurs are smaller, but have very sharp vision. So the two species stay together because they provide a mutual defense. Just the way zebras and baboons stay together on the African plain. Zebras have a good sense of smell, and baboons have good eyesight. Together they’re more effective against predators than either is alone.” “And you think this is true of the dinosaurs because …” “It’s rather obvious,” Levine said. “Just look at the behavior. When the two herds were alone, each clustered tightly among themselves. But when they’re together, the parasaurs spread out, abandoning their former herd arrangement, to form an outer ring around the apatosaurs. Just as you see them now. That can only mean that individual paras are going to be protected by the apatosaur herd. And vice versa."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0043.txt", "text": "It can only be a mutual predator defense.” As they watched, one of the parasaurs lifted its head, and stared across the river. It honked mournfully, a long musical sound. All the other parasaurs looked up and stared, too. The apatosaurs continued to drink at the river, although one or two adults raised their long necks. In the midday heat, insects buzzed around them. Thorne said, “So where are the predators?” “Right there,” Malcolm said, pointing toward a stand of trees on the other side of the river, not far from the water. Thorne looked, and saw nothing. “Don’t you see them?” “No.” “Keep looking. They’re small, lizard-like animals. Dark brown. Raptors,” he said. Thorne shrugged. He still saw nothing. Standing beside him, Levine began to eat a power bar. Preoccupied with holding the binoculars, he dropped the wrapper on the floor of the hide. Bits of paper fluttered to the ground below. “How are those things?” Arby said. “Okay. A little sugary.” “Got any more?” he said. Levine rummaged in his pockets and gave him one. Arby broke it in half, and gave half to Kelly. He began to unwrap his half, carefully folding the paper, putting it neatly in his pocket. “You realize this is all highly significant,” Malcolm said. “For the question of extinction. Already it’s obvious that the extinction of the dinosaurs is a far more complex problem than anyone has recognized.” “It is?” Arby said. “Well, consider,” Malcolm said. “All extinction theories are based on the fossil record. But the fossil record doesn’t show the sort of behavior we’re seeing here. It doesn’t record the complexity of groups interacting.” “Because fossils are just bones,” Arby said. “Right. And bones are not behavior. When you think about it, the fossil record is like a series of photographs: frozen moments from what is really a moving, ongoing reality. Looking at the fossil record is like thumbing through a family photo album. You know that the album isn’t complete. You know life happens between the pictures. But you don’t have any record of what happens in between, you only have the pictures. So you study them, and study them. And pretty soon, you begin to think of the album not as a series of moments, but as reality itself. And you begin to explain everything in terms of the album, and you forget the underlying reality. “And the tendency,” Malcolm said, “has been to think in terms of physical events. To assume that some external physical event caused the extinctions. A meteor hits the earth, and changes the weather. Or volcanoes erupt, and change the weather. Or a meteor causes the volcanoes to erupt and change the weather. Or vegetation changes, and species starve and become extinct. Or a new disease arises, and species become extinct. Or a new plant arises, and poisons all the dinosaurs. In every case, what is imagined is some external event."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0043.txt", "text": "But what nobody imagines is that the animals themselves might have changed—not in their bones, but their behavior. Yet when you look at animals like these, and see how intricately their behavior is interrelated, you realize that a change in group behavior could easily lead to extinction.” “But why would group behavior change?” Thorne said. “If there wasn’t some external catastrophe to force it, why should the behavior change?” “Actually,” Malcolm said, “behavior is always changing, all the time. Our planet is a dynamic, active environment. Weather is changing. The land is changing. Continents drift. Oceans rise and fall. Mountains thrust up and erode away. All the organisms on the planet are constantly adapting to those changes. The best organisms are the ones that can adapt most rapidly. That’s why it’s hard to see how a catastrophe that produces a large change could cause extinction, since so much change is occurring all the time, anyway.” “In that case,” Thorne said, “what causes extinction?” “Certainly not rapid change alone,” Malcolm said. “The facts tell us that clearly.” “What facts?” “After every major environmental change, a wave of extinctions has usually followed—but not right away. Extinctions only occur thousands, or millions of years later. Take the last glaciation in North America. The glaciers descended, the climate changed severely, but animals didn’t die. Only after the glaciers receded, when you’d think things would go back to normal, did lots of species become extinct. That’s when giraffes and tigers and mammoths vanished on this continent. And that’s the usual pattern. It’s almost as if species are weakened by the major change, but die off later. It’s a well-recognized phenomenon.” “It’s called Softening Up the Beachhead,” Levine said. “And what’s the explanation for it?” Levine was silent. “There is none,” Malcolm said. “It’s a paleontological mystery. But I believe that complexity theory has a lot to tell us about it. Because if the notion of life at the edge of chaos is true, then major change pushes animals closer to the edge. It destabilizes all sorts of behavior. And when the environment goes back to normal, it’s not really a return to normal. In evolutionary terms, it’s another big change, and it’s just too much to keep up with. I believe that new behavior in populations can emerge in unexpected ways, and I think I know why the dinosaurs—” “What’s that?” Thorne said. Thorne was looking at the trees, and saw a single dinosaur hop out into view. It was rather slender, agile on its hind legs, balancing with a stiff tail. It was six feet tall, green-brown with dark-red stripes, like a tiger. “That,” Malcolm said, “is a velociraptor.” Thorne turned to Levine. “That’s what chased you up in the tree? It looks ugly.” “Efficient,” Levine said. “Those animals are brilliantly constructed killing machines. Arguably the most efficient predators in the history of the planet. The one that just stepped out will be the alpha animal."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0043.txt", "text": "It leads the pack.” Thorne saw other movement beneath the trees. “There’s more.” “Oh yes,” Levine said. “This particular pack is very large.” He picked up binoculars, and peered through them. “I’d like to locate their nest,” he said. “I haven’t been able to find it anywhere on the island. Of course they’re secretive, but even so …” The parasaurs were all crying loudly, moving closer to the apatosaur herd as they did so. But the big apatosaurs seemed relatively indifferent; the adults nearest the water actually turned their backs to the approaching raptor. “Don’t they care?” Arby said. “They’re not even looking at him.” “Don’t be fooled,” Levine said, “the apatosaurs care very much. They may look like gigantic cows, but they’re nothing of the sort. Those whiptails are thirty or forty feet long, and weigh several tons. Notice how fast they can swing them. One smack from those tails would snap an attacker’s back.” “So turning away is part of their defense?” “Unquestionably, yes. And you can see now how the long necks balance their tails.” The tails of the adults were so long, they reached entirely across the river, to the other shore. As they swung back and forth, and the parasaurs cried out, the lead raptor turned away. Moments later, the entire pack began to slink off, following the edge of the trees, heading up into the hills. “Looks like you’re right,” Thorne said. “The tails scared them off.” “How many do you count?” Levine said. “I don’t know. Ten to twelve. I might have missed a few.” “Fourteen.” Malcolm scribbled in his notebook. “You want to follow them?” Levine said. “Not now.” “We could take the Explorer.” “Maybe later,” Malcolm said. “I think we need to know where their nest is,” Levine said. “It’s essential, Ian, if we’re going to settle predator-prey relationships. Nothing is more important than that. And this is a perfect opportunity to follow—” “Maybe later,” Malcolm said. He checked his watch again. “That’s the hundredth time you’ve checked your watch today,” Thorne said. Malcolm shrugged. “Getting to be lunchtime,” he said. “By the way, what about Sarah? Shouldn’t she be arriving soon?” “Yes. I imagine she’ll show up any time now,” Thorne said. Malcolm wiped his forehead. “It’s hot up here.” “Yes, it’s hot.” They listened to the buzzing of insects in the midday sun, and watched the raptors retreat. “You know, I’m thinking,” Malcolm said. “Maybe we ought to go back.” “Go back?” Levine said. “Now? What about our observations? What about the other cameras we want to place and—” “I don’t know, maybe it’d be good to take a break.” Levine stared at him in disbelief. He said nothing. Thorne and the kids looked at Malcolm silently. “Well, it seems to me,” Malcolm said, “that if Sarah’s coming all the way from Africa, we should be there to greet her.” He shrugged."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0043.txt", "text": "“I think it’s simple politeness.” Thorne said, “I didn’t realize that, uh …” “No, no,” Malcolm said quickly. “It’s nothing like that. I just, uh … You know, maybe she’s not even coming.” He looked suddenly uncertain. “Did she say she was coming?” “She said she’d think about it.” Malcolm frowned. “Then she’s coming. If Sarah said that, she’s coming. I know her. So. What do you say, want to go back?” “Certainly not,” Levine said, peering through binoculars. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving here now.” Malcolm turned. “Doc? Want to go back?” “Sure,” Thorne said, wiping his forehead. “It’s hot.” “If I know Sarah,” Malcolm said, climbing down the scaffolding, “she’s going to show up on this island just looking great.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0044.txt", "text": "Cave She struggled upward, and her head broke the surface, but she saw only water—great swells rising fifteen feet above her, on all sides. The power of the ocean was immense. The surge dragged her forward, then back, and she was helpless to resist. She could not see the boat anywhere, only foaming sea, on all sides. She could not see the island, only water. Only water. She fought a sense of overwhelming panic. She tried to kick against the current, but her boots were leaden. She sank down again, and struggled back, gasping for air. She had to get her boots off, somehow. She gulped a breath and ducked her head under the water, and tried to unlace the boots. Her lungs burned as she fumbled with the knots. The ocean swept her back and forth, ceaselessly. She got one boot off, gulped air, and ducked down again. Her fingers were stiff with cold and fright, as she worked on the other boot. It seemed to take hours. Finally her legs were free, light, and she dogpaddled, catching her breath. The surge lifted her high, dropped her again. She could not see the island. She felt panic again. She turned, and felt the surge lift once more. And then she saw the island. The sheer cliffs were close, frighteningly close. The waves boomed as they smashed against the rocks. She was no more than fifty yards offshore, being swept inexorably toward the crashing surf. On the next crest, she saw the cave, a hundred yards to her right. She tried to swim toward it, but it was hopeless. She had no power at all to move in this gigantic surf. She felt only the strength of the sea, sweeping her to the cliffs. Panic made her heart race. She knew she would be instantly killed. A wave crested over her; she gulped sea water, and coughed. Her eyes blurred. She felt nausea and deep, deep terror. She put her head down and began to swim, arm over arm, kicking as hard as she could. She had no sense of movement, only the sideways pull of the surge. She dared not look up. She kicked harder. When she raised her head for another breath, she saw she had moved a little—not much, but a little—to the north. She was a little nearer to the cave. She was encouraged, but she was terrified. She had so little strength! Her arms and legs ached with her effort. Her lungs burned. Her breath came in short ragged heaving gasps. She coughed again, grabbed another breath, put her head down and kicked onward. Even with her head in the water, she heard the deep boom of the surf against the cliffs. She kicked with all her might. The currents and surge moved her left and right, forward and back. It was hopeless. But still she tried. Gradually, the ache in her muscles became a steady dull pain."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0044.txt", "text": "She felt she had lived with this pain all her life. She did not notice it any more. She kicked on, oblivious. When she felt the surge lift her up again, she raised her head for a breath. She was startled to see that the cave was very close. A few more strokes and she would be swept inside it. She had thought the current might be less severe around the cave. But it wasn’t; on either side of the opening, the waves crashed high, climbing the cliff walls, and then falling back. The boat was nowhere in sight. She ducked her head down again, kicked forward, using the last of her strength. She could feel her entire body weakening. She could not last much longer. She knew she was being carried toward the cliffs. She heard the boom of the surf louder now, and she kicked again, and suddenly a huge swell swept her up, lifting her, carrying her toward the cliffs. She was powerless to resist it. She raised her head to look, and saw darkness, inky darkness. In her exhaustion and pain, she realized that she was inside the cave. She had been swept into the cave! The booming sound was hollow, reverberating. It was too dark to see the walls on either side. The current was intense, sweeping her ever deeper. She gasped for breath and paddled ineffectually. Her body scraped against rock; she felt a moment of searing pain, and then she was swept farther into the depths of the cave. But now there was a difference. She saw faint light on the ceiling, and the water around her seemed to glow. The surge lessened. She found it easier to keep her head above water. She saw hot light ahead, brilliantly hot—the end of the cave. And suddenly, astonishingly, she was carried through, and burst into sunlight and open air. She found herself in the middle of a broad muddy river, surrounded by dense green foliage. The air was hot and still; she heard the distant cries of jungle birds. Up ahead, around a bend in the river, she saw the stern of Dodgson’s boat, already tied up to the shore. She could not see any of the people, and she didn’t want to see them. Summoning her remaining strength, she kicked toward shore, and clutched at a stand of mangroves, growing thickly along the water’s edge. Too weak to hold on, she hooked her arm around a root, and lay on her back in the gentle current, looking up at the sky, gasping for breath. She did not know how much time passed, but finally she felt strong enough to haul herself arm over arm along the mangrove roots at the water’s edge, until she came to a narrow break in the foliage, leading to a patch of muddy shore beyond."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0044.txt", "text": "As she dragged herself out of the water, and up on the slippery bank, she noticed several rather large animal footprints in the mud. They were curious, three-toed footprints, with each toe ending in a large claw … She bent to examine them more closely, and then she felt the earth vibrating, trembling beneath her hands. A large shadow fell over her and she looked up in astonishment at the leathery, pale underbelly of an enormous animal. She was too weak to react, even to raise her head. The last thing she saw was a huge leathery foot landing beside her, squishing in the mud, and a soft snorting sound. And then suddenly, abruptly, exhaustion overtook her, and Sarah Harding collapsed, and fell onto her back. Her eyes rolled up into her head, and she lost consciousness."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0045.txt", "text": "Dodgson A few yards up from the shore of the river, Lewis Dodgson climbed into the custom-made Jeep Wrangler and slammed the door shut. Beside him in the passenger seat, Howard King was wringing his hands. He said, “How could you have done that to her?” “Done what?” George Baselton said, from the back seat. Dodgson did not reply. He turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life. He popped the four-wheel drive into gear and headed up the hill into the jungle, away from the boat at the shore. “How could you?” King said again, agitated. “I mean, Jesus.” “What happened was an accident,” Dodgson said. “An accident? An accident?” “That’s right, an accident,” Dodgson said calmly. “She fell overboard.” “I didn’t see anything,” Baselton said. King was shaking his head. “Jesus, what if somebody comes to investigate and—” “What if they do?” Dodgson said, interrupting him. “We were in rough seas, she was standing at the bow, a big wave hit us and she was washed overboard. She couldn’t swim very well. We circled and looked for her, but there was no hope. A very unfortunate accident. So what are you concerned about?” “What am I concerned about?” “Yes, Howard. Exactly what the fuck are you concerned about?” “I saw it, for Christ’s sake—” “No, you didn’t,” Dodgson said. “I didn’t see anything,” Baselton said. “I was down below, the whole time.” “That’s fine for you,” Howard King said. “But what if there’s an investigation?” The Jeep bounced up the dirt track, moving deeper into the jungle. “There won’t be,” Dodgson said. “She left Africa in a hurry, and she didn’t tell anybody where she was going.” “How do you know?” King whined. “Because she told me, Howard. That’s how I know. Now get the map out and stop moaning. You knew the deal when you joined me.” “I didn’t know you were going to kill somebody, for Christ’s sake.” “Howard,” Dodgson said, with a sigh. “Nothing’s going to happen. Get the map out.” “How do you know?” King said. “Because I know what I’m doing,” Dodgson said. “That’s why. Unlike Malcolm and Thorne, who are somewhere on this island, screwing around, doing fuck knows what in this damned jungle.” Mention of the others caused a new worry. Fretting, King said, “Maybe we’ll run into them.…” “No, Howard, we won’t. They’ll never even know we’re here. We’re only going to be on this island for four hours, remember? Land at one. Back on the boat by five. Back at the port by seven. Back in San Francisco by midnight. Bang. Done. Finito. And finally, after all these years, I’ll have what I should have had long ago.” “Dinosaur embryos,” Baselton said. “Embryos?” King asked, surprised. “Oh, I’m not interested in embryos any more,” Dodgson said. “Years ago, I tried to get frozen embryos, but there’s no reason to bother with embryos now. I want fertilized eggs."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0045.txt", "text": "And in four hours, I’ll have them from every species on this island.” “How can you do that in four hours?” “Because I already know the precise location of every dinosaur breeding site on the island. The map, Howard.” King opened the map. It was a large topographical chart of the island, two feet by three feet, showing terrain elevations in blue contours. At several places in lowland valleys, there were dense red concentric circles. In some places, clusters of circles. “What’s this?” King said. “Why don’t you read what it says,” Dodgson said. King turned the map, and looked at the legend. “ ‘Sigma data Landsat/Nordstat mixed spectra VSFR/FASLR/IFFVR.’ And then a bunch of numbers. No, wait. Dates.” “Correct,” Dodgson said. “Dates.” “Pass dates? This is a summary chart, combining data from several satellite passes?” “Correct.” King frowned. “And it looks like … visible spectrum, and false aperture radar, and … what?” “Infrared. Broadband thermal VR.” Dodgson smiled. “I did all this in about two hours. Downloaded all the satellite data, summarized it, and had the answers I wanted.” “I get it,” King said. “These red circles are infrared signatures!” “Yes,” Dodgson said. “Big animals leave big signatures. I got all the satellite flybys over this island for the last few years, and mapped the location of heat sources. And the locations overlapped from pass to pass, which is what makes these red concentric marks. Meaning that the animals tend to be located in these particular places. Why?” He turned to King. “Because these are the nesting sites.” “Yes. They must be,” Baselton said. “Maybe that’s where they eat,” King said. Dodgson shook his head irritably. “Obviously, those circles can’t be feeding sites.” “Why not?” “Because these animals average twenty tons apiece, that’s why. You get a herd of twenty-ton dinos, and you’re talking a combined biomass of more than half a million pounds moving through the forest. That many big animals are going to eat a lot of plant matter in the course of a day. And the only way they can do that is by moving. Right?” “I guess …” “You guess? Look around you, Howard. Do you see any denuded sections of forest? No, you don’t. They eat a few leaves from the trees, and move on. Trust me, these animals have to move to eat. But what they don’t move is their nesting sites. So these red circles must be nesting sites.” He glanced at the map. “And unless I’m wrong, the first of the nests is just over this rise, and down the hill on the other side.” The Jeep fishtailed in a patch of mud, and ground forward, lurching up the hill."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0046.txt", "text": "Mating Calls Richard Levine stood in the high hide, staring at the herds through binoculars. Malcolm had gone back to the trailer with the others, leaving Levine alone. In fact, Levine was relieved to have him gone. Levine was quite content to make observations on these extraordinary animals, and he was aware that Malcolm did not share his boundless enthusiasm. Indeed, Malcolm always seemed to have other considerations on his mind. And Malcolm was notably impatient with the act of observation—he wanted to analyze the data, but he did not want to collect it. Of course, among scientists, that represented a well-known difference in personality. Physics was a perfect example. The experimentalists and the theorists lived in utterly different worlds, passing papers back and forth but sharing little else in common. It was almost as if they were in different disciplines. And for Levine and Malcolm, the difference in their approach had surfaced early, back in the Santa Fe days. Both men were interested in extinction, but Malcolm approached the subject broadly, from a purely mathematical standpoint. His detachment, his inexorable formulas, had fascinated Levine, and the two men began an informal exchange over frequent lunches: Levine taught Malcolm paleontology; Malcolm taught Levine nonlinear mathematics. They began to draw some tentative conclusions which both found exciting. But they also began to disagree. More than once they were asked to leave the restaurant; then they would go out into the heat of Guadelupe Street, and walk back toward the river, still shouting at each other, while approaching tourists hurried to the other side of the street. In the end, their differences came down to personalities. Malcolm considered Levine pedantic and fussy, preoccupied with petty details. Levine never saw the big picture. He never looked at the consequences of his actions. For his own part, Levine did not hesitate to call Malcolm imperious and detached, indifferent to details. “God is in the details,” Levine once reminded him. “Maybe your God,” Malcolm shot back. “Not mine. Mine is in the process.” Standing in the high hide, Levine thought that answer was exactly what you would expect from a mathematician. Levine was quite satisfied that details were everything, at least in biology, and that the most common failing of his biological colleagues was insufficient attention to detail. For himself, Levine lived for the details, and he could not ever let them go. Like the animal that had attacked him with Diego. Levine thought of it often, turning it over and over again, reliving the events. Because there was something troubling, some impression that he could not get right. The animal had attacked quickly, and he had sensed it was a basic theropod form—hind legs, stiff tail, large skull, the usual—but in the brief flash in which he had seen the creature, there seemed to be a peculiarity around the orbits, which made him think of Carnotaurus sastrei. From the Gorro Frigo formation in Argentina."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0046.txt", "text": "And in addition, the skin was extremely unusual, it seemed to be a sort of bright mottled green, but there was something about it … He shrugged. The troubling idea hung in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t get to it. He just couldn’t get it. Reluctantly, Levine turned his attention to the parasaur herd, browsing by the river, alongside the apatosaurs. He listened as the parasaurs made their distinctive, low trumpeting sounds. Levine noticed that most often the parasaurs made a sound of short duration, a kind of rumbling honk. Sometimes, several animals made this sound at once, or very nearly overlapping; so it seemed to be an audible way of indicating to the herd where all the members were. Then there was a much longer, more dramatic trumpeting call. This sound was made infrequently, and only by the two largest animals in the herd, which raised their heads and trumpeted loud and long. But what did the sound mean? Standing there in the hot sun, Levine decided to perform a little experiment. He cupped his hands around his mouth, and imitated the parasaur’s trumpeting cry. It wasn’t a very good imitation, but immediately the lead parasaur looked up, turning its head this way and that. And it gave a low cry, answering Levine. Levine gave a second call. Again, the parasaur answered. Levine was pleased by this response, and made an entry in his notebook. But when he looked up again, he was surprised to see that the parasaur herd was drifting away from the apatosaurs. They collected together, formed a single line, and began to walk directly toward the high hide. Levine started to sweat. What had he done? In some bizarre corner of his mind, he wondered if he had imitated a mating cry. That was all he needed, to attract a randy dinosaur. Who knew how these animals behaved in mating? With growing anxiety, he watched them march forward. Probably, he should call Malcolm, and ask his advice. But as he thought about it, he realized that by imitating that cry he had interfered with the environment, introduced a new variable. He had done exactly what he had told Thorne he did not intend to do. It was thoughtless, of course. And surely not very important in the scheme of things. But Malcolm was certain to give him hell about it. Levine lowered his binoculars and stared. A deep trumpeting sound reverberated through the air, so loud it hurt his ears. The ground began to shake, making the high hide sway back and forth precariously. My God, he thought. They’re coming right for me. He bent over, and with fumbling fingers, searched his backpack for the radio."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0047.txt", "text": "Problems of Evolution In the trailer, Thorne took the rehydrated meals out of the microwave, and passed the plates around the little table. Everyone unwrapped them, and began to eat. Malcolm poked his fork into the food. “What is this stuff?” “Herb-baked chicken breast,” Thorne said. Malcolm took a bite, and shook his head. “Isn’t technology wonderful?” he said. “They manage to make it taste just like cardboard.” Malcolm looked at the two kids seated opposite him, who were eating energetically. Kelly glanced up at him, and gestured with her fork at the books strapped into a shelf beside the table. “One thing I don’t understand.” “Only one?” Malcolm said. “All this business about evolution,” she said. “Darwin wrote his book a long time ago, right?” “Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859,” Malcolm said. “And by now, everybody believes it, isn’t that right?” “I think it’s fair to say that every scientist in the world agrees that evolution is a feature of life on earth,” Malcolm said. “And that we are descended from animal ancestors. Yes.” “Okay,” Kelly said. “So, what’s the big deal now?” Malcolm smiled. “The big deal,” he said, “is that everybody agrees evolution occurs, but nobody understands how it works. There are big problems with the theory. And more and more scientists are admitting it.” Malcolm pushed his plate away. “You have to track the theory,” he said, “over a couple of hundred years. Start with Baron Georges Cuvier: the most famous anatomist in the world in his day, living in the intellectual center of the world, Paris. Around 1800, people began digging up old bones, and Cuvier realized that they belonged to animals no longer found on earth. That was a problem, because back in 1800, everybody believed that all the animal species ever created were still alive. The idea seemed reasonable because the earth was thought to be only a few thousand years old. And because God, who had created all the animals, would never let any of his creations become extinct. So extinction was agreed to be impossible. Cuvier agonized over these dug-up bones, but he finally concluded that God or no God, many animals had become extinct—as a result, he thought, of worldwide catastrophes, like Noah’s flood.” “Okay …” “So Cuvier reluctantly came to believe in extinction,” Malcolm said, “but he never accepted evolution. In Cuvier’s mind, evolution didn’t occur. Some animals died and some survived, but none evolved. In his view, animals didn’t change. Then along came Darwin, who said that animals did evolve, and that the dug-up bones were actually the extinct predecessors of living animals. The implications of Darwin’s idea upset lots of people. They didn’t like to think of God’s creations changing, and they didn’t like to think of monkeys in their family trees. It was embarrassing and offensive. The debate was fierce. But Darwin amassed a tremendous amount of factual data—he had made an overwhelming case."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0047.txt", "text": "So gradually his idea of evolution was accepted by scientists, and by the world at large. But the question remained: how does evolution happen? For that, Darwin didn’t have a good answer.” “Natural selection,” Arby said. “Yes, that was Darwin’s explanation. The environment exerts pressure which favors certain animals, and they breed more often in subsequent generations, and that’s how evolution occurs. But as many people realized, natural selection isn’t really an explanation. It’s just a definition: if an animal succeeds, it must have been selected for. But what in the animal is favored? And how does natural selection actually operate? Darwin had no idea. And neither did anybody else for another fifty years.” “But it’s genes,” Kelly said. “Okay,” Malcolm said. “Fine. We come to the twentieth century. Mendel’s work with plants is rediscovered. Fischer and Wright do population studies. Pretty soon we know genes control heredity—whatever genes are. Remember, through the first half of the century, all during World War I and World War II, nobody had any idea what a gene was. After Watson and Crick in 1953, we knew that genes were nucleotides arranged in a double helix. Great. And we knew about mutation. So by the late twentieth century, we have a theory of natural selection which says that mutations arise spontaneously in genes, that the environment favors the mutations that are beneficial, and out of this selection process evolution occurs. It’s simple and straightforward. God is not at work. No higher organizing principle involved. In the end, evolution is just the result of a bunch of mutations that either survive or die. Right?” “Right,” Arby said. “But there are problems with that idea,” Malcolm said. “First of all, there’s a time problem. A single bacterium—the earliest form of life—has two thousand enzymes. Scientists have estimated how long it would take to randomly assemble those enzymes from a primordial soup. Estimates run from forty billion years to one hundred billion years. But the earth is only four billion years old. So, chance alone seems too slow. Particularly since we know bacteria actually appeared only four hundred million years after the earth began. Life appeared very fast—which is why some scientists have decided life on earth must be of extraterrestrial origin. Although I think that’s just evading the issue.” “Okay …” “Second, there’s the coordination problem. If you believe the current theory, then all the wonderful complexity of life is nothing but the accumulation of chance events—a bunch of genetic accidents strung together. Yet when we look closely at animals, it appears as if many elements must have evolved simultaneously. Take bats, which have echolocation—they navigate by sound. To do that, many things must evolve. Bats need a specialized apparatus to make sounds, they need specialized ears to hear echoes, they need specialized brains to interpret the sounds, and they need specialized bodies to dive and swoop and catch insects. If all these things don’t evolve simultaneously, there’s no advantage."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0047.txt", "text": "And to imagine all these things happen purely by chance is like imagining that a tornado can hit a junkyard and assemble the parts into a working 747 airplane. It’s very hard to believe.” “Okay,” Thorne said. “I agree.” “Next problem. Evolution doesn’t always act like a blind force should. Certain environmental niches don’t get filled. Certain plants don’t get eaten. And certain animals don’t evolve much. Sharks haven’t changed for a hundred and sixty million years. Opossums haven’t changed since dinosaurs became extinct, sixty-five million years ago. The environments for these animals have changed dramatically, but the animals have remained almost the same. Not exactly the same, but almost. In other words, it appears they haven’t responded to their environment.” “Maybe they’re still well adapted,” Arby said. “Maybe. Or maybe there’s something else going on that we don’t understand.” “Like what?” “Like other rules that influence the outcome.” Thorne said, “Are you saying evolution is directed?” “No,” Malcolm said. “That’s Creationism and it’s wrong. Just plain wrong. But I am saying that natural selection acting on genes is probably not the whole story. It’s too simple. Other forces are also at work. The hemoglobin molecule is a protein that is folded like a sandwich around a central iron atom that binds oxygen. Hemoglobin expands and contracts when it takes on and gives up oxygen—like a tiny molecular lung. Now, we know the sequence of amino acids that make up hemoglobin. But we don’t know how to fold it. Fortunately, we don’t need to know that, because if you make the molecule, it folds all by itself. It organizes itself. And it turns out, again and again, that living things seem to have a self-organizing quality. Proteins fold. Enzymes interact. Cells arrange themselves to form organs and the organs arrange themselves to form a coherent individual. Individuals organize themselves to make a population. And populations organize themselves to make a coherent biosphere. From complexity theory, we’re starting to have a sense of how this self-organization may happen, and what it means. And it implies a major change in how we view evolution.” “But,” Arby said, “in the end, evolution still must be the result of the environment acting on genes.” “I don’t think it’s enough, Arb,” Malcolm said. “I think more is involved—I think there has to be more, even to explain how our own species arose.” “About three million years ago,” Malcolm said, “some African apes that had been living in trees came down to the ground. There was nothing special about these apes. Their brains were small and they weren’t especially smart. They didn’t have claws or sharp teeth for weapons. They weren’t particularly strong, or fast. They were certainly no match for a leopard. But because they were short, they started standing upright on their hind legs, to see over the tall African grass. That’s how it began. Just some ordinary apes, looking out over the grass."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0047.txt", "text": "“As time went on, the apes stood upright more and more of the time. That left their hands free to do things. Like all apes, they were tool-users. Chimps, for example, use twigs to fish for termites. That sort of thing. As time went on, our ape ancestors developed more complex tools. That stimulated their brains to grow in size and complexity. It began a spiral: more complex tools provoked more complex brains which provoked more complex tools. And our brains literally exploded, in evolutionary terms. Our brains more than doubled in size in about a million years. And that caused problems for us.” “Like what?” “Like getting born, for one thing. Big brains can’t pass through the birth canal—which means that both mother and child die in childbirth. That’s no good. What’s the evolutionary response? To make human infants born very early in development, when their brains are still small enough to pass through the pelvis. It’s the marsupial solution—most of the growth occurs outside the mother’s body. A human child’s brain doubles during the first year of life. That’s a good solution to the problem of birth, but it creates other problems. It means that human children will be helpless long after birth. The infants of many mammals can walk minutes after they’re born. Others walk in a few days, or weeks. But human infants can’t walk for a full year. They can’t feed themselves for even longer. So one price of big brains was that our ancestors had to evolve new, stable social organizations to permit long-term child care, lasting many years. These big-brained, totally helpless children changed society. But that’s not the most important consequence.” “No?” “No. Being born in an immature state means that human infants have unformed brains. They don’t arrive with a lot of built-in, instinctive behavior. Instinctively, a newborn infant can suck and grasp, but that’s about all. Complex human behavior is not instinctive at all. So human societies had to develop education to train the brains of their children. To teach them how to act. Every human society expends tremendous time and energy teaching its children the right way to behave. You look at a simpler society, in the rain forest somewhere, and you find that every child is born into a network of adults responsible for helping to raise the child. Not only parents, but aunts and uncles and grandparents and tribal elders. Some teach the child to hunt or gather food or weave; some teach them about sex or war. But the responsibilities are clearly defined, and if a child does not have, say, a mother’s brother’s sister to do a specific teaching job, the people get together and appoint a substitute. Because raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It’s the most important thing that happens, and it’s the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0047.txt", "text": "And eventually, a few million years later, we have kids using computers. “Now, if this picture makes sense, where does natural selection act? Does it act on the body, enlarging the brain? Does it act on the developmental sequence, pushing the kids out early? Does it act on social behavior, provoking cooperation and child-caring? Or does it act everywhere all at once—on bodies, on development, and on social behavior?” “Everywhere at once,” Arby said. “I think so,” Malcolm said. “But there may also be parts of this story that happen automatically, the result of self-organization. For example, infants of all species have a characteristic appearance. Big eyes, big heads, small faces, uncoordinated movements. That’s true of kids and puppies and baby birds. And it seems to provoke adults of all species to act tenderly toward them. In a sense, you might say infant appearance seems to self-organize adult behavior. And in our case, a good thing, too.” Thorne said, “What does that have to do with dinosaur extinction?” “Self-organizing principles can act for better or worse. Just as self-organization can coordinate change, it can also lead a population into decline, and cause it to lose its edge. On this island, my hope is we’ll see self-organizing adaptations in the behavior of real dinosaurs—and it’ll tell us why they became extinct. In fact, I’m pretty sure we already know why the dinosaurs became extinct.” The radio clicked. “Bravo,” Levine said, over the intercom. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. But perhaps you better see what is happening out here. The parasaurs are doing something very interesting, Ian.” “What’s that?” “Come and look.” “Kids,” Malcolm said, “you stay here and watch the monitors.” He pressed the radio button. “Richard? We’re on our way.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0048.txt", "text": "Parasaurs Richard Levine gripped the railing of the high hide, and watched tensely. Directly ahead, coming into view over a low rise, he saw the magnificent head of a Parasaurolophus walkerii. The duck-billed hadrosaur’s skull was three feet long, but it was made larger by a long horned crest that extended backward high in the air. As the animal approached, Levine could see the green mottling on the head. He saw the long powerful neck, the heavy body with its light-green underbelly. The parasaurolophus was twelve feet tall, and roughly the size of a large elephant. Its head was almost as high as the floor of the high hide. The animal moved steadily toward him, its footsteps thumping on the ground. Moments later, he saw a second head appear over the rise—then a third, and a fourth. The animals trumpeted, and walked in single file directly toward him. Within moments, the lead animal was abreast of the hide. Levine held his breath as it passed. The animal stared at him, its large brown eye rolling to watch him. It licked its lips with a dark-purple tongue. The hide shook with its footsteps. And then it had passed, continuing on toward the jungle behind. Soon after, the second animal passed. The third animal brushed against the structure, rocking it slightly. But the dinosaur did not seem to notice; it continued steadily on. So did the others. One by one, they disappeared, into the dense foliage behind the high hide. The earth ceased to vibrate. It was then that he saw the game trail, running past the high hide and into the jungle. Levine sighed. His body relaxed slowly. He picked up his binoculars and took a deep breath, calming himself. His panic faded. He began to feel better. And then he thought: What are they doing? Where are they going? Because, as he considered it, the behavior of the parasaurs seemed extremely strange. They had been in a defensive cluster while they fed, but in movement they had shifted to single file, which broke the usual clumped herd pattern, and made every animal vulnerable to predation. Yet the behavior was clearly organized. Moving in single file must serve some purpose. But what? Now that they were within the jungle, the animals had begun making low trumpeting sounds of short duration. Again, he had the sense that this was some sort of vocalization to convey position. Perhaps for members to keep track of each other while they moved through the jungle, while they changed locations. But why were they changing locations? Where were they going? What were they doing? He certainly couldn’t tell here, standing up in the high hide. He hesitated, listening to them. Then, in a decisive moment, he swung his leg over the railing and climbed quickly down the scaffolding."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0049.txt", "text": "Heat She felt heat, and wet. Something rough scraped along her face, like sandpaper. It happened again, this roughness on her cheek. Sarah Harding coughed. Something dripped on her neck. She smelled an odd, sweetish odor, like fermenting African beer. There was a deep hissing sound. Then the rough scraping again, starting at her neck, moving up her cheek. Slowly, she opened her eyes and stared up into the face of a horse. The big, dull eye of the horse peered down at her, with soft eyelashes. The horse was licking her with its tongue. It was almost pleasant, she thought, almost reassuring. Lying on her back in the mud, with a horse— It wasn’t a horse. The head was too narrow, she suddenly saw, the snout too tapered, the proportions all wrong. She turned to look and saw that it was a small head, leading to a surprisingly thick neck, and a heavy body— She jumped up, scrambling to her knees. “Oh my God!” Her sudden movement startled the big animal, which snorted in alarm, and moved slowly away. It walked a few steps down the muddy shore and then turned back, looking at her reproachfully. But she could see it now: small head, thick neck, huge lumbering body, with a double row of pentagonal plates running along the crest of the back. A dragging tail, with spikes in it. Harding blinked. It couldn’t be. Confused and dazed, her brain fumbled for the name of this creature, and it came back to her, all the way from childhood. Stegosaurus. It was a God damn stegosaurus. In her astonishment, her mind went back to the glaring white hospital room, when she had visited Ian Malcolm in his delirium, when he mumbled the names of several dinosaurs. She had always had her suspicions. But even now, confronted by a living stegosaur, her immediate reaction was that it must be some kind of a trick. Sarah squinted at the animal, looking for the seam in the costume, the mechanical joints beneath the skin. But the skin was seamless, and the animal moved in an integrated, organic way. The eyes blinked slowly. Then the stegosaurus turned away from her, moved to the water’s edge, and lapped it with its large rough tongue. The tongue was dark blue. How could that be? Dark blue from venous blood? Was it cold-blooded? No. This animal moved much too smoothly; it had the assurance—and indifference—of a warm-blooded creature. Lizards and reptiles always seemed to be paying attention to the temperature of their surroundings. This creature didn’t behave that way at all. It stood in the shade, and lapped up the cold water, indifferent to it all. She looked down at her shirt, saw the foamy spittle running down from her neck. It had drooled on her. She touched it with her fingers. It was warm. It was warm-blooded, all right. A stegosaurus. She stared."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0049.txt", "text": "The stegosaurus’s skin had a pebbled texture, but it was not scaly, like a reptile’s. It was more like the skin of a rhino, she thought. Or of a warthog. Except it was entirely hairless, without the bristles of a pig. The stegosaurus moved slowly. It had a peaceful, rather stupid air. And it probably was stupid, she thought, looking again at the head. The braincase was much smaller than that of a horse. Very small for the body weight. She got to her feet, and groaned. Her body ached. Every limb and muscle was sore. Her legs trembled. She took a breath. A few yards away, the stegosaurus paused, glanced at her, taking in her new upright appearance. When she did not move, it became indifferent once again, and returned to drinking from the river. “I’ll be damned,” she said. She looked at her watch. It was one-thirty in the afternoon, the sun still high overhead. She couldn’t use the sun to navigate, and the afternoon was very hot. She decided she had better start walking, and try and find Malcolm and Thorne. Barefooted, moving stiffly, her muscles aching, she headed into the jungle, away from the river. After walking half an hour, she was very thirsty, but she had trained herself to go without water for long periods in the African savannah. She continued on, indifferent to her own discomfort. As she approached the top of a ridge, she came to a game trail, a wide muddy track through the jungle. It was easier walking along the trail, and she had been following it for about fifteen minutes when she heard an excited yelping from somewhere ahead. It reminded her of dogs, and she proceeded cautiously. Moments later, there was a crashing sound in the underbrush, coming from several directions at once, and suddenly a dark-green, lizard-like animal about four feet high burst through the foliage at terrific speed, shrieked, and leapt over her. She ducked instinctively, and hardly had time to recover before a second animal appeared and raced past her. Within instants, a whole herd of animals was running past her on all sides, yelping in fear, and then the next one brushed against her and knocked her over. She fell in the mud as other animals leapt and crashed around her. A few feet ahead on the trail she saw a large tree with low-hanging branches. She acted without thinking, jumping to her feet, grabbing the branch, and swinging up. She reached safety just as a new dinosaur, with sharp-clawed feet, rushed through the mud beneath her, and chased after the fleeing green creatures. As this animal went away from her, she glimpsed a dark body, six feet tall, with reddish stripes like a tiger. Soon after, a second striped animal appeared, then a third—a pack of predators, hissing and snarling, as they pursued the green dinosaurs. From her years in the field, she found herself automatically counting the animals that rushed past her."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0049.txt", "text": "By her count, there were nine striped predators, and that immediately piqued her interest. It made no sense, she thought. As soon as the last of the predators was gone, she dropped down to the ground and hurried to follow them. It occurred to her that it might be foolish to do so, but her curiosity overcame her. She chased the tiger-dinosaurs up a hill, but even before she reached the crest she could tell from the snarls and growls that they had already brought an animal down. At the crest, she looked down on their kill. But it was like no kill she had ever seen in Africa. On the Seronera plain, a kill site had its own organization which was quite predictable, and in a way was almost stately. The biggest predators, lions or hyenas, were closest to the carcass, feeding with their young. Farther out, waiting their turn, were the vultures and marabou storks, and still farther out, the jackals and other small scavengers circled warily. After the big predators finished, the smaller animals moved in. Different animals ate different parts of the bodies: the hyenas and vultures ate bones; the jackals nibbled the carcass clean. This was the pattern at any kill, and as a result there was very little squabbling or fighting around the food. But here, she saw pandemonium—a feeding frenzy. The fallen animal was thickly covered with striped predators, all furiously ripping the flesh of the carcass, with frequent pauses to snarl and fight with each other. Their fights were openly vicious—one predator bit the adjacent animal, inflicting a deep flank wound. Immediately, several other predators snapped at the same animal, which limped away, hissing and bleeding, badly wounded. Once at the periphery, the wounded animal retaliated by biting the tail of another creature, again causing a serious wound. A young juvenile, about half the size of the others, kept pushing forward, trying to get at a bit of the carcass, but the adults did not make room for it. Instead, they snarled and snapped in fury. The youngster was frequently obliged to hop back nimbly, keeping its distance from the razor-sharp fangs of the grownups. Harding saw no infants at all. This was a society of vicious adults. As she watched the big predators, their heads and bodies smeared in blood, she noticed the crisscross pattern of healed scars on their flanks and necks. These were obviously quick, intelligent animals, yet they fought continually. Was that the way their social organization had evolved? If so, it was a rare event. Animals of many species fought for food, territory, and sex, but these fights most often involved display and ritual aggression; serious injury seldom occurred. There were exceptions, of course. When male hippos fought to take over a harem, they often severely wounded other males. But in any case, nothing matched what she saw now."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0049.txt", "text": "As she watched, the wounded animal at the edge of the kill slunk forward and bit another adult, which snarled and leapt at it, slashing with its long toe-claw. In a flash, the injured predator was eviscerated, coils of pale intestine slipping out through a wide gash. The animal fell howling to the ground, and immediately three adults turned away from the kill and jumped onto its newly fallen body, and began to tear the animal’s flesh with rapacious intensity. Harding closed her eyes, and turned away. This was a different world, and one she did not understand at all. In a daze, she headed back down the hill, moving quietly, carefully away from the kill."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0050.txt", "text": "Noise The Ford Explorer glided quietly forward along the jungle path. They were following a game trail on the ridge above the valley, heading down toward the high hide, in the valley below. Thorne drove. He said to Malcolm, “You were saying earlier that you knew why the dinosaurs became extinct.…” “Well, I’m pretty sure I do,” Malcolm said. “The basic situation is simple enough.” He shifted in his seat. “Dinosaurs arose in the Triassic, about two hundred and twenty-eight million years ago. They proliferated throughout the Jurassic and the Cretaceous periods that followed. They were the dominant life form on this planet for about a hundred and fifty million years—which is a very long time.” “Considering we’ve been here for only three million,” Eddie said. “Let’s not put on airs,” Malcolm said. “Some puny apes have been here for three million years. We haven’t. Recognizable human beings have only been on this planet for thirty-five thousand years,” he said. “That’s how long it’s been since our ancestors painted caves in France and Spain, drawing pictures of game to invoke success in the hunt. Thirty-five thousand years. In the history of the earth, that’s nothing at all. We’ve just arrived.” “Okay …” “And of course, even thirty-five thousand years ago, we were already making species extinct. Cavemen killed so much game that animals became extinct on several continents. There used to be lions and tigers in Europe. There used to be giraffes and rhinos in Los Angeles. Hell, ten thousand years ago, the ancestors of Native Americans hunted the woolly mammoth to extinction. This is nothing new, this human tendency—” “Ian.” “Well, it’s a fact, although your modern airheads think it’s all so brand-new—” “Ian. You were talking about dinosaurs.” “Right. Dinosaurs. Anyway, during a hundred and fifty million years on this planet, dinosaurs were so successful that by the Cretaceous there were twenty-one major groups of them. A few groups, like the camarasaurs and fabrosaurs, had died out. But the overwhelming majority of dinosaur groups were still active throughout the Cretaceous. And then, suddenly, about sixty-five million years ago, every single group became extinct. And only the birds remained. So. The question is—What was that?” “I thought you knew,” Thorne said. “No. I mean, what was that sound? Did you hear something?” “No,” Thorne said. “Stop the car,” Malcolm said. Thorne stopped the car, and clicked off the engine. They rolled down the windows and felt the still, midday heat. There was almost no breeze. They listened for a while. Thorne shrugged. “I don’t hear anything. What did you think you—” “Sssh,” Malcolm said. He cupped his hand to his ear and put his head out the window, listening intently. After a moment, he came back in. “I could have sworn I heard an engine.” “An engine? You mean an internal-combustion engine?” “Right.” He pointed to the east. “It sounded like it was coming from over there.” They listened again, and heard nothing. Thorne shook his head."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0050.txt", "text": "“I can’t imagine a gas engine here, Ian. There’s no gas to run one.” The radio clicked. “Dr. Malcolm?” It was Arby, in the trailer. “Yes, Arby.” “Who else is here? On the island?” “What do you mean?” “Turn on your monitor.” Thorne flicked on the dashboard monitor. They saw a view from one of the security cameras. The view looked down into the narrow, steep east valley. They saw the slope of a hillside, dark beneath the trees. A tree branch blocked much of the frame. But the view was still, silent. There was no sign of activity. “What did you see, Arby?” “Just watch.” Through the leaves, Thorne saw a flash of khaki, then another. He realized it was a person, half-walking, half-sliding, down the steep jungle slope toward the floor below. Small compact frame, short dark hair. “I’ll be damned,” Malcolm said, smiling. “You know who that is?” “Yes, of course. It’s Sarah.” “Well, we better go get her.” Thorne reached for the radio, pressed the button. “Richard,” he said. There was no answer. “Richard? Are you reading?” There was no answer. Malcolm sighed. “Great. He’s not answering. Probably decided to go for a walk. Pursuing his research …” “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Thorne said. “Eddie, unhook the motorcycle and go see what Levine’s doing now. Take a Lindstradt with you. We’ll go pick up Sarah.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0051.txt", "text": "Trail Levine followed the game trail, moving deeper into the darkness of the jungle. The parasaurs were somewhere up ahead, making a lot of noise as they crashed through the ferns and palms on the jungle floor. At least now he understood why they had formed into a single file: there was no other practical way to move through the dense growth of the rain forest. Their vocalizations had never stopped, but Levine noticed they were taking on a different character—more high-pitched, more excited. He hurried forward, pushing past wet palm fronds taller than he was, following the beaten trail. As he listened to the cries of the animals ahead, he also began to notice a distinctive odor, pungent and sweet-sour. He had the feeling the odor was growing stronger. But up ahead, something was happening, there was no doubt about it. The parasaur vocalizations were now clipped, almost barking sounds. He sensed in them an agitated quality. But what could agitate an animal twelve feet high and thirty feet long? His curiosity overwhelmed him. Levine began to run through the jungle, shoving aside palms, leaping over fallen trees. In the foliage ahead, he heard a hissing sound, a sort of spattering, and then one of the parasaurs gave a long, low trumpeting cry. Eddie Carr drove the motorcycle up to the high hide, and stopped. Levine was gone. He looked at the ground around the hide, and saw many deep animal footprints in the ground. The prints were large, about two feet in diameter, and they seemed to be going off into the jungle behind the hide. He scanned the ground, and saw fresh bootmarks as well. They had an Asolo tread; he recognized them as Levine’s. In some places the bootmarks disrupted the edge of the animal footprints, which meant that they had been made afterward. The bootmarks also led into the forest. Eddie Carr swore. The last thing he wanted to do was to go into that jungle. The very idea gave him the creeps. But what choice was there? He had to get Levine back. That guy, he thought, was getting to be a real problem. Eddie unshouldered the rifle, and set it laterally across the handlebars of the motorcycle. Then he twisted the grips, and silently, the bike moved forward, into darkness. Heart pounding with excitement, Levine pushed past the last of the big palms. He stopped abruptly. Directly ahead of him, the tail of a parasaur swung back and forth above his head. The animal’s hindquarters were turned toward him. And a thick stream of urine gushed from the posterior pubis, spattering on the ground below. Levine jumped back, avoiding the stream. Beyond the nearest animal, he saw a clearing in the jungle, trampled flat by countless animal feet. The parasaurs had located themselves at various positions within this clearing, and they were all urinating together. So they were latrine animals, he thought. That was fascinating, and totally unexpected."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0051.txt", "text": "Many contemporary animals, including rhinos and deer, preferred to relieve themselves at particular spots. And many times, the behavior of herds was coordinated. Latrine behavior was generally considered to be a method of marking territory. But whatever the reason, no one had ever suspected that dinosaurs acted in this way. As Levine watched, the parasaurs finished urinating, and each moved a few feet to the side. Then they defecated, again in unison. Each parasaur produced a large mound of straw-colored spoor. This was accompanied by low trumpeting from each animal in the herd—along with an enormous quantity of expelled flatus, redolent of methane. Behind him, a voice whispered, “Very nice.” He turned, and saw Eddie Carr sitting on the motorcycle. He was waving his hand in front of his face. “Dino farts,” he said. “Better not light a match around here, you’ll blow the place up.…” “Ssssh,” Levine hissed angrily, shaking his head. He turned back to the parasaurs. This was no time to be interrupted by a vulgar young fool. Several of the animals bent their heads down, and began to lick the puddles of urine. No doubt they wanted to recover lost nutrients, he thought. Perhaps salt. Or perhaps hormones. Or perhaps it was something seasonal. Or perhaps— Levine edged forward. They knew so little about these creatures. They didn’t even know the most basic facts about their lives—how they ate, how they eliminated, how they slept and bred. A whole world of intricate, interlocking behaviors had evolved in these long-vanished animals. Understanding them now could be the work of a lifetime for dozens of scientists. But that would probably never happen. All he could hope to do was make a few conjectures, a few simple deductions that skimmed the surface of the complexity of their lives. The parasaurs trumpeted, and headed deeper into the forest. Levine moved forward to follow them. “Dr. Levine,” Eddie said quietly. “Get on the bike. Now.” Levine ignored him, but as the big animals departed, he saw dozens of tiny green dinosaurs leap chittering out into the clearing. He realized at once what they were: Procompsognathus triassicus. Small scavenger, found by Fraas in 1913, in Bavaria. Levine stared, fascinated. Of course he knew the animal well, but only from reconstructions, because there were no complete skeletons of Procompsognathus anywhere in the world. Ostrom had done the most complete studies, but he had to work with a skeleton that was badly crushed, and fragmentary. The tail, neck, and arms were all missing from the animals Ostrom described. Yet here the procompsognathids were, fully formed and active, hopping around like so many chickens. As he watched, the compys began to eat the fresh dung, and drink what was left of the urine. Levine frowned. Was that part of ordinary scavenger behavior? Levine wasn’t sure.… He edged forward, to look at them more closely. “Dr. Levine!” Eddie whispered."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0051.txt", "text": "It was interesting that the compys only ate fresh dung, not the dried remnants that were everywhere in the clearing. Whatever nutrients they were obtaining from the dung, it must only be present in fresh specimens. That suggested a protein or hormone that would degrade over time. Probably he should obtain a fresh sample for analysis. He reached into his shirt pocket, and withdrew a plastic baggie. He moved among the compys, which seemed indifferent to his presence. He crouched down by the nearest dung pile, and reached slowly forward. “Dr. Levine!” He glanced back, annoyed, and in that moment one of the compys leapt forward and bit his hand. Another jumped onto his shoulder and bit his ear. Levine yelled, and stood up. The compys hopped onto the ground and scampered away. “Damn it!” he said. Eddie drove up on the motorcycle. “That’s enough,” he said. “Get on the damn bike. We’re getting out of here.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0052.txt", "text": "Nest The red Jeep Wrangler came to a stop. Directly ahead, the game trail they had been following continued through the foliage, to a clearing beyond. The game trail was wide and muddy, trampled flat by large animals. They could see large, deep footprints in the mud. From the clearing, they heard a low honking noise, like the sound of very large geese. Dodgson said, “Okay. Give me the box.” King didn’t answer. Baselton said, “What box?” Without taking his eyes off the clearing, Dodgson said, “There’s a black box on the seat beside you, and a battery pack. Give them to me.” Baselton grunted. “It’s heavy.” “That’s because of the cone magnets.” Dodgson reached back, took the box, which was made of black anodized metal. It was the size of a shoebox, except it ended in a flaring cone. Underneath was mounted a pistol grip. Dodgson clipped a battery pack to his belt, and plugged it into the box. Then he picked the box up by the pistol grip. There was a knob at the back, facing him, and a graduated dial. Dodgson said, “Batteries charged?” “They’re charged,” King said. “Okay,” Dodgson said. “I’ll go first, into the nest area. I’ll adjust the box, and get rid of the animals. You two follow behind me, and once the animals are gone, you each take an egg from the nest. Then you leave, and bring them back to the car. I’ll come back last. Then we all drive off. Got it?” “Right,” Baselton said. “Okay,” King said. “What kind of dinosaurs are these?” “I have no fucking idea,” Dodgson said, climbing out of the car. “And it doesn’t make any difference. Just follow the procedure.” He closed the door softly. The others got out quietly, and they started forward, down the wet trail. Their feet squished in the mud. The sound from the clearing continued. To Dodgson, it sounded like a lot of animals. He pushed aside the last of the ferns and saw them. It was a large nesting site, with perhaps four or five low earthen mounds, covered in grasses. The mounds were about seven feet wide, and three feet deep. There were twenty beige-colored adults around the mounds—a whole herd of dinosaurs, surrounding the nesting site. And the adults were big, thirty feet long and ten feet high, all honking and snorting. “Oh, my God,” Baselton said, staring. Dodgson shook his head. “They’re maiasaurs,” he whispered. “This is going to be a piece of cake.” Maiasaurs had been named by paleontologist Jack Horner. Before Horner, scientists assumed that dinosaurs abandoned their eggs, as most reptiles did. Those assumptions fitted the old picture of dinosaurs as cold-blooded, reptilian creatures. Like reptiles, they were thought to be solitary; murals on museum walls rarely showed more than one example from each species—a brontosaurus here, a stegosaurus or a triceratops there, wading through the swamps."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0052.txt", "text": "But Horner’s excavations in the badlands of Montana provided clear, unambiguous evidence that at least one species of hadrosaurs had engaged in complex nesting and parenting behavior. Horner incorporated that behavior in the name he gave these creatures: maiasaur meant “good-mother lizard.” Watching them now, Dodgson could see the maiasaurs were indeed attentive parents, the big adults circling the nests, moving carefully to step outside the shallow earthen mounds. The beige maiasaurs were duck-billed dinosaurs; they had large heads that ended in a broad, flattened snout, rather like the bill of a duck. They were taking mouthfuls of grass, and dropping it on the eggs in the mounds. This was, he knew, a way to regulate the temperature of the eggs. If the huge animals sat on the eggs, they would crush them. So instead they put a layer of grass over the eggs, which trapped heat and kept the eggs at a more constant temperature. The animals worked steadily. “They’re huge,” Baselton said. “They’re nothing but oversized cows,” Dodgson said. Although the maiasaurs were large, they were plant-eaters, and they had the docile, slightly stupid manner of cows. “Ready? Here we go.” He lifted the box like a gun, and stepped forward, into view. Dodgson expected a big reaction when the maiasaurs saw him, but there was none at all. They hardly seemed to notice him. One or two adults looked over, stared with dumb eyes, and then looked away. The animals continued to drop grass on the eggs, which were pale white, spherical, and nearly two feet long. Each was about twice the size of an ostrich egg. About the size of a small beach ball. No animals had hatched yet. King and Baselton stepped out, and stood beside him in the clearing. Still the maiasaurs ignored them. “Amazing,” Baselton said. “Fine for us,” Dodgson said. And he turned on the box. A continuous, high-pitched shriek filled the clearing. The maiasaurs immediately turned toward the sound, honking and lifting their heads. They seemed agitated, confused. Dodgson twisted the dial, and the shriek became higher, ear-splitting. The maiasaurs bobbed their heads, and moved away from the painful sound. They clustered at the far end of the clearing. Several of the animals urinated in alarm. A few of them moved away into the foliage, abandoning the nest. They were agitated, but they stayed away. “Go now,” Dodgson said. King stepped into the nearest nest, and grunted as he picked up an egg. His arms hardly reached around the huge sphere. The maiasaurs honked at him, but none of the adults moved forward. Then Baselton went into the nest, took an egg, and followed King back to the car. Dodgson walked backward, holding the box on the adults. At the edge of the clearing, he turned the sound off. At once the maiasaurs came back, honking loudly and repeatedly. But as they returned to the nests, it seemed as if the adults forgot what had just happened."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0052.txt", "text": "Within a few moments, they ceased honking, and went back to dropping grass over the eggs. They ignored Dodgson as he left and headed back along the game trail. Stupid animals, Dodgson thought, as he went to the car. Baselton and King were setting the eggs into big Styrofoam containers in the back, and fitting the foam packing around them carefully. Both men were grinning like kids. “That was amazing!” “Great! Fantastic!” “What’d I tell you?” Dodgson said. “Nothing to it.” He glanced at his watch. “At this rate, we’ll finish in less than four hours.” He climbed behind the steering wheel and turned on the engine. Baselton got into the back seat. King got in the passenger seat and took out the map. “Next,” Dodgson said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0053.txt", "text": "The High Hide “I tell you, it’s fine,” Levine said irritably. He was sweating in the stifling heat beneath the aluminum roof of the high hide. “Look, it didn’t even break the skin.” He held out his hand. There was a red semicircle where the compy had pressed its teeth into the skin, but that was all. Beside him, Eddie said, “Yeah, well, your ear is bleeding a little.” “I don’t feel anything. It can’t be bad.” “No, it’s not bad,” Eddie said, opening the first-aid kit. “But I better clean it up.” “I prefer,” Levine said, “to get on with my observations.” The dinosaurs were barely a quarter-mile away from him, and he could see them well. In the still midday air, he could hear them breathe. He could hear them breathe. Or at least he could, if this young man would leave him alone. “Look,” Levine said, “I know what I’m doing here. You came in at the end of a very interesting and successful experiment. I actually called the dinosaurs to me, by imitating their cry.” “You did?” Eddie said. “Yes, I did. That was what led them into the forest in the first place. So I hardly think that I need your assistance—” “The thing is,” Eddie said, “you got some of that dino shit on your ear and there’s a couple of little punctures. I’ll just clean it off for you.” He soaked a gauze pad with disinfectant. “May sting a little.” “I don’t care, I have other—Ow!” “Stop moving,” Eddie said. “It’ll only take a second.” “It’s absolutely unnecessary.” “If you just stand still, it’ll be done. There.” He took the gauze away. Levine saw brown and a faint streak of red. Just as he suspected, the injury was trivial. He reached up and touched his ear. It didn’t hurt at all. Levine squinted out at the plain, as Eddie packed up the first-aid case. “Jeez, it’s hot up here,” Eddie said. “Yes,” Levine said, shrugging. “Sarah Harding arrived, and I think they took her back to the trailer. You want to go back now?” “I can’t imagine why,” Levine said. “I just thought you might want to say hello or something,” Eddie said. “My work is here,” Levine said. He turned away, raised his binoculars to his eyes. “So,” Eddie said. “You don’t want to come back?” “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Levine said, staring through binoculars. “Not in a million years. Not in sixty-five million years.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0054.txt", "text": "Trailer Kelly Curtis listened to the sound of the shower. She couldn’t believe it. She stared at the muddy clothes tossed casually on the bed. Shorts and a khaki short-sleeve shirt. Sarah Harding’s actual clothes. She couldn’t help it. Kelly reached out and touched them. She noticed how the fabric was worn and frayed. Buttons sewn back on; they didn’t match. And there were some reddish streaks near the pocket that she thought must be old bloodstains. She reached down and touched the fabric— “Kelly?” Sarah was calling to her, from the shower. She remembered my name. “Yes?” Kelly said, her voice betraying her nervousness. “Is there any shampoo?” “I’ll look, Dr. Harding,” Kelly said, opening drawers hastily. The men had all gone into the next compartment, leaving her alone with Sarah while she washed. Kelly searched desperately, opening the drawers, slamming them shut again. “Listen,” Sarah called, “it’s okay if you can’t find any.” “I’m looking.…” “Is there any dishwashing liquid?” Kelly paused. There was a green plastic bottle by the sink. “Yes, Dr. Harding, but—” “Give it to me. It’s all the same stuff. I don’t care.” The hand reached out, past the shower curtain. Kelly handed it to her. “And my name is Sarah.” “Okay, Dr. Harding.” “Sarah.” “Okay, Sarah.” Sarah Harding was a regular person. Very informal and normal. Entranced, Kelly sat on the seat in the kitchen and waited, swinging her feet, in case Dr. Harding—Sarah—needed anything else. She listened to Sarah humming “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair.” After a few moments, the shower turned off, and her hand reached out and took the towel on the hook. And then she came out, wrapped in the towel. Sarah ran her fingers through her short hair, which seemed to be all the attention she gave to her appearance. “That feels better. Boy, this is a plush field trailer. Doc really did a great job.” “Yes,” she said. “It’s nice.” She smiled at Kelly. “How old are you, Kelly?” “Thirteen.” “What is that, eighth grade?” “Seventh.” “Seventh grade,” Sarah said, thoughtfully. Kelly said, “Dr. Malcolm left some clothes for you. He said he thought they’d fit.” She pointed to a clean pair of shorts and a tee shirt. “Whose are these?” “I think they’re Eddie’s.” Sarah held them up. “Might work.” She took them around the corner, into the sleeping area, and started getting dressed. She said, “What are you going to do when you grow up?” “I don’t know,” Kelly said. “That’s a very good answer.” “It is?” Kelly’s mother was always pushing her to get a part-time job, to decide what she wanted to do with her life. “Yes,” Sarah said. “Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties.” “Oh.” “What do you like to study?” “Actually, uh, I like math,” she said, in a sort of guilty voice."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0054.txt", "text": "Sarah must have heard her tone, because she said, “What’s wrong with math?” “Well, girls aren’t good at it. I mean, you know.” “No, I don’t know.” Sarah’s voice was flat. Kelly felt panic. She had been experiencing this warm feeling with Sarah Harding, but now she sensed it was dissolving away, as if she had given a wrong answer to a disapproving teacher. She decided not to say anything else. She waited in silence. After a moment Sarah came out again, wearing Eddie’s baggy clothes. She sat down and started putting on a pair of boots. She moved in a very normal, matter-of-fact way. “What did you mean, girls aren’t good at mathematics?” “Well, that’s what everybody says.” “Everybody like who?” “My teachers.” Sarah sighed. “Great,” she said, shaking her head. “Your teachers …” “And the other kids call me a brainer. Stuff like that. You know.” Kelly just blurted it out. She couldn’t believe that she was saying all this to Sarah Harding, whom she hardly knew at all except from articles and pictures, but here she was, telling her all this personal stuff. All these things that upset her. Sarah just smiled cheerfully. “Well, if they say that, you must be pretty good at math, huh?” “I guess.” She smiled. “That’s wonderful, Kelly.” “But the thing is, boys don’t like girls who are too smart.” Sarah’s eyebrows went up. “Is that so?” “Well, that’s what everybody says.…” “Like who?” “Like my mom.” “Uh-huh. And she probably knows what she’s talking about.” “I don’t know,” Kelly admitted. “My mom only dates jerks, actually.” “So she could be wrong?” Sarah asked, glancing up at Kelly as she tied her laces. “I guess.” “Well, in my experience, some men like smart women, and some don’t. It’s like everything else in the world.” She stood up. “You know about George Schaller?” “Sure. He studied pandas.” “Right. Pandas, and before that, snow leopards and lions and gorillas. He’s the most important animal researcher in the twentieth century—and you know how he works?” Kelly shook her head. “Before he goes into the field, George reads everything that’s ever been written about the animal he’s going to study. Popular books, newspaper accounts, scientific papers, everything. Then he goes out and observes the animal for himself. And you know what he usually finds?” She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. “That nearly everything that’s been written or said is wrong. Like the gorilla. George studied mountain gorillas ten years before Dian Fossey ever thought of it. And he found that what was believed about gorillas was exaggerated, or misunderstood, or just plain fantasy—like the idea that you couldn’t take women on gorilla expeditions, because the gorillas would rape them. Wrong. Everything … just … wrong.” Sarah finished tying her boots, and stood. “So, Kelly, even at your young age, there’s something you might as well learn now. All your life people will tell you things."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0054.txt", "text": "And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they’ll tell you will be wrong.” Kelly said nothing. She felt oddly disheartened to hear this. “It’s a fact of life,” Sarah said. “Human beings are just stuffed full of misinformation. So it’s hard to know who to believe. I know how you feel.” “You do?” “Sure. My mom used to tell me I’d never amount to anything.” She smiled. “So did some of my professors.” “Really?” It didn’t seem possible. “Oh yes,” Sarah said. “As a matter of fact—” From the other section of the trailer, they heard Malcolm say, “No! No! Those idiots! They could ruin everything!” Sarah immediately turned, and went into the other section. Kelly jumped off the seat, and hurried after her. The men were all clustered around the monitor. Everyone was talking at once, and they seemed to be upset. “This is terrible,” Malcolm was saying. “Terrible!” Thorne said, “Is that a Jeep?” “They had a red Jeep,” Harding said, coming up to look. “Then it’s Dodgson,” Malcolm said. “Damn!” “What’s he doing here?” “I can guess.” Kelly pushed through to get a look. On the screen, she saw foliage, and intermittent flashes of a red-and-black vehicle. “Where are they now?” Malcolm said to Arby. “I think they’re in the east valley,” Arby said. “Near where we found Dr. Levine.” The radio clicked. Levine’s voice said, “Do you mean there are now other people on the island?” “Yes, Richard.” “Well, you better go stop them, before they mess everything up.” “I know. Do you want to come back?” “Not without a compelling reason. Inform me if one arises.” And his radio clicked off. Harding stared at the screen, watching the Jeep. “That’s them, all right,” she said. “That’s your friend Dodgson.” “He’s not my friend,” Malcolm said. He got up, wincing in pain from his leg. “Let’s go,” he said. “We have to stop these bastards. There’s no time to waste.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0055.txt", "text": "Nest The red Jeep Wrangler rolled softly to a stop. Directly ahead was a wall of dense foliage. But through it they could see sunlight, from the clearing beyond. Dodgson sat quietly in the car, listening. King turned to him, about to speak, but Dodgson held up his hand, gesturing to him to be silent. Then he heard it clearly—a low rumbling growl, almost a purr. It was coming from beyond the foliage ahead. It sounded like the biggest jungle cat he had ever heard. And intermittently, he felt a slight vibration, hardly anything, but enough to make the car keys clink against the steering column. As he felt that vibration, it slowly dawned on him: It’s walking. Something very big. Walking. Beside him, King was staring forward in astonishment; his mouth hung open. Dodgson glanced back at Baselton; the professor was gripping the seat with white fingers, as he listened to the sound. A shadow moved across the ferns directly ahead. Judging by the shadow, the animal was twenty feet high, and forty feet long. It walked on its hind legs, and had a large body, a short neck, a very big head. A tyrannosaur. Dodgson hesitated, staring at the shadow. His heart was pounding in his chest. He considered going on to the next nest, but he was confident that the box would work here, too. He said, “Let’s get this over with. Give me the box.” Baselton handed him the box, just as he had done before. Dodgson said, “Charged?” “Batteries are charged,” King said. “Okay,” he said. “Here we go. Exactly the same as before. I’ll go first, you two follow, and bring the eggs back to the car. Ready?” “Ready,” Baselton said. King did not answer. He was still staring at the shadow. “What kind of a dinosaur is that?” “That’s a tyrannosaurus.” “Oh Jesus,” King said. “A tyrannosaurus?” Baselton said. “It doesn’t matter what it is,” Dodgson said irritably. “Just follow the plan, like before. Everybody ready?” “Just a minute,” Baselton said. King said, “What if it doesn’t work?” “We already know it works,” Dodgson said. “There’s a rather curious fact about tyrannosaurs that was recently reported,” Baselton said. “A paleontologist named Roxton did a study of the tyrannosaur braincase, and concluded that they have a brain not much different from a frog’s, although of course much bigger. The implication was their nervous systems were adapted to motion only. They can’t see you if you stand still. Stationary objects become invisible to them.” “Are you sure about that?” King said. Baselton said, “That was the report. And it makes perfect sense. One can’t forget that dinosaurs, for all their intimidating size, were actually rather primitive intellects. It’s quite logical that a tyrannosaur would have the mental equipment of a frog.” “I don’t see why we’re rushing into this,” King said, nervously. He stared forward. “It’s much bigger than the other ones.” “So what?” Dodgson said. “You heard what George said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0055.txt", "text": "It’s just a big frog. Let’s get it done. Get out of the fucking car. And don’t slam the doors.” George Baselton had felt quite good and authoritative, recalling that obscure article from the journals. He had been in his accustomed role, dispensing information to people who lacked it. Now that he approached the nest, he was astonished to notice that his knees had begun to tremble. His legs felt like rubber. He had always thought that was a figure of speech. He was alarmed to realize it could be literally true. He bit his lip, and forced himself under control. He was not, he told himself, going to show fear. He was the master of this situation. Dodgson was already moving ahead, holding the black box like a gun in his hand. Baselton glanced over at King, who was deathly pale and sweating. He looked on the verge of collapse; he moved forward slowly. Baselton walked alongside him. Making sure he was all right. Up ahead, Dodgson gave a final glance back, waved to Baselton and King to catch up. He glared at both of them, and then he stepped through the foliage into the clearing. Baselton saw the tyrannosaur. No—there were two! They stood on both sides of a mud mound, two adults, twenty feet high on their hind legs, powerful, dark red, with big vicious jaws. Like the maiasaurs, the animals stared at Dodgson for a moment, a dumb stare, as if amazed to see an intruder. And then the tyrannosaurs roared in fury. An incredible, bellowing, air-shaking roar. Dodgson lifted the box, pointed it at the animals. Immediately, a continuous, high-pitched shriek filled the clearing. The tyrannosaurs roared in response, and lowered their heads, extending their necks forward, snapping their jaws, preparing to attack. They were huge—and they were unaffected by the sound. They started to come around the mound, toward Dodgson. The earth shook as they moved. “Oh fuck,” King said. But Dodgson stayed cool. He twisted the dial. Baselton clapped his hands over his ears. The shriek became higher, louder, ear-splitting, incredibly painful. The response was immediate: the tyrannosaurs stepped back as if they had received a physical blow. They ducked their heads. They blinked their eyes rapidly. The sound seemed to vibrate in the air. They roared again, but weakly now, without conviction. A terrible screaming came from inside the mud nest. Dodgson moved forward, pointing the box in the air, directly at the animals. The tyrannosaurs backed away, looking into the nest, then to Dodgson. They swung their heads back and forth rapidly, as if trying to clear their ears. Dodgson calmly adjusted the dial. The sound went higher. It was now excruciating. Dodgson began to climb the mud mound of the nest. Baselton and King scrambled up, following him. Baselton found himself looking down into a nest with four mottled white eggs, and two young babies that looked for all the world like scrawny oversized turkeys."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0055.txt", "text": "Anyway, some kind of gigantic baby birds. The two tyrannosaurs were at the far end of the clearing, held away by the sound. Like the maiasaurs, they urinated in agitation. They stomped their feet. But they did not come closer. Over the ear-splitting shriek of the box, Dodgson shouted, “Get the eggs!” In a daze, King stumbled down into the nest, grabbing the nearest egg. He fumbled it in his shaking hands; the egg flew into the air; he caught it again, and lurched back. He stepped on the leg of one of the babies, which screamed in fear and pain. At this, the parents tried to come forward again, drawn by the infant’s cries. King hastily clambered out of the nest, ducked away through the foliage. Baselton watched him go. “George!” Dodgson shouted, still aiming the box at the tyrannosaurs. “Get the other egg!” Baselton turned to look at the adult tyrannosaurs, seeing their agitation and their anger, watching their jaws snap open and closed, and he had the sudden feeling that sound or no sound, these animals would not allow anyone to enter the nest again. King had been lucky but Baselton would not be lucky, he could feel it, and— “George! Now!” Baselton said, “I can’t!” “You dumb fuck!” Holding the gun high, Dodgson began to climb down into the nest himself. But as he started, he twisted his body—and the battery plug pulled out of the box. The sound abruptly died. In the clearing, there was silence. Baselton moaned. The tyrannosaurs shook their heads a final time, and roared. Baselton saw Dodgson go rigidly still, his body frozen. Baselton also stood still. Somehow, he forced his body to stay where he was. He forced his knees to stop trembling. He held his breath. And he waited. On the far side of the clearing, the tyrannosaurs began to move toward him. “What are they doing?” Arby cried, in the trailer. He was so close to the monitor his nose almost touched the screen. “Are they crazy? They’re just standing there.” Beside him, Kelly said nothing. She watched the screen silently. “Want to be out there now, Kel?” Arby said. “Shut up,” Kelly said. “No, they’re not crazy,” Malcolm said over the radio, as he stared at the dashboard monitor. The Explorer lurched down the trail, heading toward the eastern sector of the island. Thorne was driving. Sarah and Malcolm were in the back seat. Sarah said, “He should be trying to put his sound machine together again. Are they really just going to stand there?” “Yes,” Malcolm said. “Why?” “They are misinformed,” Malcolm said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0056.txt", "text": "Dodgson Dodgson watched the lead tyrannosaur come toward him. For such big animals, they were cautious. Only one of the two parents approached them, and although it paused to roar fiercely every few paces, it seemed oddly tentative, as if it was perplexed by the fact that the men were staying there. Or perhaps it could not see them. Perhaps he and Baselton had vanished from their view. The other parent hung back, remaining toward the other side of the nest. Bobbing and ducking its head, agitated. Agitated but not attacking. Of course, the roars of the approaching dinosaur were terrifying, blood-chilling. Dodgson didn’t dare glance at Baselton, just a few yards away. Baselton was probably peeing in his pants right now. Just so he didn’t turn and run, Dodgson thought. If he ran, he was a dead man. If he stayed perfectly still, everything would be all right. Standing stiffly, keeping his body rigid, Dodgson held the anodized box at waist level in his left hand, near his belt buckle. With his right hand, he slowly, ever so slowly, pulled up the disconnected power cord. In a few moments he would feel the end plug in his hands, and then he would slip it back into the box. Meanwhile, he never took his eyes off the approaching tyrannosaur. He felt the ground shake beneath his feet. He heard the cries of the infant that King had stepped on. Those cries seemed to bother the parents, to arouse them. No matter. Just a few seconds more, and he would have the plug back in the power pack. And then … The tyrannosaur was very close now. Dodgson could smell the rotten odor of the carnivore. The animal roared, and he felt hot breath. It was standing right by Baselton. Dodgson turned his head fractionally, to watch. Baselton stood entirely still. The tyrannosaur came close, and lowered his big head. He snorted at Baselton. He raised his head again, as if perplexed. He really can’t see him, Dodgson thought. The tyrannosaur bellowed, a ferocious sound. Somehow Baselton stayed unmoving. The tyrannosaur bent over, bringing his huge head down again. The jaws opened and closed. Baselton stared straight forward, not blinking. With huge flaring nostrils, the tyrannosaur smelled him, a long snuffling inhalation that fluttered Baselton’s trouser legs. Then the tyrannosaur nudged Baselton tentatively with his snout. And in that moment Dodgson realized that the animal could see him after all, and then the tyrannosaur swung his head laterally, striking Baselton in the side and easily knocking him to the earth. Baselton yelled as the tyrannosaur’s big foot came down, pinning him to the ground. Baselton raised his arms and shouted “You son of a bitch!” just as the head came down, jaws wide, and closed on him."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0056.txt", "text": "The movement was gentle, almost delicate, but in the next instant the head snapped high, tearing the body, and Dodgson heard a scream and saw something small and floppy hanging from the jaws, and realized it was Baselton’s arm. Baselton’s hand swung freely, the metal band of his wristwatch glinting beneath the tyrannosaur’s huge eye. Baselton was screaming, a continuous undifferentiated sound, and hearing it, Dodgson broke into a dizzying sweat. Then he turned and ran, back toward the car, back toward safety, back toward anything. He ran. Kelly and Arby turned away from the monitor at the same moment. Kelly felt sick. She couldn’t watch. But through the radio they could still hear the tinny screams of the man lying on his back, while the tyrannosaur tore him apart. “Turn it off,” Kelly said. A moment later, the sound stopped. Kelly sighed, let her shoulders drop. “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t do anything,” Arby said. She glanced back at the screen, and quickly looked away again. The tyrannosaur was tearing at something red. She shivered. It was silent in the trailer. Kelly heard the tick of electronic counters, and the thumping of the water pumps under the floor. Outside, there was the faint sound of wind rustling the tall grass. Kelly suddenly felt very alone, very isolated on this island. “Arby,” she said, “what are we going to do?” Arby didn’t answer her. He bolted for the bathroom. “I knew it,” Malcolm said, staring at the dashboard monitor. “I knew that would happen. They tried to steal eggs. Now look—the tyrannosaurs are leaving! Both of them!” He pushed the radio transmitter. “Arby. Kelly. Are you there?” “We can’t talk,” Kelly said. The Explorer continued down the hillside, toward the area of the tyrannosaur nest. Thorne gripped the wheel grimly as he drove. “What a damn mess.” “Kelly. Are you listening? We can’t see what’s happening down there. The tyrannosaurs have left the nest! Kelly? What’s happening?” Dodgson sprinted for the Jeep. The battery pack fell off his belt as he ran, but he didn’t care. Up ahead in the Jeep, he saw King waiting, tense and pale. Dodgson got behind the wheel, started the engine. The tyrannosaurs roared. “Where’s Baselton?” King asked. “Didn’t make it,” Dodgson said. “What do you mean?” “I mean he fucking didn’t make it!” Dodgson yelled, and slammed the car into gear. The Jeep took off, bouncing up the hill. They heard the tyrannosaurs bellowing behind them. King was holding the egg, looking back down the road. “Maybe we should get rid of this,” he said. “Don’t you fucking dare!” Dodgson said. King was rolling down the window. “Maybe he just wants the egg back.” “No,” Dodgson said. “No!” He reached across the passenger seat, struggling with King as he drove. The trail was narrow, with deep ruts. The Jeep lurched forward. Suddenly, one of the tyrannosaurs burst from the trees in the road ahead. The animal stood there, snarling, blocking the road."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0056.txt", "text": "“Oh Christ,” Dodgson said, slamming on the brakes. The car slid sickeningly in the muddy track, came to a stop. The tyrannosaur lumbered toward them, bellowing. “Turn around!” King screamed. “Turn around!” But Dodgson didn’t turn around. He slammed the car into reverse, and started backing down the trail. He was driving fast, and the road was narrow. “You’re crazy!” King said. “You’re going to kill us!” Dodgson swung his arm, smacked King with his hand. “Shut the fuck up!” he shouted. It took all his attention to maneuver the car back down the winding trail. Even going as fast as he could, he was sure the tyrannosaur would be faster. It wasn’t going to work. They were in a fucking Jeep with a fucking cloth top, and they were going to get killed and— “No!” King shouted. Behind them, Dodgson saw the second tyrannosaur, charging up the road toward them. He looked forward, saw the first tyrannosaur bearing down on them. They were trapped. He twisted the wheel in panic and the car ran off the road, crashing backward into dense underbrush and surrounding trees, and he felt a jolting impact. Then the rear of the car dropped sickeningly, and he realized the back wheels were hanging over the edge of a hill. He gunned the engine frantically, but the wheels just spun in the air. It was hopeless. And slowly, the car sank backward, deeper into foliage so dense he could not see through it. But they were over the edge. Beside him, King was sobbing. He heard the tyrannosaurs roaring, very near now. Dodgson flung open the car door, and jumped out into space. He plunged through the foliage, fell, hit a tree trunk, and tumbled down a steep jungle hill. Somewhere along the way he felt a sharp pain in his forehead, and saw stars for the brief moment before blackness enveloped him, and he lost consciousness."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0057.txt", "text": "Decision They sat in the Explorer, on top of the ridge overlooking the jungle-covered east valley. The windows were down. They listened to the bellowing of the tyrannosaurs, as the huge animals crashed through the underbrush. “They both left the nest,” Thorne said. “Yeah. Those guys must have taken something.” Malcolm sighed. They were silent a while, listening. They heard a soft buzzing, and then Eddie pulled up alongside them, in the motorcycle. “I thought you might need help. Are you going to go down?” Malcolm shook his head. “No, absolutely not. It’s too dangerous—we don’t know where they are.” Sarah Harding said, “Why did Dodgson just stand there like that? That’s not the way to act around predators. You get caught around lions, you make a lot of noise, wave your hands, throw things at them. Try to scare them off. You don’t just stand there.” “He probably read the wrong research paper,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. “There’s been a theory going around that tyrannosaurs can only see movement. A guy named Roxton made casts of rex braincases, and concluded that tyrannosaurs had the brain of a frog.” The radio clicked. Levine said, “Roxton is an idiot. He doesn’t know enough anatomy to have sex with his wife. His paper was a joke.” “What paper?” Thorne said. The radio clicked again. “Roxton,” Levine said, “believed that tyrannosaurs had a visual system like an amphibian: like a frog. A frog sees motion but doesn’t see stillness. But it is quite impossible that a predator such as a tyrannosaur would have a visual system that worked that way. Quite impossible. Because the most common defense of prey animals is to freeze. A deer or something like that, it senses danger, and it freezes. A predator has to be able to see them anyway. And of course a tyrannosaur could.” Over the radio, Levine snorted with disgust. “It’s just like the other idiotic theory put forth by Grant a few years back that a tyrannosaur could be confused by a driving rainstorm, because it was not adapted to wet climates. That’s equally absurd. The Cretaceous wasn’t particularly dry. And in any case, tyrannosaurs are North American animals—they’ve only been found in the U.S. or Canada. Tyrannosaurus rex lived on the shores of the great inland sea, east of the Rocky Mountains. There are lots of thunderstorms on mountain slopes. I’m quite sure tyrannosaurs saw plenty of rain, and they evolved to deal with it.” “So is there any reason why a tyrannosaur might not attack somebody?” Malcolm said. “Yes, of course. The most obvious one,” Levine said. “Which is?” “If it wasn’t hungry. If it had just eaten another animal. Anything larger than a goat would take care of its hunger for hours to come. No, no. The tyrannosaur sees fine, moving or still.” They listened to the roaring, coming up from the valley below. They saw thrashing in the underbrush, about half a mile away, to the north. More bellowing."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0057.txt", "text": "The two rexes seemed to be answering each other. Sarah Harding said, “What are we carrying?” Thorne said, “Three Lindstradts. Fully loaded.” “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.” The radio crackled. “I’m not there,” Levine said, over the radio. “But I’d certainly advise waiting.” “The hell with waiting,” Malcolm said. “Sarah’s right. Let’s go down there and see how bad it is.” “Your funeral,” Levine said. Arby came back to the monitor, wiping his chin. He still looked a little green. “What are they doing now?” “Dr. Malcolm and the others are going to the nest.” “Are you kidding?” he said, alarmed. “Don’t worry,” Kelly said. “Sarah can handle it.” “You hope,” Arby said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0058.txt", "text": "Nest Just beyond the clearing, they parked the Explorer. Eddie pulled up in the motorcycle, and leaned it against the trunk of a tree and waited while the others climbed out of the Explorer. Sarah Harding smelled the familiar sour odor of rotting flesh and excrement that always marked a carnivore nesting site. In the afternoon heat, it was faintly nauseating. Flies buzzed in the still air. Harding took one of the rifles, slung it over her shoulder. She looked at the three men. They were all standing very still, tense, not moving. Malcolm’s face was pale, particularly around the lips. It reminded her of the time that Coffmann, her old professor, had visited her in Africa. Coffmann was one of those hard-drinking Hemingway types, with lots of affairs at home, and lots of tales of his adventures with the orangs in Sumatra, the ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar. So she took him with her to a kill site in the savannah. And he promptly passed out. He weighed more than two hundred pounds, and she had to drag him out by the collar while the lions circled and snarled at her. It had been a good lesson for her. Now she leaned close to the three men and whispered, “If you’ve got any qualms about this, don’t go. Just wait here. I don’t want to worry about you. I can do this myself.” She started off. “Are you sure—” “Yes. Now keep quiet.” She moved directly toward the clearing. Malcolm and the others hurried to catch up with her. She pushed aside the palm fronds, and stepped out into the open. The tyrannosaurs were gone, and the mud cone was deserted. Over to the right, she saw a shoe, with a bit of torn flesh sticking out above the ragged sock. That was all there was left of Baselton. From within the nest, she heard a plaintive, high-pitched squeal. Harding climbed up the mud bank, with Malcolm struggling to follow. She saw two infant tyrannosaurs there, mewling. Nearby were three large eggs. They saw heavy footprints all around, in the mud. “They took one of the eggs,” Malcolm said. “Damn.” “You didn’t want anything to disrupt your little ecosystem?” Malcolm smiled crookedly. “Yeah. I was hoping.” “Too bad,” she said, and moved quickly around the edge of the pit. She bent over, looking at the baby tyrannosaurs. One of the babies was cowering, its downy neck pulled into its body. But the second one behaved very differently. It did not move as they approached, but remained lying sprawled on its side, breathing shallowly, eyes glazed. “This one’s been hurt,” she said. Levine was standing in the high hide. He pressed the headset to his ear, and spoke into the microphone near his cheek. “I need a description,” he said. Thorne said, “There’s two of them, roughly two feet long, weighing maybe forty pounds. About the size of small cassowary birds. Large eyes. Short snouts. Pale-brown color."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0058.txt", "text": "And there’s a ring of down around the necks.” “Can they stand?” “Uh … if they can, not very well. They’re kind of flopping around. Squeaking a lot.” “Then they’re infants,” Levine said, nodding. “Probably only a few days old. Never been out of the nest. I’d be very careful.” “Why is that?” “With offspring that young,” Levine said, “the parents won’t leave them for long.” Harding moved closer to the injured infant. Still mewling, the baby tried to crawl toward her, dragging its body awkwardly. One leg was bent at an odd angle. “I think the left leg’s hurt.” Eddie came closer, standing alongside her to see. “Is it broken?” “Yeah, probably, but—” “Hey!” Eddie said. The baby lunged forward, and clamped its jaws around the ankle of his boot. He pulled his foot away, dragging the baby, which held its grip tightly. “Hey! Let go!” Eddie lifted his leg up, shook it back and forth, but the baby refused to let go. He pulled for a moment longer, then stopped. Now the baby just lay there on the ground, breathing shallowly, jaws still locked around Eddie’s boot. “Jeez,” Eddie said. “Aggressive little guy, isn’t he,” Sarah said. “Right from birth …” Eddie looked down at the tiny, razor-sharp jaws. They hadn’t penetrated the leather. The baby held on firmly. With the butt of his rifle, he poked the infant’s head a couple of times. It had no effect at all. The baby lay on the ground, breathing shallowly. Its big eyes blinked slowly as they stared up at Eddie, but it did not release its grip. They heard the distant roars of the parents, somewhere to the north. “Let’s get out of here,” Malcolm said. “We’ve seen what we came here to see. We’ve got to find where Dodgson went.” Thorne said, “I think I saw a track up the trail. They might have gone off there.” “We better have a look.” They all started back to the car. “Wait a minute,” Eddie said, looking down at his foot. “What am I going to do about the baby?” “Shoot it,” Malcolm said, over his shoulder. “You mean kill it?” Sarah said, “It’s got a broken leg, Eddie, it’s going to die anyway.” “Yeah, but—” Thorne called, “We’re going back up the trail, Eddie, and if we don’t find Dodgson, we’ll take the ridge road going toward the laboratory. Then down to the trailer again.” “Okay, Doc. I’m right behind you.” Eddie lifted his rifle, turned it in his hands. “Do it now,” Sarah said, climbing into the Explorer. “Because you don’t want to be here when Momma and Poppa get back.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0059.txt", "text": "Gambler’s Ruin Driving up the trail, Malcolm stared at the dashboard monitor, as the image flicked from one camera view to another. He was looking for Dodgson and the rest of his party. Over the radio, Levine said, “How bad was it?” “They took one egg,” Malcolm said. “And we had to shoot one of the babies.” “So, a loss of two. Out of a total hatching brood of what, six?” “That’s right.” “Frankly, I’d say it’s a minor matter,” Levine said. “As long as you stop those people from doing anything more.” “We’re looking for them now,” Malcolm said morosely. Harding said, “It was bound to happen, Ian. You know you can’t expect to observe the animals without changing anything. It’s a scientific impossibility.” “Of course it is,” Malcolm said. “That’s the greatest single scientific discovery of the twentieth century. You can’t study anything without changing it.” Since Galileo, scientists had adopted the view that they were objective observers of the natural world. That was implicit in every aspect of their behavior, even the way they wrote scientific papers, saying things like “It was observed …” As if nobody had observed it. For three hundred years, that impersonal quality was the hallmark of science. Science was objective, and the observer had no influence on the results he or she described. This objectivity made science different from the humanities, or from religion—fields where the observer’s point of view was integral, where the observer was inextricably mixed up in the results observed. But in the twentieth century, that difference had vanished. Scientific objectivity was gone, even at the most fundamental levels. Physicists now knew you couldn’t even measure a single subatomic particle without affecting it totally. If you stuck your instruments in to measure a particle’s position, you changed its velocity. If you measured its velocity, you changed its position. That basic truth became the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: that whatever you studied you also changed. In the end, it became clear that all scientists were participants in a participatory universe which did not allow anyone to be a mere observer. “I know objectivity is impossible,” Malcolm said impatiently. “I’m not concerned about that.” “Then what are you concerned about?” “I’m concerned about the Gambler’s Ruin,” Malcolm said, staring at the monitor. Gambler’s Ruin was a notorious and much-debated statistical phenomenon that had major consequences both for evolution, and for everyday life. “Let’s say you’re a gambler,” he said. “And you’re playing a coin-toss game. Every time the coin comes up heads, you win a dollar. Every time it comes up tails, you lose a dollar.” “Okay …” “What happens over time?” Harding shrugged. “The chances of getting either heads or tails is even. So maybe you win, maybe you lose. But in the end, you’ll come out at zero.” “Unfortunately, you don’t,” Malcolm said. “If you gamble long enough, you’ll always lose—the gambler is always ruined. That’s why casinos stay in business. But the question is, what happens over time?"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0059.txt", "text": "What happens in the period before the gambler is finally ruined?” “Okay,” she said. “What happens?” “If you chart the gambler’s fortunes over time, what you find is the gambler wins for a period, or loses for a period. In other words, everything in the world goes in streaks. It’s a real phenomenon, and you see it everywhere: in weather, in river flooding, in baseball, in heart rhythms, in stock markets. Once things go bad, they tend to stay bad. Like the old folk saying that bad things come in threes. Complexity theory tells us the folk wisdom is right. Bad things cluster. Things go to hell together. That’s the real world.” “So what are you saying? That things are going to hell now?” “They could be, thanks to Dodgson,” Malcolm said, frowning at the monitor. “What happened to those bastards, anyway?”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0060.txt", "text": "King There was a buzzing, like the sound of a distant bee. Howard King was dimly aware of it, as he came slowly back to consciousness. He opened his eyes, and saw the windshield of a car, and the branches of trees beyond. The buzzing was louder. King didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t remember how he got here, what had happened. He felt pain in his shoulders, and at his hips. His forehead throbbed. He tried to remember but the pain distracted him, prevented him from thinking clearly. The last thing he remembered was the tyrannosaur in front of him on the road. That was the last thing. Then Dodgson had looked back and— King turned his head, and cried out as sudden, sharp pain ran up his neck to his skull. The pain made him gasp, took his breath away. He closed his eyes, wincing. Then he slowly opened them again. Dodgson was not in the car. The driver’s door hung wide open, a dappled shadow across the door panel. The keys were still in the ignition. Dodgson was gone. There was a streak of blood across the top of the steering wheel. The black box was on the floor by the gearshift. The open driver’s door creaked a little, moved a little. In the distance, King heard the buzzing again, like a giant bee. It was a mechanical sound, he now realized. Something mechanical. It made him think of the boat. How long would the boat wait at the river? What time was it, anyway? He looked at his watch. The crystal was smashed, the hands fixed at 1:54. He heard the buzzing again. It was coming closer. With an effort, King pushed himself away from the seat, toward the dashboard. Streaks of electric pain shot up his spine, but quickly subsided. He took a deep breath. I’m all right, he thought. At least, I’m still here. King looked at the open driver’s door, in the sunlight. The sun was still high. It must still be sometime in the afternoon. When was the boat leaving? Four o’clock? Five o’clock? He couldn’t remember any more. But he was certain that those Spanish fishermen wouldn’t hang around once it started to get dark. They’d leave the island. And Howard King wanted to be on the boat when they did. It was the only thing he wanted in the world. Wincing, he raised himself up, and painfully slid over to the driver’s seat. He settled himself in, took a deep breath, and then leaned over, and looked out the open door. The car was hanging over empty space, supported by trees. He saw a steep jungle hillside, falling away beneath him. It was dark beneath the canopy of trees. He felt dizzy, just looking down. The ground must be twenty or thirty feet below him. He saw scattered green ferns, and a few dark boulders. He twisted his body to look more. And then he saw him."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0060.txt", "text": "Dodgson lay on his back, head downward, on the slope of the hill. His body was crumpled, arms and legs thrown out in awkward positions. He was not moving. King couldn’t see him very well, in the dense foliage on the hillside, but Dodgson looked dead. The buzzing was suddenly very loud, building rapidly, and King looked forward and saw, through the foliage that blocked the windshield, a car driving by, not ten yards away. A car! And then the car was gone. From the sound of it, he thought, it was an electric car. So it must be Malcolm. Howard King was somehow encouraged by the thought that other people were on this island. He felt new strength, despite the pain in his body. He reached forward, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled. He put the car in gear, and gently stepped on the accelerator. The rear wheels spun. He engaged the front-wheel drive. At once, the Jeep rumbled forward, lurching through the branches. A moment later, he was out on the road. He remembered this road now. To the right, it led down to the tyrannosaurus nest. Malcolm’s car had gone to the left. King turned left, and headed up the road. He was trying to remember how to get back to the river, back to the boat. He vaguely recalled that there was a Y-fork in the road at the top of the hill. He would take that fork, he decided, drive down the hill, and get the hell off this island. That was his only goal. To get off this island, before it was too late."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0061.txt", "text": "Bad News The Explorer came to the top of the hill, and Thorne drove onto the ridge road. The road curved back and forth, cut into the rock face of the cliff. In many places, the dropoff was precipitous, but they had views over the entire island. Eventually they came to a place where they could look over the valley. They could see the high hide off to the left, and closer by, the clearing with the two trailers. Off to the right was the laboratory complex, and the worker complex beyond. “I don’t see Dodgson anywhere,” Malcolm said unhappily. “Where could he have gone?” Thorne pushed the radio button. “Arby?” “Yes, Doc.” “Do you see them?” “No, but …” He hesitated. “What?” “Don’t you want to come back here now? It’s pretty amazing.” “What is?” Thorne said. “Eddie,” Arby said. “He just got back. And he brought the baby with him.” Malcolm leaned forward. “He did what?”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0063.txt", "text": "Baby In the trailer, they were clustered around the table where the baby Tyrannosaurus rex now lay unconscious on a stainless-steel pan, his large eyes closed, his snout pushed into the clear plastic oval of an oxygen mask. The mask almost fitted the baby’s blunt snout. The oxygen hissed softly. “I couldn’t just leave him,” Eddie said. “And I figured we can fix his leg.…” “But Eddie,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. “So I shot him full of morphine from the first-aid kit, and brought him back. You see? The oxygen mask almost fits him.” “Eddie,” Malcolm said, “this was the wrong thing to do.” “Why? He’s okay. We just fix him and take him back.” “But you’re interfering with the system,” Malcolm said. The radio clicked. “This is extremely unwise,” Levine said, over the radio. “Extremely.” “Thank you, Richard,” Thorne said. “I am entirely opposed to bringing any animal back to the trailer.” “Too late to worry about that now,” Sarah Harding said. She had moved forward alongside the baby, and began strapping cardiac leads to the animal’s chest; they heard the thump of the heartbeat. It was very fast, over a hundred and fifty beats a minute. “How much morphine did you give him?” “Gee,” Eddie said. “I just … you know. The whole syringe.” “What is that? Ten cc’s?” “I think. Maybe twenty.” Malcolm looked at Harding. “How long before it wears off?” “I have no idea,” she said. “I’ve sedated lions and jackals in the field, when I tagged them. With those animals, there’s a rough correlation between dose and body weight. But with young animals, it’s unpredictable. Maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours. And I don’t know a thing about baby tyrannosaurs. Basically, it’s a function of metabolism, and this one seems to be rapid, bird-like. The heart’s pumping very fast. All I can say is, let’s get him out of here as quickly as possible.” Harding picked up the small ultrasound transducer and held it to the baby’s leg. She looked over her shoulder at the monitor. Kelly and Arby were blocking the view. “Please, give us a little room here,” she said, and they moved away. “We don’t have much time. Please.” As they moved away, Sarah saw the green-and-white outlines of the leg and its bones. Surprisingly like a large bird, she thought. A vulture or a stork. She moved the transducer. “Okay … there’s the metatarsals … and there’s the tibia and fibula, the two bones of the lower leg.…” Arby said, “Why are the bones different shades like that?” The legs had some dense white sections within paler-green outlines. “Because it’s an infant,” Harding said. “His legs are still mostly cartilage, with very little calcified bone. I’d guess this baby probably can’t walk yet—at least, not very well. There. Look at the patella.… You can see the blood supply to the joint capsule.…” “How come you know all this anatomy?” Kelly said. “I have to."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0063.txt", "text": "I spend a lot of time looking through the scat of predators,” she said. “Examining pieces of bones that are left behind, and figuring out which animals have been eaten. To do that, you have to know comparative anatomy very well.” She moved the transducer along the baby’s leg. “And my father was a vet.” Malcolm looked up sharply. “Your father was a vet?” “Yes. At the San Diego Zoo. He was a bird specialist. But I don’t see … Can you magnify this?” Arby flicked a switch. The image doubled in size. “Ah. Okay. All right. There it is. You see it?” “No.” “It’s mid-fibula. See it? A thin black line. That’s a fracture, just above the epiphysis.” “That little black line there?” Arby said. “That little black line means death for this infant,” Sarah said. “The fibula won’t heal straight, so the ankle joint can’t pivot when he stands on his hind feet. The baby won’t be able to run, and probably can’t even walk. It’ll be crippled, and a predator will pick it off before it gets more than a few weeks old.” Eddie said, “But we can set it.” “Okay,” Sarah said. “What were you going to use for a cast?” “Diesterase,” Eddie said. “I brought a kilo of it, in hundred-cc tubes. I packed lots, for glue. The stuff’s polymer resin, it solidifies hard as steel.” “Great,” Harding said, “That’ll kill him, too.” “It will?” “He’s growing, Eddie. In a few weeks he’ll be much larger. We need something that’s rigid, but biodegradable,” she said. “Something that will wear off, or break off, in three to five weeks, when his leg’s healed. What have you got?” Eddie frowned. “I don’t know.” “Well, we haven’t got much time,” Harding said. Eddie said, “Doc? This is like one of your famous test questions. How to make a dinosaur cast with only Q-tips and super-glue.” “I know,” Thorne said. The irony of the situation was not lost on him. He had given problems such as these to his engineering students for three decades. Now he was faced with one himself. Eddie said, “Maybe we could degrade the resin—mix it with something like table sugar.” Thorne shook his head. “Hydroxy groups in the sucrose will make the resin friable. It’ll harden okay, but it’ll shatter like glass as soon as the animal moves.” “What if we mix it with cloth that’s been soaked in sugar?” “You mean, to get bacteria to decay the cloth?” “Yeah.” “And then the cast breaks?” “Yeah.” Thorne shrugged. “That might work,” he said. “But without testing, we can’t know how long the cast will last. Might be a few days, it might be a few months.” “That’s too long,” Sarah said. “This animal is growing rapidly. If growth is constricted, it’ll end up being crippled by the cast.” “What we need,” Eddie said, “is an organic resin that will form a decaying binder. Like a gum of some kind.” “Chewing gum?” Arby said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0063.txt", "text": "“Because I have plenty of—” “No, I was thinking of a different kind of gum. Chemically speaking, the diesterase resin—” “We’ll never solve it chemically,” Thorne said. “We don’t have the supplies.” “What else can we do? There’s no choice but—” “What if you make something that’s different in different directions?” Arby said. “Strong one way and weak in another?” “You can’t,” Eddie said. “It’s a homogeneous resin. It’s all the same stuff, goopy glue that turns rock-hard when it dries, and—” “No, wait a minute,” Thorne said, turning to the boy. “What do you mean, Arby?” “Well,” Arby said, “Sarah said the leg is growing. That means it’s going to grow longer, which doesn’t matter for a cast, and wider, which does, because it’ll start to squeeze the leg. But if you made it weak in the diameter—” “He’s right,” Thorne said. “We can solve it structurally.” “How?” Eddie said. “Just build in a split-line. Maybe using aluminum foil. We have some for cooking.” “That’d be much too weak,” Eddie said. “Not if we coat it with a layer of resin.” Thorne turned to Sarah. “What we can do is make a cast that is very strong for vertical stresses, but weak for lateral stresses. It’s a simple engineering problem. The baby can walk around on its cuff, and everything is fine, as long as the stresses are vertical. But when its leg grows, it will pop the split-line open, and the cuff will fall away.” “Yes,” Arby said, nodding. “Is that hard to do?” she said. “No. It should be pretty easy. You just build a cuff of aluminum foil, and coat it with resin.” Eddie said, “And what’ll hold the cuff together while you coat it?” “How about chewing gum?” Arby said. “You got it,” Thorne said, smiling. At that moment, the baby rex stirred, its legs twitching. It raised its head, the oxygen mask dropping away, and gave a low, weak squeak. “Quickly,” Sarah said, grabbing the head. “More morphine.” Malcolm had a syringe ready. He jabbed it into the animal’s neck. “Just five cc’s now,” Sarah said. “What’s wrong with more? Keep him out longer?” “He’s in shock from the injury, Ian. You can kill him with too much morphine. You’ll put him into respiratory arrest. His adrenal glands are probably stressed, too.” “If he even has adrenals,” Malcolm said. “Does a Tyrannosaurus rex have hormones at all? The truth is, we don’t know anything about these animals.” The radio clicked, and Levine said, “Speak for yourself, Ian. In point of fact, I suspect we will find that dinosaurs have hormones. There are compelling reasons to imagine they do. As long as you have gone to the misguided trouble of taking the baby, you might draw some tubes of blood. Meanwhile, Doc, could you pick up the phone?” Malcolm sighed. “That guy,” he said, “is starting to get on my nerves.” Thorne moved down the trailer to the communications module near the front."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0063.txt", "text": "Levine’s request was odd; there was a perfectly good system of microphones throughout the trailer. But Levine knew that; he had designed the system himself. Thorne picked up the phone. “Yes?” “Doc,” Levine said, “I’ll get right to the point. Bringing the baby to the trailer was a mistake. It’s asking for trouble.” “What sort of trouble?” “We don’t know, is the point. And I don’t want to alarm anybody. But why don’t you bring the kids out to the high hide for a while? And why don’t you and Eddie come, too?” “You’re telling me to get the hell out of here. You really think it’s necessary?” “In a word,” Levine said, “yes. I do.” As the morphine was injected into the baby, he gave a sighing wheeze, and collapsed back onto the steel pan. Sarah adjusted the oxygen mask around his face. She glanced back at the monitor, checking the heart rate, but once again Arby and Kelly were blocking her view. “Kids, please.” Thorne stepped forward, clapped his hands. “Okay, kids! Field trip! Let’s get moving.” Arby said, “Now? But we want to watch the baby—” “No, no,” Thorne said. “Dr. Malcolm and Dr. Harding need room to work. This is the time for a field trip to the high hide. We can watch the dinosaurs for the rest of the afternoon.” “But Doc—” “Don’t argue. We’re just in the way here, and we’re going,” Thorne said. “Eddie, you come, too. Leave these two lovebirds to do their work.” In a few moments, they left. The trailer door slammed shut behind them. Sarah Harding heard the soft whirr of the Explorer as it drove away. Bent over the baby, adjusting the oxygen mask, she said, “Lovebirds?” Malcolm shrugged. “Levine …” “Was this Levine’s idea? Clearing everybody out?” “Probably.” “Does he know something we don’t?” Malcolm laughed. “I’m sure he thinks he does.” “Well, let’s start the cast,” she said. “I want to get it done quickly, and take this baby home again.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0064.txt", "text": "The High Hide The sun had disappeared behind low-hanging clouds by the time they reached the high hide. The entire valley was bathed in a soft reddish glow as Eddie parked the Explorer beneath the aluminum scaffolding, and they all climbed up to the little shelter above. Levine was there, binoculars to his eyes. He did not seem glad to see them. “Stop moving around so much,” he said irritably. From the shelter, they had a magnificent view over the valley. Somewhere in the north, thunder rumbled. The air was cooling, and felt electric. “Is there going to be a storm?” Kelly asked. “Looks like it,” Thorne said. Arby glanced doubtfully at the metal roof of the shelter. “How long are we staying out here?” “For a while,” Thorne said. “This is our only day here. The helicopters are taking us away tomorrow morning. I thought you kids deserved a chance to see the dinosaurs in the field one more time.” Arby squinted at him. “What’s the real reason?” “I know,” Kelly said, in a worldly tone. “Yeah? What?” “Dr. Malcolm wants to be alone with Sarah, stupid.” “Why?” “They’re old friends,” Kelly said. “So? We were just going to watch.” “No,” Kelly said. “I mean, they’re old friends.” “I know what you’re talking about,” Arby said. “I’m not stupid, you know.” “Knock it off,” Levine said, staring through the binoculars. “You’re missing the interesting stuff.” “What’s that?” “Those triceratops, down at the river. Something’s bothering them.” The triceratops herd had been drinking peacefully from the river, but now they were beginning to make noise. For such huge animals, their vocalizations were incongruously high-pitched: they sounded more like yelping dogs. Arby turned to look. “There’s something in the trees,” he said, “across the river.” There was some hint of dark movement, beneath the trees. The triceratops herd shifted, and began backing toward each other until they formed a sort of rosette, with their curved horns facing outward, against the unseen menace. The solitary baby was in the center, yelping in fear. One of the animals, presumably its mother, turned and nuzzled it. Afterward, the baby was silent. “I see them,” Kelly said, staring at the trees. “They’re raptors. Over there.” The triceratops herd faced the raptors, the adults barking as they swung their sharp horns up and down. They created a kind of barrier of moving spikes. There was an unmistakable sense of coordination, of group defense against predators. Levine was smiling happily. “There’s never been any evidence for this,” he said, suddenly cheerful. “In fact, most paleontologists don’t believe it happens.” “Don’t believe what happens?” Arby said. “This kind of group defensive behavior. Especially with trikes—they look a bit like rhinos, so they’ve been assumed to be solitary, like rhinos. But now we will see.… Ah. Yes.” From beneath the trees, a single velociraptor hopped out into view. It moved quickly on its hind legs, balancing with a stiff tail."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0064.txt", "text": "The triceratops herd barked noisily at the appearance of the raptor. The other raptors remained hidden beneath the trees. The solitary velociraptor in full view moved in a slow semicircle around the herd, entering the water on the far side. It crossed, swimming easily, and came out on the other bank. It was now about fifty yards upstream from the barking triceratops herd, which wheeled to present a united front. All their attention was focused on the single velociraptor. Slowly, other raptors began to slink out of their hiding place. They moved low, bodies hidden in the tall grass. “Jeez,” Arby said. “They’re hunting.” “In a pack,” Levine said, nodding. He picked up a bit of candy bar wrapper from the floor of the shelter, and dropped it, watching it flutter off in the wind. “The main pack is downwind, so the trikes can’t smell them.” He raised the binoculars to his eyes again. “I think,” he said, “that we’re about to see a kill.” They watched as the raptors closed in around the herd. And then suddenly, lightning cracked on the island rim, brilliantly lighting the valley floor. One of the stalking raptors stood up in surprise. Its head was briefly visible above the grass. Immediately, the triceratops herd wheeled again, regrouping to face the new menace. All the raptors stopped, as if to reconsider their plan. “What happened?” Arby said. “Why are they stopping?” “They’re in trouble.” “Why?” “Look at them. The main pack is still across the river. They’re too far away to mount an attack.” “You mean they’re giving up? Already?” “Looks like it,” Levine said. One by one, the raptors in the grass raised their heads, making their positions known. As each new predator appeared, the triceratops barked loudly. The raptors seemed to know the situation was hopeless. They slunk away, moving back toward the trees. Seeing them retreat, the triceratops barked even louder. And then the single raptor by the water’s edge charged. It moved incredibly fast—astonishingly fast—streaking like a cheetah across the fifty yards that separated it from the herd. The adult triceratops had no time to re-form. The baby was exposed. It squealed in fright as it saw the approaching animal. The velociraptor leapt into the air, raising both its hind legs. Lightning cracked again, and in the brilliant light they saw the twin curved claws high in the air. At the last moment, the nearest adult turned, swiveling its big horned head with the wide bony crest, and it knocked the raptor a glancing blow, sending the animal sprawling on the muddy bank. Immediately the adult triceratops charged forward, its head high. When it reached the raptor it stopped abruptly and swung its big head down, lowering its horns toward the fallen animal. But the raptor was quick; hissing, it leapt to its feet, and the triceratops’ horns slashed harmlessly into the mud. The raptor spun sideways, and kicked the adult on the snout, drawing blood with its big curved claw."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0064.txt", "text": "The adult bellowed, but by then two other adults were charging forward, while the others remained behind with the baby. The raptor scrambled away, back into the grass. “Wow,” Arby said. “That was something!”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0065.txt", "text": "The Herd King gave a long sigh of relief as he came to the Y-fork in the road, and drove the red Jeep left, coming onto a wide dirt road. He recognized it at once: this was the ridge road that led back to the boat. As he looked off to his left, he could see down across the east valley. The boat was still there! All right! He gave a shout and accelerated sharply, relief flooding through him. On the deck, he could see the Spanish fishermen, staring up at the sky. Despite the threatening storm, they didn’t seem to be preparing to leave. Probably they were waiting for Dodgson. Well, he thought, that was fine. King would be there in a few minutes. After working his way through dense jungle, he could finally see exactly where he was. The ridge road was high, following the crest of one of the volcanic spines. There was almost no foliage up here, and as the road twisted and turned, he had views across the entire island. To the east, he could look down into the ravine, and the boat at the shore. To the west, he could look straight across at the laboratory, and Malcolm’s twin trailers parked near the far edge of the clearing. They never did find out what the hell Malcolm was doing here, he thought. Not that it mattered now. King was getting off the island. That was the only thing that mattered. He could almost feel the deck beneath his feet. Maybe one of the fishermen would even have a beer. A nice cold beer, while they chugged down the river, and pulled out of this damned island. He’d toast Dodgson, is what he’d do. Maybe, he thought, I’ll have two beers. * * * King came around a curve, and saw a herd of animals standing thickly in the road. They were some kind of green dinosaurs, about four feet tall, with big domed heads and a bunch of little horns. They reminded him of green water buffalo. But there were a lot of them. He braked sharply; the car swerved to a stop. The green dinosaurs looked at his car, but they did not move. The herd just stood there in a lazy, contented way. King waited, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. When nothing happened, he honked the horn, and flashed his headlights. The animals just stared. They were funny-looking creatures, with that smooth bulging curve on the forehead and all those little horns around it. They just stared at him, with a stupid cow-like look. He slipped the car into gear and edged it forward slowly, expecting that he could push his way through the animals. They didn’t move aside. Finally his front bumper nudged the nearest animal, which grunted, took a couple of steps back, lowered its head, and butted the front of the car, hard, with a metallic clang! Christ, he thought."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0065.txt", "text": "It could puncture the radiator, if he wasn’t careful. He stopped the car again and waited, the motor idling. The animals settled down again. Several of them lay down on the road. He couldn’t drive over them. He looked ahead toward the river and saw the boat, not more than a quarter of a mile away. He hadn’t realized it was so near. As he watched, he realized that the fishermen were very busy on the deck. They were swinging the crane back, lashing it down. They were getting ready to leave! The hell with waiting, he thought. He opened the door, and climbed out, leaving the car in the center of the road. Immediately, the animals jumped to their feet, and the nearest one charged him. He had the door open; the animal smashed into it, slamming it shut, leaving a deep dent in the metal. King scrambled toward the edge of the hill, only to find he was at the top of a steep vertical descent of more than a hundred feet. He’d never make it down, at least not here. Farther along, the slope was not so steep. But now more animals were charging him. He had no choice. He ran around the back of the car, just as another animal smashed into the rear taillight, shattering the plastic. A third animal charged the back of the car directly. King scrambled up onto the spare tire, as the animal slammed into the bumper. The jolt knocked him off, and he fell to the ground, rolling, while the buffaloes snorted all around him. He got to his feet and ran to the opposite side of the road, where there was a slight rise; he scrambled up it, moving into foliage. The animals did not pursue him. Not that it did him any good—now he was on the wrong side of the road! Somehow he had to get back to the other side. He climbed to the top of the rise and started down, swearing to himself. He decided to work his way forward a hundred yards or so, until he was beyond the butting animals, and then cross the road. If he could do that, then he could get to the boat. Almost immediately, he was surrounded by dense jungle. He tripped, tumbled down a muddy slope, and when he got to his feet was no longer sure which way to go. He was at the bottom of a ravine, and the palm trees were ten feet tall, and very thick. He couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. In a moment of panic, he realized he didn’t know which way to go. He pushed forward through the wet leaves, hoping to get his bearings back. The kids were still peering over the railing, looking at the departing raptors. Thorne pulled Levine to one side, and said quietly, “Why did you want us to come here?” “Just a precaution,” Levine said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0065.txt", "text": "“Bringing the infant to the trailer is asking for trouble.” “What sort of trouble?” Levine shrugged. “We don’t know, is the point. But in general, parents don’t like it when their babies are taken away. And that baby has some very big parents.” From the other side of the shelter Arby said, “Look! Look!” “What is it?” Levine said. “It’s a man.” Gasping for breath, King emerged from the jungle and walked out onto the plain. At last he could see where he was! He paused, soaked and muddy, to get his bearings. He was disappointed to find that he was nowhere near the boat. In fact, he still seemed to be on the wrong side of the road. He was facing a broad grassy plain, with a river coursing through it. The plain was mostly deserted, although there were several dinosaurs farther down the banks. They were the horned ones: triceratops. And they looked a little agitated. The big adults were raising their heads up and down, making barking sounds. Obviously, he would have to follow the river, until it brought him to the boat. But he’d have to be careful getting past these triceratops. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a candy bar. He ripped the wrapping while he watched the triceratops, wishing they would go away. How long would it take him to reach the boat? That was the only question on his mind. He decided to move, triceratops or not. He began walking through the tall grass. Then he heard a reptilian hiss. It was coming from the grass, somewhere to his left. And he noticed a smell, a peculiar rotten smell. He paused, waiting. The candy bar didn’t taste so good, any more. Then, behind him, he heard splashing. It was coming from the river. King turned to look. “It’s one of those men from the Jeep,” Arby said, standing in the high hide. “But why is he waiting?” From their vantage point, they could see the dark shapes of the raptors, moving through the grass on the other side of the river. Now two of the raptors came forward, splashing in the water. Moving toward the man. “Oh no,” Arby said. King saw two dark, striped lizards moving across the river. They walked on their hind legs, with a sort of hopping motion. Their bodies were reflected in the flowing water of the river. They snapped their long jaws, and hissed menacingly at King. He glanced upstream, and saw another lizard crossing, and another beyond that. Those other animals were already deep in the water, and had begun to swim. Howard King backed away from the river, moving deeper into the tall grass. Then he turned, and ran. He was chest-deep in grass and running hard, gasping for breath, when suddenly another lizard head rose up in front of him, hissing and snarling. He dodged, changed direction, but suddenly the nearest lizard leapt in the air."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0065.txt", "text": "It jumped so high its body cleared the grass; he could see the entire animal flying through the air, its two hind legs raised to pounce. He glimpsed curved, dagger-like claws. King turned again and the lizard shrieked as it landed on the ground behind him, and tumbled away in the grass. King ran on. He was energized by pure fear. Behind him he heard the lizard snarling. He ran hard: ahead was another twenty yards of grassy clearing, and then the jungle began again. He saw trees—big trees. He could climb one and get away. Off to the left, he saw another lizard moving diagonally across the clearing toward him. King could only see the head above the grass. The lizard seemed to be moving incredibly fast. He thought: I’m not going to make it. But he would try. Panting, lungs searing, he sprinted for the trees. Only ten more yards now. His arms pumped, his legs churned. His breath came in ragged gasps. And then something heavy struck him from behind, forcing him to the ground, and he felt searing pain down his back and he knew it was the claws, they dug into the flesh of his back as he was knocked down. He hit the dirt hard, and tried to roll, but the animal on his back held on, he could not move. He was pinned down on his stomach, hearing the animal snarl behind him. The pain in his back was excruciating, dizzying. And then he felt the animal’s hot breath on the back of his neck, and he heard the snorting breath, and his terror was extreme. Then suddenly a kind of lassitude, a deep and welcome sleepiness, took him. Everything became slow. As if in a dream, he could see all the blades of grass in the ground in front of his face. He saw them with a kind of languid intensity, and he almost did not mind the sharp pain on his neck, and he almost did not care that his neck was within the animal’s hot jaws. It seemed to be happening to someone else. He was many miles away. He had a moment of surprise when he felt the bones of his neck crunching loudly— And then blackness. Nothing. “Don’t look,” Thorne said, turning Arby away from the railing in the high hide. He drew the boy toward his chest, but Arby impatiently pushed away again, to watch what was happening. Thorne reached for Kelly, but she stepped away from him, and stared out at the plain. “Don’t look,” Thorne kept saying. “Don’t look.” The kids watched, in silence. Levine focused his binoculars on the kill. There were now five raptors snarling around the man’s body, tearing viciously at the carcass. As he watched, one of the raptors jerked its head up, tearing away a piece of blood-soaked shirt, the ragged edge of the collar."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0065.txt", "text": "Another was shaking the man’s severed head in its jaws, before finally dropping it on the ground. Thunder rumbled, and lightning flashed in the distant sky. It was growing dark, and Levine was having difficulty seeing exactly what was happening. But it was clear that whatever hierarchical organization they had adopted for hunting was abandoned for a kill. Here it was every animal for itself; the frenzied raptors hopped and ducked their heads as they tore the body to pieces; and there was plenty of nipping and fighting among themselves. One animal came up, with something brown hanging from its jaws. The animal got an odd expression on its face as it chewed. Then it turned away from the rest of the pack, and held the brown object carefully in its forearms. In the growing darkness, it took Levine a moment to recognize what it was doing: it was eating a candy bar. And it seemed to be enjoying it. The raptor turned back, and buried its long nose in the bloody carcass again. From across the plain, other raptors were racing to join the feast, half-running, half-bounding in great forward leaps. Snarling and furious, they threw themselves into the fray. Levine lowered his glasses, and looked at the two kids. They were staring silently and calmly at the kill."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0066.txt", "text": "Dodgson Dodgson was awakened by a noisy chittering, like the sound of a hundred tiny birds. It seemed to be coming from all around him. Slowly, he realized that he was lying on his back, on damp sloping ground. He tried to move, but his body felt painful and heavy. Some sort of weight pressed down on his legs, his stomach, his arms. The weight on his chest made it difficult to breathe. And he was sleepy, incredibly sleepy. He wanted nothing more in all the world than to go back to sleep. Dodgson started to drift off to unconsciousness, but something was pulling at his hand. Tugging at his fingers, one by one. As if pulling him back to consciousness. Slowly, slowly, pulling him back. Dodgson opened his eyes. There was a little green dinosaur standing beside his hand. It leaned over, and bit his finger in its tiny jaws, tugging at the flesh. His fingers were bleeding; ragged chunks of flesh had already been bitten away. He pulled his hand away in surprise, and suddenly the chittering grew louder. He turned and saw that he was surrounded by these little dinosaurs; they were standing on his chest and legs as well. They were the size of chickens and they pecked at him like chickens, quick darting bites on his stomach, his thighs, his crotch— Revolted, Dodgson jumped to his feet, scattering the lizards, which hopped away, chirping in annoyance. The little animals moved a few feet away, then stopped. They turned back, and stared at him, showing no sign of fear. On the contrary, they seemed to be waiting. That was when he realized what they were. They were procompsognathids. Compys. Scavengers. Christ, he thought. They thought I was dead. He staggered back, almost losing his balance. He felt pain and a wave of dizziness. The little animals chittered, watched his every move. “Go on,” he said, waving his hand. “Get out of here.” They did not leave. They stood there, cocking their heads to one side quizzically, and waited. He bent his head, stared down at himself. His shirt, his trousers were torn in a hundred places. Blood dribbled from a hundred tiny wounds down his clothes. He felt a wave of dizziness and put his hands on his knees. He took a deep breath, and watched his blood drip onto the leaf-strewn ground. Christ, he thought. He took another deep breath. When he did not move, the animals began to inch forward. He stood up, and they backed away. But a moment later, they began to come forward again. One came close. Dodgson kicked it viciously, sending the little body flying through the air. The animal squealed in alarm, but it landed like a cat, upright and uninjured. The others remained where they were. Waiting. He looked around, realized it was getting dark. He looked at his watch: 6:40. There were only a few minutes more of daylight."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0066.txt", "text": "Beneath the jungle canopy, it was already quite dark. He had to get to safety, and soon. He checked the compass on his watch strap, and headed south. He was pretty sure the river was to the south. He had to get back to the boat. He would be safe at the boat. As he started walking, the compys chittered and followed after him. They stayed about five or ten feet behind, making a lot of noise as they hopped and crashed through the low foliage. There were dozens of them, he realized. As darkness descended, their eyes glowed bright green. His body was a mass of pain. Every step hurt. His balance was not good. He was losing blood, and he was very, very sleepy. He would never make it all the way to the river. He would not make it more than another couple of hundred yards. He fell, tripping over a root. He got up slowly, dirt clinging to his blood-soaked clothes. He looked back at the green eyes behind him, and forced himself onward. He could go a little farther, he thought. And then, directly ahead, he saw a light through the foliage. Was it the boat? He moved faster, hearing the compys behind him. He pushed through the foliage and then saw a little shed, like a toolshed or a guardhouse, made of concrete, with a tin roof. It had a square window, and light was shining through the window. He fell again, got to his knees, and crawled the rest of the way to the house. He reached the door, pulled himself up on the doorknob, and opened the door. Inside, the shed was empty. Some pipes came up through the floor. Some time in the past, they had connected to machinery, but the machinery was gone; there were only the rust spots where it had once been bolted to the concrete floor. In a corner of the room was an electric light. It was fitted with a timer, so that it came on at night. That was the light he had seen. Did they have electricity on this island? How? He didn’t care. He staggered into the room, closed the door firmly behind him, and sank down onto the bare concrete. Through the dirty windowpanes, he saw the compys outside, banging against the glass, hopping in frustration. But he was safe for the moment. He would have to go on, of course. He would somehow have to get off this fucking island. But not now, he thought. Later. He’d worry about everything later. Dodgson laid his cheek on the damp concrete floor, and slept."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "Trailer Sarah Harding placed the aluminum-foil cuff around the baby’s injured leg. The baby was still unconscious, breathing easily, not moving. Its body was relaxed. The oxygen hissed softly. She finished shaping the aluminum foil into a cuff six inches long. Using a small brush, she began to paint resin over it, to make a cast. “How many raptors are there?” she said. “I couldn’t tell for sure, when I saw them. I thought nine.” “I think there’s more,” Malcolm said. “I think eleven or twelve in all.” “Twelve?” she said, glancing up at him. “On this little island?” “Yes.” The resin had a sharp odor, like glue. She brushed it evenly on the aluminum. “You know what I’m thinking,” she said. “Yes,” he said. “There are too many.” “Far too many, Ian.” She worked steadily. “It doesn’t make sense. In Africa, active predators like lions are very spread out. There’s one lion for every ten square kilometers. Sometimes every fifteen kilometers. That’s all the ecology can support. On an island like this, you should have no more than five raptors. Hold this.” “Uh-huh. But don’t forget, the prey here is huge.… Some of those animals are twenty, thirty tons.” “I’m not convinced that’s a factor,” Sarah said, “but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is. I’ll double the estimate, and give you ten raptors for the island. But you tell me there are twelve. And there are other major predators, as well. Like the rexes …” “Yes. There are.” “That’s too many,” she said, shaking her head. “The animals are pretty dense here,” Malcolm said. “Not dense enough,” she said. “In general, predator studies—whether tigers in India, or lions in Africa—all seem to show that you can support one predator for every two hundred prey animals. That means to support twenty-five predators here, you need at least five thousand prey on this island. Do you have anything like that?” “No.” “How many animals in total do you think are here?” He shrugged. “A couple of hundred. Maybe five hundred at most.” “So you’re off by an order of magnitude, Ian. Hold this, and I’ll get the lamp.” She swung the heat lamp over the baby, to harden the resin. She adjusted the oxygen mask over the baby’s snout. “The island can’t support all those predators,” she said. “And yet they’re here.” He said, “What could explain it?” She shook her head. “There has to be a food source that we don’t know about.” “You mean, an artificial source?” he said. “I don’t think there is one.” “No,” she said. “Artificial food sources make animals tame. And these animals aren’t tame. The only other possibility I can think of is that there’s a differential death rate among prey. If they grow very fast, or die young, then that might represent a larger food supply than expected.” Malcolm said, “I’ve noticed, the largest animals seem small. It’s as if they don’t seem to reach maturity."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "Maybe they’re being killed off early.” “Maybe,” she said. “But if there’s a differential death rate large enough to support this population, you should see evidence of carcasses, and lots of skeletons of dead animals. Have you seen that?” Malcolm shook his head. “No. In fact, now that you mention it, I haven’t seen any skeletons at all.” “Me neither.” She pushed the light away. “There’s something funny about this island, Ian.” “I know,” Malcolm said. “You do?” “Yes,” he said. “I’ve suspected it from the beginning.” Thunder rumbled. From the high hide, the plain below them was dark and silent, except for the distant snarling of the raptors. “Maybe we should go back,” Eddie said anxiously. “Why?” Levine said. Levine had switched to his night-vision glasses, pleased with himself that he had thought to bring them. Through the goggles, the world was shades of pale green. He clearly saw the raptors at the kill site, the tall grass trampled and bloody all around. The carcass was long since finished, though they could still hear the cracking of bones as the animals gnawed on them. “I just think,” Eddie said, “that now that it’s night, we’d be safer in the trailer.” “Why?” Levine said. “Well, it’s reinforced, it’s strong, and very safe. It has everything that we need. I just think we should be there. I mean, you’re not planning on staying out here all night, are you?” “No,” Levine said. “What do you think I am, a fanatic?” Eddie grunted. “But let’s stay for a while longer,” Levine said. Eddie turned to Thorne. “Doc? What do you say? It’s going to start raining soon.” “Just a little longer,” Thorne said. “And then we’ll all go back together.” “There have been dinosaurs on this island for five years, maybe more,” Malcolm said, “but none have appeared elsewhere. Suddenly, in the last year, carcasses of dead animals are showing up on the beaches of Costa Rica, and according to reports, on islands of the Pacific as well.” “Carried by currents?” “Presumably. But the question is, why now? Why all of a sudden, after five years? Something has changed, but we don’t know—wait a minute.” He moved away from the table, over to the computer console. He turned toward the screen. “What are you doing?” she said. “Arby got us into the old network,” he said, “and it still has research files from the eighties.” He moved the mouse across the screen. “We haven’t looked at them.…” He saw the menu come up, showing work files and research files. He began to scroll through screens of text. “Years ago, they had trouble with some disease,” he said. “There were a lot of notes about it in the laboratory.” “What kind of disease?” “They didn’t know,” Malcolm said. “In the wild, there are some very slow-acting illnesses,” she said. “May take five or ten years to show up. Caused by viruses, or prions."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "You know, protein fragments—like scrapie or mad-cow disease.” “But,” Malcolm said, “those diseases only come from eating contaminated food.” There was a silence. “What do you suppose they fed them, back then?” she asked. “Because if I was growing baby dinosaurs, I’d wonder. What do they eat? Milk, I suppose, but—” “Milk, yes,” Malcolm said, reading the screens. “First six weeks, goat’s milk.” “That’s the logical choice,” she said. “Goat’s milk is what they always use in zoos, because it’s so hypoallergenic. But what about later?” “Give me a minute here,” Malcolm said. Harding held the baby’s leg in her hand, waiting for the resin to harden. She looked at the cast, sniffed it. It was still strong-smelling. “I hope that’s all right,” she said. “Sometimes if there’s a distinctive smell, the animals won’t allow infants to return. But maybe this will dissipate after the compound hardens. How long has it been?” Malcolm glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes. Another ten minutes and it’ll set.” She said, “I’d like to take this guy back to the nest.” Thunder rumbled. They looked out the window at the black night. “Probably too late to return him tonight,” Malcolm said. He was still typing, peering at the screen. “So … what did they feed them? Okay. In the period from 1988 to 1989 … the herbivores got a macerated plant matter on a feeding schedule three times a day … and the carnivores got …” He stopped. “What’d the carnivores get?” “Looks like a ground-up extract of animal protein.…” “From what? The usual source is turkey or chicken, with some antibiotics added.” “Sarah,” he said. “They used sheep extract.” “No,” she said. “They wouldn’t do that.” “Yeah, they did. Came from their supplier, who used ground-up sheep.” “You’re kidding,” she said. Malcolm said, “I’m afraid so. Now, let me see if I can find out—” A soft alarm sounded. On the wall panel above him, a red light began to flash. A moment later, the exterior lights above the trailer turned on, bathing the grassy clearing around them in bright halogen glare. “What’s that?” Harding said. “The sensors—something set them off.” Malcolm moved away from the computer, peered out the window. He saw nothing but tall grass, and the dark trees at the perimeter. It was silent, still. Sarah, still intent on the baby, said, “What happened?” “I don’t know. I don’t see anything.” “But something triggered the sensors?” “I guess.” “Wind?” “There’s no wind,” he said. In the high hide, Kelly said, “Hey, look!” Thorne turned. From their location in the valley, they could look north to the high cliff behind them and the two trailers above, in the grassy clearing. The exterior lights on the trailers had come on. Thorne unclipped the radio at his belt. “Ian? Are you there?” A momentary crackle: “I’m here, Doc.” “What’s happening?” “I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “The perimeter lights just turned on. I think the sensor was activated."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "But we don’t see anything out there.” Eddie said, “Air’s cooling off fast now. Might have been convection currents, set it off.” Thorne said, “Ian? Everything okay?” “Yes. Fine. Don’t worry.” Eddie said, “I always figured we set the sensitivity too high. That’s all it is.” Levine frowned, and said nothing. Sarah finished with the baby, and wrapped him in a blanket, and gently strapped him down to the table with cloth restraint straps. She came over and stood beside Malcolm. She looked out the window. “What do you think?” Malcolm shrugged. “Eddie says the system’s too sensitive.” “Is it?” “I don’t know. It’s never been tested before.” He scanned the trees at the edge of the clearing, looking for any movement. Then he thought he heard a snorting sound, almost a growl. It seemed like it was answered from somewhere behind him. He went to look out the other side of the trailer, at the trees on the other side. Malcolm and Harding looked out, straining to see something in the night. Malcolm held his breath, tensely. After a moment, Harding sighed. “I don’t see anything, Ian.” “No. Me neither.” “Must be a false alarm.” Then he felt the vibration, a deep resonant thumping in the ground, that was carried to them through the floor of the trailer. He glanced at Sarah. Her eyes widened. Malcolm knew what it was. The vibration came again, unmistakably this time. Sarah stared out the window. She whispered, “Ian: I see it.” Malcolm turned, and joined her. She was pointing out the window toward the nearest trees. “What?” And then he saw the big head emerge from the foliage midway up one tree. The head turned slowly from side to side, as if listening. It was an adult Tyrannosaurus rex. “Ian,” she whispered. “Look—there are two of them.” Over to the right, he saw a second animal step from behind the trees. It was larger, the female of the pair. The animals growled, a deep rumble in the night. They emerged slowly from the cover of the trees, stepping into the clearing. They blinked in the harsh light. “Are those the parents?” “I don’t know. I think so.” He glanced over at the baby. It was still unconscious, breathing steadily, the blanket rising and falling regularly. “What are they doing here?” she said. “I don’t know.” The animals were still standing at the edge of the clearing, near the cover of the trees. They seemed hesitant, waiting. “Are they looking for the baby?” she said. “Sarah, please.” “I’m serious.” “That’s ridiculous.” “Why? They must have tracked it here.” The tyrannosaurs raised their heads, lifting their jaws. Then they turned their heads left and right, in slow arcs. They repeated the movement, then took a step forward, toward the trailer. “Sarah,” he said. “We’re miles from the nest. There isn’t any way for them to track it.” “How do you know?” “Sarah—” “You said yourself, we don’t know anything about these animals."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "We don’t know anything about their physiology, their biochemistry, their nervous systems, their behavior. And we don’t know anything about their sensory equipment, either.” “Yes, but—” “They’re predators, Ian. Good sense of vision, good sense of hearing and smell.” “I assume so, yes.” “But we don’t know what else,” Sarah said. “What else?” Malcolm said. “Ian. There are other sensory modalities. Snakes sense infrared. Bats have echolocation. Birds and turtles have magnetosensors—they can detect the earth’s magnetic field, which is how they migrate. Dinosaurs may have other sensory modalities that we can’t imagine.” “Sarah, this is ridiculous.” “Is it? Then you tell me. What are they doing out there?” Outside, near the trees, the tyrannosaurs had become silent. They were no longer growling, but they were still moving their heads back and forth in slow arcs, turning left and right. Malcolm frowned. “It looks like … they’re looking around.…” “Straight into bright lights? No, Ian. They’re blinded.” As soon as she said it, he realized she was right But the heads were turning back and forth in that regular way. “Then what are they doing? Smelling?” “No. Heads are high. Nostrils aren’t moving.” “Listening?” She nodded “Possibly.” “Listening to what?” “Maybe to the baby.” He glanced over again. “Sarah. The baby is out cold.” “I know.” “It isn’t making any noise.” “None that we can hear.” She stared at the tyrannosaurs. “But they’re doing something, Ian. That behavior we’re seeing has meaning. We just don’t know what it is.” * * * From the high hide, Levine stared through his night-vision glasses at the clearing. He saw the two tyrannosaurs standing at the edge of the forest. They were moving their heads in an odd, synchronized way. They took a few hesitant steps toward the trailer, lifted their heads, turned right and left, and then seemed finally to make up their minds. The animals moved quickly, almost aggressively, across the clearing. Over the radio, they heard Malcolm say, “It’s the lights! The lights are drawing them.” A moment later, the exterior lights were turned off, and the clearing went black. They all squinted in the darkness. They heard Malcolm say, “That did it.” Thorne said to Levine, “What do you see?” “Nothing.” “What’re they doing?” “They’re just standing there.” Through the night-vision goggles, he saw that the tyrannosaurs had paused, as if confused by this change in light. Even from a distance, he could hear their growls, but they were uneasy. They swung their great heads up and down, and snapped their jaws. But they did not move closer. Kelly said, “What is it?” “They’re waiting,” Levine said. “At least for the moment.” Levine had the distinct impression that the tyrannosaurs were unsettled. The trailer must represent a large and fearsome change in their environment. Perhaps they would turn away, he thought, and leave. Despite their enormous size, they were cautious, almost timid animals. They growled again. And then he saw them move forward, toward the darkened trailer."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "“Ian: what do we do?” “Damned if I know,” Malcolm whispered. They were crouched down side by side in the passageway, trying to stay out of sight in the windows. The tyrannosaurs moved implacably forward. They could feel each step as a distinct vibration now—two ten-ton animals, moving toward them. “They’re coming right at us!” “I noticed,” he said. The first of the animals reached the trailer, coming so close that the body blocked the entire window. All Malcolm could see was powerfully muscled legs and underbelly. The head was far above them, out of view. Then the second tyrannosaur came up on the opposite side. The two animals began to circle the trailer, growling and snorting. Heavy footsteps shook the floor beneath them. They smelled the pungent predator odor. One of the tyrannosaurs brushed against the side of the trailer and they heard a scraping sound, scaly flesh on metal. Malcolm felt sudden panic. It was the smell that did it, the smell that he suddenly remembered, from before. He began to sweat. He glanced over at Sarah, and saw that she was intent, watching the movements of the animals. “This isn’t hunting behavior,” she whispered. “I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “Maybe it is. They aren’t lions, you know.” One of the tyrannosaurs bellowed in the night, a frightening, ear-splitting sound. “Not hunting,” she said. “They’re searching, Ian.” A moment later, the second tyrannosaur bellowed in reply. Then the big head swung down, and peered in through the window in front of them, Malcolm ducked down, flattening himself on the trailer floor, and Sarah collapsed on top of him. Her shoe pressed on his ear. “It’s going to be fine, Sarah.” Outside, they heard the tyrannosaurs snorting and growling. Malcolm whispered, “Would you mind moving?” She edged to one side, and he eased up slowly, peering cautiously over the seat cushions. He had a glimpse of the big eye of the rex staring in at him. The eye swiveled in the socket. He saw the jaws open and close. The hot breath of the animal fogged the glass. The tyrannosaur’s head swung away, moving back from the trailer, and for a moment Malcolm breathed more easily. But then the head swung back, and slammed with a heavy thud into the trailer, rocking it hard. “Don’t worry, Sarah. The trailer’s very strong.” She whispered, “I can’t tell you how relieved I am.” From the opposite side, the other rex bellowed and struck the trailer with its snout. The suspension creaked with the impact. The two tyrannosaurs now began an alternating, rhythmic pounding of the trailer from either side. Malcolm and Harding were thrown back and forth. Sarah tried to steady herself, but was knocked away at the next impact. The floor tilted crazily under each blow. Lab equipment flew off the tables. Glass shattered. And then, abruptly, the pounding stopped. There was silence. Grunting, Malcolm got up on one knee."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "He peered out the window, and saw the hindquarters of one of the tyrannosaurs, as it moved forward. “What do we do?” he whispered. The radio crackled. Thorne said, “Ian, are you there? Ian!” “For God’s sake, turn that off,” Sarah whispered. Malcolm reached for his belt, whispered, “We’re okay,” and clicked the radio off. Sarah was crawling on her hands and knees forward through the trailer, into the biology lab. He followed her, and saw the big tyrannosaur peering in through the window, at the baby, strapped down. The tyrannosaur made a soft grunting sound. Then it paused, looking in the window. It grunted again. “She wants her baby, Ian,” Sarah whispered. “Well, God knows,” Malcolm said, “it’s all right with me.” They were huddled on the floor, trying to stay out of sight. “How are we going to get it to her?” “I don’t know. Maybe push it out the door?” “I don’t want them to step on it,” Sarah said. “Who cares?” Malcolm said. The tyrannosaur at the window made a series of soft grunts, followed by a long, menacing growl. It was the big female. “Sarah—” But she was already standing up, facing the tyrannosaur. She immediately began to speak, her voice soft, soothing. “It’s okay.… It’s all right now.… The baby is fine.… I’m just going to loosen these straps here.… You can watch me.…” The head outside the window was so huge it filled the entire glass frame. Sarah saw the powerful muscles of the neck ripple beneath the skin. The jaws moved slightly. Her hands trembled as she undid the straps. “That’s right.… Your baby is fine.… See, it’s just fine.…” Crouched below at her feet, Malcolm whispered, “What are you doing?” She did not change her soft, soothing tone. “I know it sounds crazy.… But it works with lions … sometimes.… There we are.… Your baby is free.…” Sarah unwrapped the blanket, and took away the oxygen mask, all the while speaking calmly. “Now … all I have to do …” She lifted the baby up in her hands. “… is get it to you.…” Suddenly, the female’s head swung back, and smashed side-on into the glass, which shattered into a white spiderweb with a harsh crack. Sarah couldn’t see through it, but she saw a shadow move and then the second impact broke the glass free. Sarah dropped the baby on the tray and jumped back as the head crashed through, and pushed several feet into the trailer. Streams of blood ran down the adult’s snout, from the shards of glass. But after the initial violence it stopped, and became delicate in its movements. It sniffed the baby, starting at the head, moving slowly down the body. It sniffed the cast, too, and licked it briefly with its tongue. Finally, it rested its lower jaw lightly on the baby’s chest. It stayed that way for a long time, not moving. Only the eyes blinked slowly, staring at Sarah."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "Malcolm, lying on the floor, saw blood dripping over the edge of the counter. He started to get up, but she pushed his head back down with her hand. She whispered, “Ssssh.” “What’s happening?” “It’s feeling the heartbeat.” The tyrannosaur grunted, opened its mouth, and gently gripped the infant between its jaws. Then it moved slowly back, out through the broken glass, carrying the baby outside. It set the baby on the ground, below their vision. It bent over, the head disappearing from view. Malcolm whispered, “Did it wake up? Is the baby awake?” “Ssssh!” There was a repetitive slurping sound, coming from outside the trailer. It was interspersed with soft, guttural growls. Malcolm saw Sarah leaning forward, trying to see out the window. He whispered, “What’s happening?” “She’s licking him. And pushing him with her snout.” “And?” “That’s all. She just keeps doing it.” “What about the baby?” “Nothing. It keeps rolling over, like it’s dead. How much morphine did we give him, the last time?” “I don’t know,” he said. “How should I know?” Malcolm remained on the floor, listening to the slurping and the growling. And finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he heard a soft high-pitched squeak. “He’s waking up! Ian! The baby’s waking up!” Malcolm crawled up on his knees, and looked out the window in time to see the adult carrying the baby in its jaws, walking away toward the perimeter of the clearing. “What’s it doing?” “I guess, taking it back.” The second adult came into view, following the first. Malcolm and Sarah watched the two tyrannosaurs move away from the trailer, across the clearing. Malcolm’s shoulders dropped. “That was close,” he said. “Yes. That was close.” She sighed, and wiped blood from her forearm. In the high hide, Thorne pressed the radio button. “Ian! Are you there? Ian!” Kelly said, “Maybe they turned the radio off.” A light rain began to fall, pattering on the metal roof of the shed. Levine was staring through his night-vision glasses toward the cliff. Lightning flashed, and Thorne said, “Can you see what the animals are doing?” “I can,” Eddie said. “It looks … it looks like they’re going away.” They all began to cheer. Only Levine remained silent, watching through the glasses. Thorne turned to him. “Is that right, Richard? Is everything okay?” “Actually, I think not,” Levine said. “I’m afraid we have made a serious error.” Malcolm watched the retreating tyrannosaurs through the shattered glass window. Beside him, Sarah said nothing. She never took her eyes off the animals. Rain started to fall; water dripped from the shards of glass. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and lightning cracked harshly down, illuminating the giant animals as they moved away. At the nearest of the big trees, the adults stopped, and placed the baby on the ground. “Why are they doing that?” Sarah said. “They should be going back to the nest.” “I don’t know, maybe they’re—” “Maybe the baby is dead,” she said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "But no, in the next flash of lightning they could see the baby moving. It was still alive. They could hear its high-pitched squeaking as one of the adults took the baby in its jaws, and gently placed it in a fork among the high branches of a tree. “Oh no,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “This is wrong, Ian. This is all wrong.” The female tyrannosaur remained with the baby for some moments, moving it, positioning it. Then the female turned, opened its jaws, and roared. The male tyrannosaur roared in response. And then both animals charged the trailer at full speed, racing across the clearing toward them. “Oh, my God,” Sarah said. “Brace yourself, Sarah!” Malcolm shouted. “It’s going to be bad!” The impact was stunning, knocking them sideways through the air. Sarah screamed as she tumbled away. Malcolm hit his head and fell to the floor, seeing stars. Beneath him, the trailer rocked on its suspension, with a metallic scream. The tyrannosaurs roared, and slammed into it again. He heard her shouting, “Ian! Ian!” and then the trailer crashed over onto its side. Malcolm turned away; glassware and lab equipment smashed all around him. When he looked up, everything was cockeyed. Directly above him was the broken window the tyrannosaur had smashed. Rain dripped through onto Malcolm’s face. Lightning flashed, and then he saw a big head peering down at him and snarling. He heard the harsh scratching of the tyrannosaurs’ claws on the metal side of the trailer, then the face disappeared. A moment later, he heard them bellowing as they pushed the trailer through the dirt. He called “Sarah!” and he saw her, somewhere behind him, just as the world spun crazily again, and the trailer was upended with a crash. Now the trailer was lying on its roof; Malcolm started crawling along the ceiling, trying to reach Sarah. He looked up at the lab equipment, locked down on the lab benches, above his head. Liquid dripped onto him from a dozen sources. Something stung his shoulder. He heard a hiss, and realized it must be acid. Somewhere in the darkness ahead, Sarah was groaning. Lightning flashed again, and Malcolm saw her, lying crumpled near the accordion junction that connected the two trailers. That junction was twisted almost shut, which must mean that the second trailer was still upright. It was crazy. Everything was crazy. Outside, the tyrannosaurs roared, and he heard a muffled explosion. They were biting the tires. He thought: Too bad they don’t bite into the battery cable. That’d give them a real surprise. Suddenly, the tyrannosaurs slammed into the trailer again, knocking it laterally along the clearing. As soon as it stopped, they slammed again. The trailer lurched sideways. By then he had reached Sarah. She threw her arms around him. “Ian,” she said. The whole left half of her face was dark. When the lightning flashed, he saw it was covered in blood. “Are you okay?” “I’m fine,” she said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "With the back of her hand, she wiped blood out of her eye. “Can you see what it is?” In another lightning flash, he saw the glint of a large chunk of glass, embedded near her hairline. He pulled it out, and pressed his hand against the sudden gush of blood. They were in the kitchen; he reached up toward the stove, and pulled down a dishtowel. He held it against her head, and watched the cloth darken. “Does it hurt?” “It’s okay.” “I think it’s not too bad,” he said. Outside, the tyrannosaurs roared in the night. “What are they doing?” she said. Her voice was dull. The tyrannosaurs slammed into the trailer again. With this impact, the trailer seemed to move a lot more than before, sliding sideways—and down. Sliding down. “They’re pushing us,” he said. “Where, Ian?” “To the edge of the clearing.” The tyrannosaurs slammed again, and the trailer moved farther. “They’re pushing us over the cliff.” The cliff was five hundred feet of sheer rock, straight down to the valley below. They’d never survive the fall. She held the dishtowel with her own hand, pushing his hand away. “Do something.” “Yeah, okay,” he said. He moved away from her, bracing for the next impact. He didn’t know what to do. He had no idea what to do. The trailer was upside down, and everything was crazy. His shoulder burned and he could smell the acid eating his shirt. Or maybe it was his flesh. It burned a lot. The whole trailer was dark, all the power was out, there was glass everywhere, and he— All the power was out. Malcolm started to get to his feet, but the next impact flung him sideways, and he fell hard, slamming his head against the refrigerator. The door swung open and cartons of cold milk, glass bottles, crashed down on him. But there was no light from the refrigerator. Because all the power was out. Lying on his back, Malcolm looked out the window and saw the big foot of a tyrannosaur standing in the grass. Lightning flashed as the foot raised to kick, and immediately the trailer moved again, sliding easily now, metal screeching, and then tilting downward. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Ian …” But it was too late, the whole trailer was groaning and creaking in metallic protest, and then Malcolm saw the far end sink down, as the trailer slid over the cliff. It started slowly, and then gathered speed, the ceiling they were lying on falling away, everything falling, Sarah falling, clutching at him as she went, and the tyrannosaurs bellowing in triumph. We’re going over the cliff, he thought. Not knowing what else to do, he grabbed the refrigerator door, hanging on tightly. The door was cold, and slippery with moisture. The trailer tilted and fell, the metal creaking loudly."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "Malcolm felt his hands sliding off the white enamel, sliding … sliding.… And then he lost his grip and fell free, dropping helplessly straight down toward the far end of the trailer. He saw the driver’s seat rushing up to him, but before he got there he struck something in the darkness, felt a moment of searing pain, and bent double. And slowly, gently, everything around him went black. Rain drummed on the roof of the shed, and poured in a continuous sheet down the sides. Levine wiped the lenses of his glasses, then lifted them again to his eyes. He stared at the cliffs in the darkness. Arby said, “What is it? What happened?” “I can’t tell,” Levine said. It was hard to see anything in this downpour. Moments before, they had watched in horror as the two tyrannosaurs pushed the trailer toward the cliff. The large animals had done it with ease: Levine guessed the tyrannosaurs had a combined mass of twenty tons, and the trailer only weighed about two tons. Once they had turned it over, it slid easily over the wet grass as they pushed it with their underbellies, and kicked it with their powerful leg muscles. “Why are they doing that?” Thorne said to Levine, standing beside him. “I suspect,” he said, “that we have changed the perceived territory.” “How’s that again?” “You have to remember what we’re dealing with,” Levine said. “Tyrannosaurs may show complex behavior, but most of it is instinctual. It’s unthinking behavior, wired in. And territoriality is part of that instinct. The tyrannosaurs mark territory, they defend territory. It’s not thinking behavior—they don’t have very large brains—but they do it from instinct. All instinctive behavior has triggers, releasers for the behavior. And I’m afraid that, by moving the baby, we redefined their territory to include the clearing where the baby was found. So now they’re going to defend their territory, by driving out the trailers.” Then lightning flashed, and they all saw it in the same horrifying moment. The first trailer had gone over the cliff. It was hanging upside down in space, still connected by the accordion connector to the second trailer in the clearing above. “That connector won’t hold!” Eddie shouted. “Not long!” In the glare of lightning, they saw the tyrannosaurs up in the clearing. Methodically, they were now pushing the second trailer toward the cliff. Thorne turned to Eddie. “I’m going!” he said. “I’ll come with you!” Eddie said. “No! Stay with the kids!” “But you need—” “Stay with the kids! We can’t leave them alone!” “But Levine can—” “No, you stay!” Thorne said. He was already climbing down the scaffolding, slippery in drenching rain, toward the Explorer below. He saw Kelly and Arby looking down at him. He jumped in the car, clicked on the ignition. He was already thinking of the distance to the clearing. It was three miles, maybe more. Even driving fast, it would take him seven or eight minutes to get there."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "And by then it would be too late. He’d never make it in time. But he had to try. Sarah Harding heard a rhythmic creaking, and opened her eyes. Everything was dark; she was disoriented. Then lightning flashed, and she stared straight down toward the valley, five hundred feet below. The view swung gently, back and forth. She was looking through the windshield of the trailer, hanging down the side of the cliff. They were not falling any more. But they were hanging precariously in space. She herself was lying across the driver’s seat, which had broken free of its mounting, and shattered a control panel in the wall; loose wires hung out, panel indicators flickered. She was having trouble seeing, from the blood in her left eye. She pulled out the tail of her shirt, and ripped two strips of cloth. She folded one to make a compress, and pressed it against the gash on her forehead. Then she tied the second strip around her head, to hold the compress down. The pain was intense for a moment; she gritted her teeth until it faded. From somewhere above her, she felt a thumping vibration. She turned, and looked straight up. She saw the whole length of the trailer, suspended vertically. Malcolm was ten feet above her, bent over a lab table, not moving. “Ian,” she said. He didn’t answer. He didn’t move. The trailer shuddered again, creaking under a dull impact. And then Harding realized what was happening. The first trailer was dangling straight down the cliff face, swinging freely in space. But it was still connected to the second trailer, up on the clearing. The first trailer now hung from the accordion connector. And the tyrannosaurs, up above, were now pushing the second trailer off the cliff. “Ian,” she said. “Ian.” She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the pain in her body. She felt a wave of dizziness, and wondered how much blood she had lost. She began to climb straight up, standing first on the back of the driver’s seat, grabbing for the nearest biology table. She pulled herself upward, until she could reach a handle mounted in the wall. The trailer swayed beneath her. From the handle, she managed to grab the refrigerator door, putting her fingers through a wire shelf. She tested it, it held, and she gave it her full weight. She raised her leg, until she got her shoe into the refrigerator itself. Then she swung her body still higher, until she was standing up and could reach the handle to the oven. It was like mountain climbing through a damn kitchen, she thought. Soon she was alongside Malcolm. Lightning flashed again, and she saw his battered face. He groaned. She crawled over to him, trying to see how badly he was hurt. “Ian,” she said. His eyes were closed. “Sorry.” “Never mind.” “I got you into this.” “Ian. Can you move? Are you okay?” He groaned. “My leg.” “Ian."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "We have to do something.” From the clearing above them, she heard the tyrannosaurs roaring. It seemed to her that they had been roaring her whole life. The trailer lurched and swung; her legs slid out of the refrigerator and she was hanging free in space from the oven door. The far end of the trailer was some twenty feet below. The oven handle wouldn’t hold her weight, she knew. Not for long. Harding swung her legs, kicking wildly, finally touched something solid. She felt with her feet, then stepped down. Looking back, she saw she was standing on the side of the stainless-steel sink. She moved her foot and the faucet turned on, soaking her feet. The tyrannosaurs roared, pounding hard. The trailer moved farther out into space, swinging. “Ian. There’s not much time. We have to do something.” He raised his head, stared at her with blank eyes. Lightning flashed again. His lips moved. “Power,” he said. “What about it?” “Power is off.” She didn’t know what he was talking about. Of course the power was off. Then she remembered: he had turned it off earlier. When the tyrannosaurs were approaching. The light had bothered them before, maybe it would bother them again. “You want me to turn the power on?” His head nodded fractionally. “Yes. Turn it on.” “How, Ian?” She looked around in the darkness. “There’s a panel.” “Where?” He didn’t answer her. She reached out, shook his shoulder. “Ian: where is the panel?” He pointed downward. She looked down, saw the loose wires from the panel. “I can’t. It’s broken.” “Up …” She could hardly hear him. Vaguely, she remembered that there was another control panel just inside the second trailer. If she could get in, she might be able to turn the power on. “Okay, Ian,” she said. “I’ll do it.” She moved on, going higher. The floor of the trailer was now thirty feet below her. The tyrannosaurs roared, and kicked again. She swung in space. She moved on. She intended to go through the accordion passage into the second trailer, but as she came closer to the top, she saw that it was not possible. In the harsh flare of lightning, she saw the accordion passage was twisted tightly shut. She was trapped in the first trailer. She heard the tyrannosaurs bellowing, and slamming the second trailer above. “Ian!” She looked down. He wasn’t moving. Hanging there, she realized with a sick feeling that she was defeated. Another kick, another two kicks, and it would be all over. They would fall. There was nothing they could do. There was no time left. She was hanging suspended in blackness, the power was out, and there was nothing— Or was there? She heard an electrical hum, not far away in the darkness. Was there a panel up here, at this end of the trailer? Did they design it to have panels at both ends?"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "Section0067.txt", "text": "Hanging near the top of the trailer, her shoulders and forearms burning with strain, she looked around for a second power panel. She was up near the far end. If there was a panel, it should be nearby. But where? In the glare of lightning, she looked over one shoulder, then the other. She saw no panel. Her arms ached. “Ian, please …” No panel. It wasn’t possible. She kept hearing that hum. There had to be a panel. She just wasn’t seeing it. There had to be a panel. She swung left and right, and lightning flashed again, casting crazy shadows, and then at last she saw it. It was just six inches above her head. It was upside down, but she could see all the buttons and switches. They were dark now. If she could just figure out which was which— The hell with it. She released her right hand, and hanging from her left, pressed every button on the panel she could touch. Immediately, the trailer began to light up, every interior light coming on. She kept pressing the buttons, one after another. Some shorted out; there were sparks and smoke. She kept pressing more. Suddenly the side monitor came on, just inches from her face, a streaky video blur. Then it came into focus. Although she was looking at it sideways, she could see the tyrannosaurs up on the clearing, standing over the second trailer, their forearms touching it, their powerful legs kicking and pushing at it. She pressed more buttons. The final one had a silver protective cover; she flipped the cover open, and pressed that button, too. On the monitor she saw the tyrannosaurs disappear in a sudden flaring burst of incandescent sparks, and she heard them roar in rage. And then the video monitor went off, and there was a crackling explosion of sparks all around Harding, stinging her face and hands, and then everything in the trailer went off, and it was dark again. There was silence for a long moment. Then, inexorably, the pounding began again."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0068.txt", "text": "Thorne The windshield wipers flicked back and forth. Thorne took the curves fast, despite the driving rain. He glanced at his watch. Two minutes gone, perhaps three. Perhaps more. He wasn’t sure. The road was a muddy track, slippery and dangerous. He splashed through deep puddles, holding his breath each time. The car had been waterproofed back in his shop, but you were never sure about these things. Each puddle was another test. So far, so good. Three minutes gone. At least three. The road curved, opened out, and in a flash of lightning he saw a deep puddle ahead. He accelerated through it, the car kicking up plumes of water on both side windows. And then he was through it, still going. Still going! As he headed up a hill, he saw the dashboard needles swing wildly, and he heard the sizzle that he knew meant a fatal electrical short. There was an explosion under the hood, and acrid smoke poured out from the radiator, and the car stopped dead. Four minutes. He sat in the car, hearing the rain pound on the metal roof. He turned the ignition key. Nothing happened. Dead. Rain poured in sheets down the windshield. He sat back in his seat, sighed, and stared at the road ahead. The radio crackled on the seat beside him. “Doc? Are you almost there?” Thorne stared at the road, trying to guess where he was. He estimated that he must still be more than a mile from the trailer in the clearing, maybe more. Too far to try it on foot. He swore, and pounded the seat. “No, Eddie. I shorted.” “You what?” “Eddie, the car’s dead. I’m—” Thorne broke off. He noticed something. From around the curve ahead, he saw a faint, flashing red glow. Thorne squinted, trying to be sure. Yes, his eyes were not playing tricks on him. It was there, all right: a flashing red glow. Eddie said: “Doc? You there?” Thorne didn’t answer; he grabbed the radio and the Lindstradt rifle, jumped out of the car, and ducking his head against the rain, began to run up the hill toward the junction of the ridge road. Coming around a curve, he saw the red Jeep, standing in the middle of the ridge road, its taillights flashing. One of the lights was broken, glaring white. He ran forward, trying to see inside. In a flash of lightning he could see there was no driver. The driver’s door was not even closed; the side was deeply dented. Thorne climbed inside, reaching down with his hand for the steering wheel.… Yes, the keys were there! He turned the ignition. The motor rumbled to life. He shoved the Jeep in gear, backed it around, and headed up the ridge toward the clearing. It was only another few curves before he saw the green roof of the laboratory and turned left, his headlights swinging across the grassy clearing, and shining onto the dinosaurs pushing the trailer."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0068.txt", "text": "Confronted by these new lights, the tyrannosaurs turned in unison, and bellowed at Thorne’s Jeep. They abandoned the trailer, and charged. Thorne threw the Jeep into reverse and was backing away frantically before he realized the animals were not coming toward him. Instead, they were running diagonally across the clearing, toward a tree near Thorne. Beneath the tree they paused, their heads turned upward. Thorne doused his lights, and waited. Now he saw the animals only intermittently, in the flashes of lightning. In one crackling burst, he saw them take down the baby from the tree. Then he saw them nuzzling the baby. Obviously his sudden arrival had made them anxious about the infant. The next time lightning flashed, the tyrannosaurs were gone. The clearing was empty. Were they really gone? Or were they just hiding? He rolled down the window, stuck his head out in the rain. That was when he heard an odd, low, continuous squealing sound. It sounded like the extended cry of an animal, but it was too steady, too continuous. As he listened, he realized it was something else. It was metal. Thorne turned on his lights again, and drove forward slowly. The tyrannosaurs were gone. In the pale beam of the headlamps, he saw the second trailer. With a continuous metallic squeal, it was still sliding slowly across the wet grass, toward the edge of the cliff. “What is he doing now?” Kelly yelled, over the rain. “He’s driving,” Levine said, looking through goggles. From the high hide, they could see Thorne’s headlamps cross the clearing. “He’s driving to the trailer. And he’s …” “He’s what?” Kelly said. “What is he doing now?” “He’s driving around and around a tree,” Levine said. “A big tree by the clearing.” “Why?” “He must be running the cable around the tree,” Eddie said. “That’s the only possible reason.” There was a moment of silence. “What’s he doing now?” Arby said. “He’s gotten out of the Jeep. Now he’s running toward the trailer.” Thorne was down on his hands and knees in the mud, holding the big hook of the Jeep winch in his hands. The trailer was sliding away from him, but he managed to crawl beneath it, and get the hook around the rear axle. He pulled his fingers clear just as the hook slammed tight against the brake cover, and he rolled his body away. Newly restrained, the trailer jumped sideways in the grass, the tires slamming down where his body had been moments before. The metal cable from the winch was pulled taut. The whole underbelly of the trailer creaked in protest. But it held. Thorne crawled out from beneath the trailer, and squinted at it in the rain. He looked carefully at the wheels of the Jeep, to see if they were moving at all. No. With the cable wrapped around the tree, the counterbalancing weight of the Jeep was enough to hold the second trailer on the rim of the cliff."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0068.txt", "text": "He went back to the Jeep, climbed inside, and set the brake. He heard Eddie saying, “Doc. Doc.” “I’m here, Eddie.” “You manage to stop it?” “Yeah. It’s not moving any more.” The radio crackled. “That’s great. But listen. Doc. You know that connector is just five-mil mesh over stainless rod. It was never intended to—” “I know, Eddie. I’m working on it.” Thorne climbed out of the car again. He ran quickly through the rain toward the trailer. He opened the side door, and went inside. The interior was inky black. He could see nothing at all. Everything was overturned. His feet crunched on glass. All the windows were shattered. He held the radio in his hand. “Eddie!” “Yes, Doc.” “I need rope.” He knew that Eddie had all sorts of supplies squirreled away. “Doc …” “Just tell me.” “It’s in the other trailer, Doc.” Thorne crashed against a table in the darkness. “Great.” “There might be some nylon line in the utility locker,” Eddie said. “But I don’t know how much.” He didn’t sound hopeful. Thorne pushed his way down the trailer, came to the wall cabinets. They were jammed shut. He tugged at them in the darkness, then turned away. The utility locker was just beyond. Maybe there would be rope there. And right now, he needed rope."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0069.txt", "text": "Trailer Sarah Harding, still hanging by her arms from the top of the trailer, stared up at the twisted accordion connector, leading to the second trailer. The pounding from the dinosaurs had stopped, and the other trailer was no longer moving. But now she felt water, dripping cold onto her face. And she knew what that meant. The accordion connector was beginning to leak. She looked up, and saw a tear had begun to open in the mesh fabric, revealing the twisted coils of steel that formed the connector. The tear was small now, but it would rapidly widen. And as the mesh broke, the steel would begin to uncoil, to lengthen, and finally snap. They had only minutes before the hanging trailer broke free and fell to the ground below. She climbed back down to Malcolm, bracing herself to stand beside him. “Ian.” “I know,” he said, shaking his head. “Ian, we have to get out of here.” She grabbed him under his armpits, and pulled him upright. “And you’re coming with me.” He shook his head, defeated. She had seen that gesture before in her life, that futile shake, giving up. She hated to see it. Harding never gave up. Not ever. Malcolm grunted. “I can’t.…” “You have to,” she said. “Sarah …” “I don’t want to hear it, Ian. There’s nothing to talk about. Now let’s go.” She was pulling him, and he groaned, but he straightened his body. She pulled hard, and got him up off the table. Lightning flashed, and he seemed to find some energy. He managed to stand on the edge of the seat, facing the table. He was unsteady, but standing. “What do we do?” “I don’t know, but we’re going to get out of here.… Is there any rope?” He nodded, weakly. “Where?” He pointed straight down, toward the nose of the trailer, now hanging in space. “Down there. Under the dash.” “Come on.” She leaned out into space, and spread her legs so she was braced against the floor opposite her. She was standing like a rock climber in a chimney. Twenty feet below her to the dashboard. “Okay, Ian. Let’s go.” Malcolm said, “I can’t do it, Sarah. Seriously.” “Then lean on me. I’ll carry you.” “But—” “Now, damn it!” Malcolm hoisted himself up, grasped a wall fitting, his arm trembling. He was dragging his right leg. Then she felt his weight on her, sudden and heavy, almost knocking her free. His arms locked around her neck, choking her. She gasped, reached back with both arms, grabbed his thighs, and lifted him while he adjusted his arms better around her neck. Finally she could breathe. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s okay,” she said. “Here we go.” She started to make her way down the vertical passageway, grabbing at whatever she could."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0069.txt", "text": "In places there were handholds, and when there were no handholds, she clutched at drawer handles, table legs, window latches, even the carpeting on the floor, her fingers tearing the cloth. At one point, the carpet came away in a big strip, and she slipped before her legs tightened wider, and she halted her downward slide. Hanging behind her, Malcolm wheezed; his arms around her neck were trembling. He said, “You’re very strong.” “But still feminine,” she said, grimly. She was only ten feet from the dashboard. Then five. She found a wall grip, hung, dangling her legs. Her feet touched the steering wheel. She lowered herself down, easing Malcolm onto the dashboard. He lay back, gasping. The trailer creaked and swayed. She fumbled under the dashboard, found a utility box, popped it open. Metal tools spilled out, clattering. And she found a rope. Half-inch nylon, easily fifty feet of it. She got up, staring down through the windshield at the bottom of the valley hundreds of feet below. Directly to her side, she saw the driver’s door to the trailer. She twisted the handle, pushed it open. It clanged against the outer surface of the trailer, and she felt rain on her face. She leaned out and looked up the side of the trailer. She saw smooth metal paneling, with no hand grips. But underneath the trailer, there must be axles and boxes and other things to stand on. Gripping the wet metal of the doorjamb, she bent over, trying to look at the underside of the trailer. She heard a metallic clanking, and she heard someone say, “Finally!” And a bulky shape suddenly loomed in front of her. It was Thorne, hanging on the undercarriage. “For Christ’s sake,” Thorne said. “What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation? Let’s go!” “It’s Ian,” she said. “He’s hurt.” Typical, Kelly thought, looking at Arby in the high hide. When things got tough, he just couldn’t handle it. Too much emotion, too much tension, and he got all trembly and weird. Arby had long since turned away from the cliff, and now was looking out the other side of the shelter, toward the river. Almost as if nothing was going on. Typical. Kelly turned back to Levine. “What’s happening now?” she said. “Thorne just went in,” Levine said, peering through the goggles. “He went in? You mean, in the trailer?” “Yes. And now … someone’s coming out.” “Who?” “I think Sarah. She’s getting everybody out.” Kelly strained in the night, trying to see. The rain had almost stopped; there was only a light drizzle now. Across the valley, the trailer still swung free in space. She thought she could make out a figure, clinging to the undercarriage. But she couldn’t be sure. “What’s she doing?” “Climbing.” “Alone?” “Yes,” Levine said. “Alone.” Sarah Harding came out through the door, twisting her body in the rain. She did not look down. She knew the valley was five hundred feet below her."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0069.txt", "text": "She could feel the trailer swinging. She had the rope slung around her shoulder. She edged around, lowered her leg, and stood on a gearbox. She felt with her hand, gripped a cable. Swung around. Thorne was inside the trailer, talking to her. “We’ll never get Malcolm up without a rope,” he said. “Can you climb it?” Lightning flashed. She stared straight up at the underside of the trailer, glistening wet with rain. She saw the slick gleam of grease. Then blackness again. “Sarah: can you do it?” “Yes,” she said. She reached up, and started to climb. In the high hide, Kelly was saying, “Where is she? What’s happening? Is she all right?” Levine watched through the glasses. “She’s climbing,” he said. Arby listened to their voices distantly. He was turned away, staring off at the river in the darkened plain. He waited impatiently for the next lightning flash. Waited to see if it was true, what he had seen earlier. She did not know how, but slipping and sliding, she somehow got to the top of the cliff, and flung herself over the side. There was no time to waste; she uncoiled the rope, and crawled beneath the second trailer. She looped the rope through a metal bracket, quickly knotted it. Then she went back to the edge of the cliff, and threw the rope down. “Doc!” she shouted. Standing at the trailer door, Thorne caught the rope, and tied it around Malcolm, who groaned. “Let’s go,” Thorne said. He put his arm around Malcolm and swung them both out, until they were standing on the gearbox. “Christ,” Malcolm said, looking upward. But Sarah was already pulling him, the rope tightening. “Just use your arms,” Thorne said. Malcolm started to rise; in a few moments, he was ten feet above Thorne. Sarah was up on the cliff, but Thorne couldn’t see her; Ian’s body blocked his view. Thorne began to climb, his legs struggling for purchase. The underside of the trailer was slippery. He thought: I should have made it nonskid. But who would ever make the undercarriage of a vehicle nonskid? In his mind’s eye, he saw the accordion connector, tearing … slowly tearing … opening wider.… He climbed upward. Hand over hand. Foot by foot. Lightning flashed, and he realized that they were close to the top. Sarah was standing on the edge of the cliff, reaching down for Malcolm. Malcolm was pulling himself up with his arms; his legs swung limp, free. But he was still going. Another few feet … Sarah grabbed Malcolm by the shirt collar, and hauled him up the rest of the way. Malcolm flopped over, out of sight. Thorne continued up. His feet slipped. His arms ached. He climbed. Sarah was reaching down to him. “Come on, Doc,” she said. Her hand was extended. Fingers reaching toward him. With a metallic whang! the mesh ripped on the connector, and the trailer dropped down ten feet, the coils widening."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0069.txt", "text": "Thorne climbed faster. Looking up toward Sarah. Her hand still reached down. “You can do it, Doc.…” He climbed, closing his eyes, just climbing, holding the rope, gripping it tightly. His arms ached, his shoulders ached, and the rope seemed to become smaller in his hands. He twisted it around his fist, trying to hold on. But at the last moment he began to slip, and then he felt a sudden burning pain in his scalp. “Sorry about that,” Sarah said, and she pulled him up by his hair. The pain was intense but he didn’t care, he hardly noticed, because now he was alongside the accordion connector, watching the coils pop free like a bursting corset, and the trailer dropped lower but she still pulled him, she was immensely strong, and then his fingers touched wet grass, and he was over the side. Safe. Beneath them, there was a sharp series of metallic sounds—whang! whang! whang!—as the coiled metal rods snapped one after another, and then, with a final groan, the trailer broke all connection, and fell free down the cliff face, growing smaller and smaller, until it smashed on the rocks far below. In the glare of lightning, it looked like a crumpled paper bag. Thorne turned, and looked up at Sarah. “Thanks,” he said. Sarah sat heavily on the ground beside him. Blood dripped from her bandaged head. She opened her fingers, and released a handful of his gray hair, which fell in a wet clump onto the grass. “Hell of a night,” she said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0070.txt", "text": "The High Hide Watching through the night-vision glasses, Levine said, “They made it!” Kelly said, “All of them?” “Yes! They made it!” Kelly began to jump and cheer. Arby turned, and grabbed the glasses out of Levine’s hand. “Hey,” Levine said. “Just a minute—” “I need them,” Arby said. He spun back around and looked out at the dark plain. For a moment, he couldn’t see anything, just a green blur. His fingers found the focus knob, he twisted it quickly, and the image came into view. “What the hell is so important?” Levine said irritably. “That’s an expensive piece of equipment—” And then they all heard the snarling. It was coming closer. In pale shades of luminous green, Arby saw the raptors clearly. There were twelve of them, moving in a loose cluster through the grass, heading in the direction of the high hide. One animal was a few yards ahead and seemed to be the leader; but it was hard to discern any organization in the pack. The raptors were all snarling and licking the blood off their snouts, wiping their faces with their clawed forearms, a gesture oddly intelligent, almost human. In the night-vision glasses, their eyes glowed bright green. They did not seem to have noticed the high hide. They never looked up toward it. But they were certainly headed in that direction. Abruptly, the glasses were yanked out of Arby’s hands. “Excuse me,” Levine said. “I think I’d better handle this.” Arby said, “You wouldn’t even know about it, if it wasn’t for me.” “Be quiet,” Levine said. He brought the glasses to his eyes, focused them, and sighed at what he saw. Twelve animals, about twenty yards away. Eddie said quietly, “Do they see us?” “No. And we’re downwind of them, so they won’t smell us. My guess is they’re following the game trail that runs past the hide. If we’re quiet, they’ll go right past us.” Eddie’s radio crackled. He hastily reached to turn it down. They all stared out at the plain. The night was now calm and still. The rain had stopped, and the moon was breaking through thinning clouds. Faintly, they saw the approaching animals, dark against the silver grass. Eddie whispered, “Can they get up here?” “I don’t see how,” Levine whispered. “We’re almost twenty feet above the ground. I think we’ll be fine.” “But you said they can climb trees.” “Ssssh. This isn’t a tree. Now, everybody down, and quiet.” * * * Malcolm winced in pain as Thorne stretched him out on a table in the second trailer. “I don’t seem to have much luck on these expeditions, do I?” “No, you don’t,” Sarah said. “Just take it easy, Ian.” Thorne held a flashlight while she cut away Malcolm’s trouser. He had a deep gash on his right leg, and he had lost a lot of blood."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0070.txt", "text": "She said, “We have a medical kit?” Thorne said, “I think there’s one outside, where we store the bike.” “Get it.” Thorne went outside to get it. Malcolm and Harding were alone in the trailer. She shone the light into the wound, peering closely. Malcolm said, “How bad is it?” “It could be worse,” she said lightly. “You’ll survive.” In fact, the wound cut deep, almost to the bone. Somehow it had missed the artery; that was lucky. But the gash was filthy—she saw grease and bits of leaves mashed into the ragged red muscle. She’d have to clean it out, but she’d wait for the morphine to take effect first. “Sarah,” Malcolm said, “I owe you my life.” “Never mind, Ian.” “No, no, I do.” “Ian,” she said, looking at him. “This sincerity is not like you.” “It’ll pass,” he said, and smiled a little. She knew he must be in pain. Thorne returned with the medical kit, and she filled the syringe, tapped out the bubbles, and injected it into Malcolm’s shoulder. He grunted. “Ow. How much did you give me?” “A lot.” “Why?” “Because I have to clean the wound out, Ian. And you’re not going to like it when I do.” Malcolm sighed. He turned to Thorne. “It’s always something, isn’t it? Go on, Sarah, do your damnedest.” * * * Levine watched the approaching raptors through the night glasses. They moved in a loose group, with their characteristic hopping gait. He watched, hoping to see some organization in the pack, some structure, some sign of a dominance hierarchy. Velociraptors were intelligent and it made sense that they would organize themselves hierarchically, and that this would appear in their spatial configuration. But he could see nothing. They were like a band of marauders, shapeless, hissing and snapping at one another. Near Levine in the high hide, Eddie and the kids were crouched down. Eddie had his arms around the kids, comforting them. The boy especially was panicky. The girl seemed to be okay. She was calmer. Levine didn’t understand why anyone was afraid. They were perfectly secure, high up here. He watched the approaching pack with academic detachment, trying to discern a pattern in their rapid movements. There was no doubt they were following the game trail. Their path exactly matched the paras earlier in the day: up from the river, then over the slight rise, and along the back of the high hide. The raptors paid no attention to the hide itself. They seemed mostly to interact with each other. The animals came around the side of the structure, and were about to continue on, when the nearest animal paused. It fell behind the rest of the pack, sniffing the air. Then it bent over, and began to poke its snout through the grass around the bottom of the hide. What was it doing? Levine wondered. The solitary raptor growled. It continued to root in the grass."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0070.txt", "text": "And then it came up with something in its hand, something it held in its clawed fingers. Levine squinted, trying to see it. It was a piece of wrapping paper from a candy bar. The raptor looked up at the high hide, its eyes glowing. It stared right at Levine. And it snarled."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0071.txt", "text": "Malcolm “You feel okay?” Thorne said. “Better all the time,” Malcolm said. He sighed. His body relaxed. “You know, there’s a reason why people like morphine,” he said. Sarah Harding adjusted the inflatable plastic splint around Malcolm’s leg. She said to Thorne, “How long until the helicopter comes?” Thorne glanced at his watch. “Less than five hours. Dawn tomorrow.” “For sure?” “Yes, absolutely.” Harding nodded. “Okay. He’ll be okay.” “I’m fine,” Malcolm said, in a dreamy voice. “I’m just sad that the experiment is over. And it was such a good experiment, too. So elegant. So unique. Darwin never knew.” Harding said to Thorne, “I’m going to clean this out now. Hold his leg for me.” More loudly, she said, “What didn’t Darwin know, Ian?” “That life is a complex system,” he said, “and everything that goes along with that. Fitness landscapes. Adaptive walks. Boolean nets. Self-organizing behavior. Poor man. Ouch! What are you doing there?” “Just tell us,” Harding said, bent over the wound. “Darwin had no idea …” “That life is so unbelievably complex,” Malcolm said. “Nobody realizes it. I mean, a single fertilized egg has a hundred thousand genes, which act in a coordinated way, switching on and off at specific times, to transform that single cell into a complete living creature. That one cell starts to divide, but the subsequent cells are different. They specialize. Some are nerve. Some are gut. Some are limb. Each set of cells begins to follow its own program, developing, interacting. Eventually there are two hundred and fifty different kinds of cells, all developing together, at exactly the right time. Just when the organism needs a circulatory system, the heart starts pumping. Just when hormones are needed, the adrenals start to make them. Week after week, this unimaginably complex development proceeds perfectly—perfectly. It’s incredible. No human activity comes close. “I mean, you ever build a house? A house is simple in comparison. But even so, workmen build the stairs wrong, they put the sink in backward, the tile man doesn’t show up when he’s supposed to. All kinds of things go wrong. And yet the fly that lands on the workman’s lunch is perfect. Ow! Take it easy.” “Sorry,” she said, continuing to clean his wound. “But the point,” Malcolm said, “is that this intricate developmental process in the cell is something we can barely describe, let alone understand. Do you realize the limits of our understanding? Mathematically, we can describe two things interacting, like two planets in space. Three things interacting—three planets in space—well, that becomes a problem. Four or five things interacting, we can’t really do it. And inside the cell, there’s one hundred thousand things interacting. You have to throw up your hands. It’s so complex—how is it even possible that life ever happens at all? Some people think the answer is that living forms organize themselves. Life creates its own order, the way crystallization creates order."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0071.txt", "text": "Some people think life crystallizes into being, and that’s how the complexity is managed. “Because, if you didn’t know any physical chemistry, you could look at a crystal and ask all the same questions. You’d see those beautiful spars, those perfect geometric facets, and you could ask, What’s controlling this process? How does the crystal end up so perfectly formed—and looking so much like other crystals? But it turns out a crystal is just the way molecular forces arrange themselves in solid form. No one controls it. It happens on its own. To ask a lot of questions about a crystal means you don’t understand the fundamental nature of the processes that led to its creation. “So maybe living forms are a kind of crystallization. Maybe life just happens. And maybe, like crystals, there’s a characteristic order to living things that is generated by their interacting elements. Okay. Well, one of the things that crystals teach us is that order can arise very fast. One minute you have a liquid, with all the molecules moving randomly. The next minute, a crystal forms, and all the molecules are locked in order. Right?” “Right …” “Okay. Now. Think of the interaction of life forms on the planet to make an ecosystem. That’s even more complex than a single animal. All the arrangements are very complicated. Like the yucca plant. You know about that?” “Tell me.” “The yucca plant depends on a particular moth which gathers pollen into a ball, and carries the ball to a different plant—not a different flower on the same plant—where it rubs the ball on the plant, fertilizing it. Only then does the moth lay its eggs. The yucca plant can’t survive without the moth. The moth can’t survive without the plant. Complex interactions like that make you think maybe behavior is a kind of crystallization, too.” “You’re speaking metaphorically?” Harding said. “I’m talking about all the order in the natural world,” Malcolm said. “And how perhaps it can emerge fast, through crystallization. Because complex animals can evolve their behavior rapidly. Changes can occur very quickly. Human beings are transforming the planet, and nobody knows whether it’s a dangerous development or not. So these behavioral processes can happen faster than we usually think evolution occurs. In ten thousand years human beings have gone from hunting to farming to cities to cyberspace. Behavior is screaming forward, and it might be nonadaptive. Nobody knows. Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.” “Yes? Why is that?” “Because it means the end of innovation,” Malcolm said. “This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they’ll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0071.txt", "text": "And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That’s the effect of mass media—it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. Oh, that hurts. Are you done?” “Almost,” Harding said. “Hang on.” “And believe me, it’ll be fast. If you map complex systems on a fitness landscape, you find the behavior can move so fast that fitness can drop precipitously. It doesn’t require asteroids or diseases or anything else. It’s just behavior that suddenly emerges, and turns out to be fatal to the creatures that do it. My idea was that dinosaurs—being complex creatures—might have undergone some of these behavioral changes. And that led to their extinction.” “What, all of them?” “It just takes a few,” Malcolm said. “Some dinosaur roots in the swamps around the inland sea, changes the water circulation, and destroys the plant ecology that twenty other species depend on. Bang! They’re gone. That causes still more dislocations. A predator dies off, and its prey grow unchecked. The ecosystem becomes unbalanced. More things go wrong. More species die. And suddenly it’s over. It could have happened that way.” “Just behavior …” “Yes,” Malcolm said. “Anyway, that was the idea. And I had this nice thought that we might prove it.… But now it’s finished. We have to get out of here. You better tell the others.” Thorne clicked on the radio. “Eddie? It’s Doc.” There was no answer. “Eddie?” The radio crackled. And then they heard a noise that at first sounded like static. It was a moment before they realized it was a high-pitched human scream."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0072.txt", "text": "The High Hide The first of the raptors hissed as it began jumping up, clattering against the high hide, shaking the structure. Its claws raked against the metal, and it fell down again. Eddie was astonished at how high it jumped—the animal could leap eight feet straight up, again and again, without apparent effort. Its jumps attracted the other animals, which slowly came back to circle the hide. Soon the hide was surrounded by leaping, snarling raptors. It swayed back and forth as the animals slammed into it, clawed for purchase, and fell back again. But more ominously, Levine saw, they were learning. Already, some of them had begun to use their clawed forearms to grip the structure, holding on while their legs got footing. One of the raptors came within a few feet of their little shelter before finally falling back. The falls never seemed to hurt the animals. They immediately leapt up, and jumped again. Eddie and the kids scrambled to their feet. Levine said, “Get back! Don’t look out,” and he pushed the kids into the center of the shelter. Eddie was bent over his knapsack, and held up an incandescent flare. He popped it and flung it over the side; two of the raptors fell away. The flare sputtered on the wet ground, casting harsh red shadows. But the raptors kept coming. Eddie pulled up one of the aluminum bars from the floor, leaned over the side railing brandishing the bar like a club. One of the raptors had already climbed high enough to dart forward, jaws gaping, at Eddie’s neck. Surprised, Eddie shouted and jerked his head back; the raptor narrowly missed him, but its jaws closed on his shirt. Then the raptor fell back, jaws clenched tight, and its weight pulled Eddie forward over the railing. He yelled “Help me! Help!” as he started to topple over the side; Levine threw his arms around him, dragging him back. Levine looked past Eddie’s shoulder at the raptor, which was now dangling in space, hissing furiously, still gripping the shirt. Eddie pounded the raptor on the snout with his bar. But the raptor held on like a bulldog. Eddie was bent precariously over the railing; he might fall at any moment. He jabbed the bar into the animal’s eye, and abruptly the raptor released its grip. The two men fell back into the shelter. When they got to their feet, they saw raptors climbing up the sides of the hide. As they appeared at the rail, Eddie swung at them with the strut, knocking them back. “Quick!” he shouted to the kids. “Up on the roof! Quick!” Kelly started climbing one of the struts, then pushed herself easily up onto the roof. Arby stood there, his expression blank. She looked back down and said, “Come on, Arb!” The boy was frozen, his eyes wide with fear. Levine ran to help him, lifted him up."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0072.txt", "text": "Eddie was swinging the strut in wide arcs, the metal smacking against the raptors. One of the raptors caught the strut in its jaws and jerked it hard. Eddie lost his balance, twisted, and fell backward, toppling over the side. He cried “Nooo!” as he fell. Immediately all the animals dropped down to the ground. They heard Eddie screaming in the night. The raptors snarled. Levine was terrified. He was still holding Arby in his arms, pushing him up to the roof. “Go on,” he kept saying. “Go on. Go on.” From the roof, Kelly was saying, “You can do it, Arb.” The boy gripped the roof, pulling himself up, his legs churning in panic. He kicked Levine hard in the mouth and Levine dropped him. He saw the boy slide away, and drop backward to the ground. “Oh Christ,” Levine said. “Oh Christ.” Thorne was underneath the trailer, unhooking the cable. He released it, crawled out, and sprinted for the Jeep. He heard the whirr of a motor and saw that Sarah had gotten onto the motorbike, and was already racing off, a Lindstradt rifle slung across her shoulder. He got behind the wheel, turned on the engine, and waited impatiently while the cable winched in, the hook sliding across the grass. It seemed to take forever. Now the cable was snaking around the tree. He waited. He looked over and saw the light from Sarah’s bike moving off through the foliage, heading down toward the high hide. At last the winch motor stopped. Thorne threw the car in gear, and roared away from the clearing. The radio clicked. “Ian,” he said. “Don’t worry about me,” Malcolm said, in a dreamy voice. “I’m just fine.” Kelly was lying flat on the angled roof of the shed, looking down over the side. She saw Arby hit the ground, on the other side of the structure from Eddie. He seemed to hit hard. But she didn’t know what happened to him, because she had turned away to grip the wet roof, and when she looked back down again, Arby was gone. Gone. Sarah Harding drove fast on the muddy jungle road. She wasn’t sure where she was, but she thought by following the terrain downward she would eventually come out onto the plain. At least that was her hope. She accelerated, came around a curve, and suddenly saw a big tree blocking the road. She braked to a stop, spun the bike around, and headed back again. Farther up the road, she saw Thorne’s twin headlights, turning off to the right. She followed his Jeep, racing her engine in the night. Levine stood in the center of the high hide, frozen with terror. The raptors were no longer jumping, no longer trying to climb the structure. He heard them down on the ground, snarling. He heard the sharp crunch of bones. The boy had never made a sound. Cold sweat broke out all over his body."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0072.txt", "text": "Then he heard Arby shout, “Back! Get back!” Up on the roof, Kelly twisted around, trying to see down on the other side. In the dying light of the flare, she saw that Arby was inside the cage. He had managed to close the door, and was reaching his hand back through the bars, to turn the key in the lock. There were three raptors near him; they leapt forward when they saw his hand, and he pulled it back quickly. He shouted, “Get back!” The raptors began to bite the cage, turning their heads sideways to gnaw the bars. One of the animals got its lower jaw tangled up in the looped elastic band that hung from the key. The raptor pulled its head away, stretching the elastic, and suddenly the key snapped out of the lock, smacking against its neck. The raptor squealed in surprise and stepped backward. The elastic was now looped tight around the lower jaw, the key glinting in the light. The raptor scratched at it with its forearms, trying to pull the elastic loop off, but it was caught around the curved back teeth, and the animal’s efforts just made the elastic snap on the skin. Soon it gave up, and began rubbing its snout in the dirt, trying to get the key off. Meanwhile the other raptors managed to pull the cage free from the superstructure, and knock it over onto the ground. They ducked their heads, slashing Arby behind the bars. When they realized that wouldn’t work, they kicked and stomped the cage repeatedly. More animals joined them. Soon seven raptors were clustered over the cage. They kicked it and it rolled away from the hide. Their bodies blocked her view of Arby. She heard a faint sound, and looked up to see two headlights in the distance. It was a car. Someone was coming. Arby was in hell. Inside the cage, he was surrounded by black snarling shapes. The raptors couldn’t get their jaws through the spaces in the bars, but their hot saliva dripped down on him, and when they kicked their claws came through, slashing his arms and shoulders as he rolled. His body was bruised. His head hurt from banging against the bars. His world was swirling, terrifying pandemonium. He knew only one thing with certainty. The raptors were rolling him away from the hide. * * * As the car came closer, Levine went to the railing and looked down. In the light of the red flare, he saw three raptors dragging what remained of Eddie’s body toward the jungle. They paused frequently to fight over it, snapping at each other, but they still managed to haul it away. Then he saw that another group of raptors were kicking and pushing the cage. They rolled it down the game trail, and into the forest. Now he could hear the rumble of the Jeep engine, as the car came closer. He saw Thorne’s silhouette behind the wheel."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0072.txt", "text": "He hoped he had a gun. Levine wanted to kill every one of these damned animals. He wanted to kill them all. Up on the roof, Kelly watched the raptors kicking the cage, rolling it away. One raptor remained behind, turning around and around in circles, like a frustrated dog. Then she saw it was the raptor that had caught its jaw in the elastic loop. The key still dangled along its cheek, glinting in the red light. The raptor jerked its head up and down, trying to get free. The Jeep came roaring forward, and the raptor seemed confused by the sudden bright lights. Thorne accelerated, trying to hit it with his car. The raptor turned and ran off, out into the plain. Kelly scrambled off the roof, and headed down. Thorne threw open the door as Levine jumped into the car. “They got the kid,” Levine said, pointing along the trail. Kelly was still coming down, shouting, “Wait!” Thorne said, “Get back up there. Sarah’s coming! We’ll get Arby!” “But—” “We can’t lose them!” Thorne gunned the engine, and started to drive down the game trail, chasing the raptors. In the trailer, Ian Malcolm listened to the voices shouting over the radio. He heard the panic, the confusion. Black noise, he thought. Everything going to hell at once. A hundred thousand things interacting. He sighed, and closed his eyes. Thorne drove fast. The jungle was dense around them. The trail ahead began to narrow, the big palms edging closer, slapping the car. He said, “Can we make it?” “It’s wide enough,” Levine said. “I walked it earlier today. Paras use this trail.” “How could this happen?” Thorne said. “The cage was attached to the scaffolding.” “I don’t know,” Levine said. “It broke off.” “How? How?” “I didn’t see. A lot happened.” “And Eddie?” Thorne said grimly. “It was fast,” Levine said. The Jeep plunged through the jungle, bouncing hard as it followed the game trail; they banged their heads on the cloth roof. Thorne drove recklessly. Up ahead, the raptors were moving fast; he could hardly see the last of the animals, sprinting in the darkness up ahead. “They wouldn’t listen to me!” Kelly shouted, as Sarah pulled up on the motorcycle. “About what?” “The raptor took the key! Arby’s locked in the cage and the raptor took the key!” “Where?” Sarah said. “There!” she said, pointing across the plain. In the moonlight they could just see the dark shape of the fleeing raptor. “We need the key!” “Get on,” Sarah said, unshouldering her rifle. Kelly climbed behind her on the bike. Sarah thrust the gun into her hands. “Can you shoot?” “No. I mean, I never—” “Can you drive a bike?” “No, I—” “Then you have to shoot,” Sarah said. “Now, look: trigger’s here. Okay? Safety’s here. Twist it like this. Okay? It’ll be a rough ride, so don’t release it until we get close.” “Close to what?” But Sarah didn’t hear her."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0072.txt", "text": "She gunned the engine, and the bike accelerated, heading out into the plain, chasing the fleeing raptor. Kelly put one arm around Sarah, and tried to hold on. The Jeep bounced along the jungle trail, splashing through muddy pools. “I don’t remember it this rough,” Levine said, clutching the armhold. “Maybe you should slow down—” “Hell no,” Thorne said. “If we lose sight of him, it’s over. We don’t know where the raptor nest is. And in this jungle, at night … Ah, hell.” Up ahead, the raptors were leaving the trail, running off into the underbrush. The cage was gone. Thorne could not see the terrain very well, but it looked like a sheer hill, going almost straight down. “You can’t do it,” Levine said. “It’s too steep.” “I have to do it,” Thorne said. “Don’t be crazy,” Levine said. “Face facts. We’ve lost the kid, Doc. It’s too bad, but we’ve lost him.” Thorne glared at Levine. “He didn’t give up on you,” he said. “And we’re not giving up on him.” Thorne spun the wheel and drove the Jeep over the edge. The car nosed down sickeningly, gained speed, and began a steep descent. “Shit!” Levine yelled. “You’ll kill us all!” “Hang on!” Bouncing, they plunged downward into darkness."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0074.txt", "text": "Chase The motorcycle raced forward across the grassy plain. Kelly clutched Sarah with one hand, and held the rifle with the other; the rifle was heavy; her arm was getting tired. The motorcycle jolted over the terrain. The wind blew her hair around her face. “Hold on!” Sarah shouted. The moon broke through the clouds, and the grass before them was silver in the moonlight. The raptor was forty yards ahead of them, the animal just within range of their headlamp. They were gaining steadily. Kelly saw no other animals on the plain, except for the apatosaur herd in the far distance. They came closer to the raptor. The animal ran swiftly, its tail stiff, barely visible above the grass. Sarah angled the bike to the right, as they came alongside the raptor. They moved steadily closer. She leaned back, her mouth close to Kelly’s ear. “Get ready!” she shouted. “What do I do?” They were running parallel to the raptor, back by its tail. Sarah accelerated, passing the legs, moving toward the head. “The neck!” she shouted. “Shoot it in the neck!” “Where?” “Anywhere! The neck!” Kelly fumbled with the gun. “Now?” “No! Wait! Wait!” The raptor panicked as the motorcycle approached. It increased its speed. Kelly was trying to find the safety. The gun was bouncing. Everything was bouncing. Her fingers touched the safety, slid off. She reached again. She was going to have to use two hands, and that meant letting go of Sarah— “Get ready!” Sarah shouted. “But I can’t—” “Now! Do it! Now!” Sarah swerved the bike, coming alongside the raptor. They were now just three feet away. Kelly could smell the animal. It turned its head and snapped at them. Kelly fired. The gun bucked in her hands; she grabbed Sarah again. The raptor kept running. “What happened?” “You missed!” Kelly shook her head. “Never mind!” Sarah shouted. “You can do it! I’ll get closer!” She angled the bike toward the raptor again, moving closer. But this time was different: as they came alongside, the raptor abruptly charged them, butting at them with its head. Sarah howled and twisted the bike away, widening the gap. “Smart bastards, aren’t they!” she shouted. “No second chances!” The raptor chased them for a moment, then suddenly turned, changing direction, racing away across the plains. “It’s going for the river!” Kelly shouted. Sarah gunned the engine. The bike shot forward. “How deep?” Kelly didn’t answer. “How deep!” “I don’t know!” Kelly shouted. She was trying to remember how the raptors looked when they crossed the river. She seemed to remember they were swimming. That meant it must be at least— “More than three feet?” Sarah said. “Yes!” “No good!” They were now ten yards behind the raptor, and losing ground. The animal had entered an area marked with thick Benettitalean cycads. The rough trunks scratched at them. The terrain was uneven; the bike bounced and jolted over the bumps. “Can’t see!” Sarah shouted."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0074.txt", "text": "“Hold on!” She angled left, moving away from the raptor, heading for the river. The animal was disappearing in the grass. “What’re you doing?” Kelly shouted. “We have to cut him off!” Shrieking, a flock of startled birds rose up in front of them. Sarah drove through flapping wings, and Kelly ducked her head. The rifle thunked in her hand. “Careful!” Sarah shouted. “What happened?” “It went off!” “How many shots do I have?” “Two more! Make ’em good!” The river was up ahead, shimmering in the moonlight. They burst out of the grass and came onto the muddy bank. Sarah turned, the motorcycle swerved, slipped, and the bike shot away. Kelly fell, hitting the cold mud, Sarah landing hard on top of her. Immediately Sarah jumped up, running for the bike, shouting, “Come on!” Dazed, Kelly followed her. The rifle in her hands was thick with mud. She wondered if it would still work. Sarah was already on the bike, gunning the engine, waving her forward. Kelly jumped on, and Sarah headed up the riverbank. The raptor was twenty yards ahead of them. Approaching the water. “It’s getting away!” Thorne’s Jeep crashed down the hillside, out of control. Palms slapped against the windshield; they could see nothing at all, but they felt the steepness of the incline. The Jeep fished sideways. Levine yelled. Thorne gripped the steering wheel, tried to turn the car back. He touched the brake; the Jeep straightened and continued down the hill. There was a gap in the palms—he saw a field of black boulders looming directly ahead. The raptors were scrambling over the boulders. But maybe if he went left— “No!” Levine shouted. “No!” “Hang on!” Thorne yelled, and he twisted the wheel. The car lost traction and slid downward. They hit the first of the boulders, shattering a headlight. The car swung up at an angle, crashed down again. Thorne thought that had finished the transmission but somehow the car was still going, angling down the hillside, moving off to the left. The second headlight smashed on a tree branch. They continued down in darkness, through another layer of palms, and then abruptly they banged down on level ground. The Jeep tires rolled across soft earth. Thorne brought the car to a stop. Silence. They peered out the windows, trying to see where they were. But it was so dark, it was hard to see anything. They seemed to be at the bottom of a deep gully, a canopy of trees overhead. “Alluvial contours,” Levine said. “We must be in a streambed.” As his eyes adjusted, Thorne saw he was right. The raptors were running down the center of the streambed, which was lined with big boulders on both sides. But the bed itself was sandy, and it was wide enough for the car to pass through. He followed them. “You have any idea where we are?” Levine said, staring at the raptors. “No,” Thorne said. The car drove forward."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0074.txt", "text": "The streambed widened, opening out into a flat basin. The boulders disappeared; there were trees on both sides of the river. Patches of moonlight appeared here and there. It was easier to see. But the raptors were gone. He stopped the car, rolled down the window, and listened. He could hear them hissing and growling. The sound seemed to be coming from off to the left. Thorne put the car in gear, and left the streambed, moving off among ferns and occasional pine trees. Levine said, “Do you suppose the boy survived that hill?” “I don’t know,” Thorne said. “I can’t imagine.” He drove forward slowly. They came to a break in the trees, and saw a clearing where the ferns had been trampled flat. Beyond the clearing, they saw the banks of the river, moonlight glinting on the water. Somehow they had returned to the river. But it was the clearing itself that held their attention. Within the broad open space, they saw the huge pale skeletons of several apatosaurs. The giant rib cages, arcs of pale bone, shone in the silver light. The dark hulk of a partially eaten carcass lay on its side in the center, clouds of flies buzzing above it in the night. “What is this place?” Thorne said. “It looks like a graveyard.” “Yes,” Levine said. “But it’s not.” The raptors were all clustered to one side, fighting over the remains of Eddie’s carcass. At the opposite side of the clearing they saw three low mud mounds; the walls were broken in many places. Within the nests they saw crushed fragments of eggshells. There was the strong stench of decay. Levine leaned forward, staring. “This is the raptor nest,” he said. In the darkness of the trailer, Malcolm sat up, wincing. He grabbed the radio. “You found it? The nest?” The radio crackled. Levine said, “Yes. I think so.” “Describe it,” Malcolm said. Levine spoke quietly, reporting features, estimating dimensions. To Levine, the velociraptor nest appeared slovenly, uncared for, ill-made. He was surprised, because dinosaur nests usually conveyed an unmistakable sense of order. Levine had seen it time and again, in fossil sites from Montana to Mongolia. The eggs in the nest were arranged in neat concentric circles. Often there were more than thirty eggs in a single nest, suggesting that many females cooperated to share a single mud mound. Numerous adult fossils would be found nearby, indicating that the dinosaurs cared communally for the eggs. At a few excavations, it was even possible to get a sense of the spatial arrangement, with the nests in the center, the adults moving carefully around the outside, so as not to disturb the incubating eggs. In this rigid structure, the dinosaurs were reminiscent of their descendants the birds, which also displayed precise courtship, mating, and nest-building patterns. But the velociraptors behaved differently."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0074.txt", "text": "There was a disorderly, chaotic feeling to the scene before him: ill-formed nests; quarreling adults; very few young and juvenile animals; the eggshells crushed; the broken mounds stepped on. Around the mounds, Levine now saw scattered small bones which he presumed were the remains of newborns. He saw no living infants anywhere in the clearing. There were three juveniles, but these younger animals were forced to fend for themselves, and they already showed many scars on their bodies. The youngsters looked thin, undernourished. Poking around the periphery of the carcass, they were cautious, backing away whenever one of the adults snapped at them. “And what about the apatosaurs?” Malcolm asked. “What about the carcasses?” Levine counted four, all together. In various stages of decomposition. “You have to tell Sarah,” Malcolm said. But Levine was wondering about something else: he was wondering how these big carcasses had gotten here in the first place. They hadn’t died here by accident, surely all animals would have avoided this nest. They couldn’t have been lured here, and they were too large to carry. So how did they get here? Something was tickling the back of his mind, some obvious thought that he wasn’t— “They brought Arby,” Malcolm said. “Yes,” Levine said. “They did.” He stared at the nest, trying to figure it out. Then Thorne nudged him. “There’s the cage,” he said, pointing. At the far side of the clearing, lying on the ground, partially hidden behind fronds, Levine saw the glint of aluminum struts. But he couldn’t see Arby. “Way over there,” Levine said. The raptors were ignoring the cage, still fighting over Eddie’s carcass. Thorne brought out a Lindstradt rifle, snapped open the cartridge pack. He saw six darts. “Not enough,” he said, and snapped it shut. There were at least ten raptors in the clearing. Levine rummaged in the back seat, found his knapsack, which had fallen to the floor. He unzipped it, came out with a small silver cylinder the size of a large soft-drink bottle. It had a skull and crossbones stenciled on it. Beneath, lettering read: CAUTION TOXIC METACHOLINE (MIVACURIUM). “What’s that?” Thorne said. “Something they cooked up in Los Alamos,” Levine said. “It’s a nonlethal area neutralizer. Releases a short-acting cholinesterase aerosol. Paralyzes all life forms for up to three minutes. It’ll knock all the raptors out.” “But what about the boy?” Thorne said. “You can’t use that. You’ll paralyze him.” Levine pointed. “If we throw the canister to the right of the cage, the gas’ll blow away from him, toward the raptors.” “Or it may not,” Thorne said. “And he may be badly injured.” Levine nodded. He put the cylinder back in the knapsack, then sat, facing forward, staring at the raptors. “So,” Levine said. “What do we do now?” Thorne looked over at the aluminum cage, partially blocked by ferns. Then he saw something that made him sit up: the cage moved slightly, the bars shifting in the moonlight. “Did you see that?” Levine said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0074.txt", "text": "Thorne said, “I’m going to get that kid out of there.” “But how?” Levine said. “The old-fashioned way,” Thorne said. He climbed out of the car. * * * Sarah accelerated, racing the motorcycle up the mud banks of the river. The raptor was just ahead, cutting diagonally toward them, heading for the water. “Go!” Kelly shouted. “Go!” The raptor saw them and changed course, angling farther ahead. It was trying to get distance on them but they were moving faster on the open banks. They came abreast of the animal, flanking it, and then Sarah left the banks, heading back onto the grassy plain. The raptor moved right, deeper into the plain. Away from the river. “You did it!” Kelly shouted. Sarah maintained her speed, moving slowly closer to the raptor. It seemed to have given up on the river, and now had no plan. It was just running up the plain. And they were steadily, inexorably gaining. Kelly was excited. She tried to wipe the mud off her rifle, preparing to shoot again. “Damn!” Sarah shouted. “What?” “Look!” Kelly leaned forward, stared past Sarah’s shoulder. Directly ahead, she saw the herd of apatosaurs. They were only fifty yards from the first of the enormous animals, which bellowed and wheeled in sudden fear. Their bodies were green-gray in the moonlight. The raptor streaked directly toward the herd. “It thinks it’s going to lose us!” Sarah gunned the bike, moving closer. “Get it now! Now!” Kelly aimed and fired. The gun bucked. But the raptor kept going. “Missed!” Up ahead, the apatosaurs were turning, their big legs stomping the ground. Their heavy tails whipped through the air. But they were too slow to move away. The raptor raced forward, heading directly beneath the big apatosaurs. “What do we do?” Kelly shouted. “No choice!” Sarah yelled. She pulled parallel to the raptor just as they passed into shadow, racing beneath the first animal. Kelly glimpsed the curve of the belly, hanging three feet above her. The legs were as thick as tree trunks, stamping and turning. The raptor ran on, darting among the moving legs. Sarah swerved, followed. Above them, the animals roared and turned, and roared again. They were beneath another belly, then out into moonlight, then in shadow again. Now they were in the middle of the herd. It was like being in a forest of moving trees. Directly ahead, a big leg came down with a slam! that shook the ground. The bike bounced as Sarah swung left; they scraped against the animal’s flesh. “Hang on!” she shouted, and swerved again, following the raptor. Above them, the apatosaurs were bellowing and moving. The raptor dodged and turned, and then broke clear, racing out the back of the herd. “Shit!” Sarah said, spinning the bike around. A whiptail swung low, narrowly missing them, and then they too were free, chasing the raptor again. The motorcycle raced across the grassy plain. “Last chance!” Sarah shouted."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Section0074.txt", "text": "“Do it!” Kelly raised the rifle. Sarah was driving hard and fast, pulling very close to the running raptor. The animal turned to butt her, but she held her position, punched it hard in the head with her fist. “Now!” Kelly shoved the barrel against the flesh of the neck, and squeezed the trigger. The gun snapped back hard, jolting her in the stomach. The raptor ran on. “No!” she shouted. “No!” And then suddenly the raptor fell, tumbling end over end in the grass, and Sarah swung the bike away and pulled to a stop. The raptor was five yards away, flopping in the grass. It snarled and yelped. Then it was silent. Sarah took the rifle, snapped open the cartridge pack. Kelly saw five more darts. “I thought that was the last one,” she said. “I lied,” Sarah said. “Wait here.” Kelly stayed by the bike while Sarah moved cautiously forward through the grass. Sarah fired one more shot, then stood waiting for a few moments. Then she bent down. When she came back, she was holding the key in her hand. In the nest, the raptors were still tearing at the carcass, off to one side. But the intensity of the behavior was diminishing: some of the animals were turning away, rubbing their jaws with their clawed hands, drifting slowly toward the center of the clearing. Moving closer to the cage. Thorne climbed into the back of the Jeep, pushing aside the canvas cover. He checked the rifle in his hands. Levine slid into the driver’s seat. He started the engine. Thorne steadied himself in the back of the Jeep, gripped the rear bar. He turned to Levine. “Go!” The Jeep raced forward across the clearing. By the carcass, the raptors looked up in surprise as they saw the intruder. By then the Jeep was past the center of the clearing, driving past the enormous dead skeletons, the broad ribs high over their heads, and then Levine was swinging the car left, pulling alongside the aluminum cage. Thorne jumped out, and grabbed the cage in both hands. In the darkness he couldn’t tell how badly Arby was hurt; the boy was turned face down. Levine climbed out of the car; Thorne yelled for him to get back in, as he rifted the cage high and swung it onto the back of the Jeep. Thorne jumped into the back, next to the cage, and Levine shoved the car in gear. Behind them, the raptors snarled and raced forward in pursuit, running among the skeletal ribs. They crossed the clearing with stunning speed. As Levine stepped on the gas, the nearest raptor leapt high, landing up on the back of the car, and grabbing the canvas tarp in its teeth. The animal hissed and held on. Levine accelerated, and the Jeep bounced out of the clearing. * * * In darkness, Malcolm sank back into morphine dreams."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Section0074.txt", "text": "Images floated in front of his eyes: fitness landscapes, the multicolored computer images now employed to think about evolution. In this mathematical world of peaks and valleys, populations of organisms were seen to climb the fitness peaks, or slide down into the valleys of nonadaptation. Stu Kauffman and his coworkers had shown that advanced organisms had complex internal constraints which made them more likely to fall off the fitness optima, and descend into the valleys. Yet, at the same time complex creatures were themselves selected by evolution. Because complex creatures were able to adapt on their own. With tools, with learning, with cooperation. But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost—they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching. Chimpanzees taught their young to collect termites with a stick. Such actions implied at least the rudiments of a culture, a structured social life. But animals raised in isolation, without parents, without guidance, were not fully functional. Zoo animals frequently could not care for their offspring, because they had never seen it done. They would ignore their infants, or roll over and crush them, or simply become annoyed with them and kill them. The velociraptors were among the most intelligent dinosaurs, and the most ferocious. Both traits demanded behavioral control. Millions of years ago, in the now-vanished Cretaceous world, their behavior would have been socially determined, passed on from older to younger animals. Genes controlled the capacity to make such patterns, but not the patterns themselves. Adaptive behavior was a kind of morality; it was behavior that had evolved over many generations because it was found to succeed—behavior that allowed members of the species to cooperate, to live together, to hunt, to raise young. But on this island, the velociraptors had been re-created in a genetics laboratory. Although their physical bodies were genetically determined, their behavior was not. These newly created raptors came into the world with no older animals to guide them, to show them proper raptor behavior. They were on their own, and that was just how they behaved—in a society without structure, without rules, without cooperation. They lived in an uncontrolled, every-creature-for-himself world where the meanest and the nastiest survived, and all the others died. The Jeep picked up speed, bouncing hard. Thorne held on to the bars, to keep from being thrown out. Behind him, he saw the raptor swinging back and forth in the air, still clinging to the tarp. It wasn’t letting go. Levine drove back onto the flat muddy banks of the river, and turned right, following the edge of the water. The raptor hung on tenaciously. Directly ahead, lying in the mud, Levine saw another skeleton. Another skeleton?"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Section0074.txt", "text": "Why were all these skeletons here? But there was no time to think—he drove forward, passing beneath the row of ribs. Without lights, he leaned forward and squinted in the moonlight, looking for obstacles ahead. In the back of the car, the raptor scrambled up, released the tarp, clamped its jaws on the cage, and began to pull it out of the back of the Jeep. Thorne lunged, grabbed the end of the cage nearest him. The cage twisted, rolling Thorne onto his back. He found himself in a tug of war with the raptor—and the raptor was winning. Thorne locked his legs around the front passenger seat, trying to hold on. The raptor snarled; Thorne sensed the sheer fury of the animal, enraged that it might lose its prize. “Here!” Levine shouted, holding a gun out to Thorne. Thorne was on his back, gripping the cage in both hands. He couldn’t take the gun. Levine looked back, and saw the situation. He looked in the rearview mirror. Behind them, he saw the rest of the pack still in pursuit, snarling and growling. He could not slow down. Thorne could not let go of the cage. Still driving fast, Levine swung around in the passenger seat, and aimed the rifle backward. He tried to maneuver the gun, knowing what would happen if he accidentally shot Thorne, or Arby. “Watch it!” Thorne was shouting. “Watch it!” Levine managed to get the safety off, and swung the barrel straight at the raptor, which was still gripping the cage bars in its jaws. The animal looked up, and in a quick movement closed its jaws over the barrel. It tugged at the gun. Levine fired. The raptor’s eyes popped wide as the dart slammed into the back of its throat. It made a gurgling sound, then went into convulsions, toppling backward out of the Jeep—and yanking the gun from Levine’s hands as it fell. Thorne scrambled to his knees, and pulled the cage inside the car. He looked down inside it, but he couldn’t tell about Arby. Looking back, he saw the other raptors were still pursuing, but they were now twenty yards back, and losing ground. On the dashboard, the radio hissed. “Doc.” Thorne recognized Sarah’s voice. “Yes, Sarah.” “Where are you?” “Following the river,” Thorne said. The storm clouds had now cleared, and it was a bright moonlit night. Behind him, the raptors still continued to chase the Jeep. But they were now falling steadily behind. “I can’t see your lights,” Sarah said. “Don’t have any.” There was a pause. The radio crackled. Her voice was tense: “What about Arby.” “We have him,” Thorne said. “Thank God. How is he?” “I don’t know. Alive.” The landscape opened out. They came back into a broad valley, the grass silvery in the moonlight. Thorne looked around, trying to orient himself. Then he realized: they were back on the plain, but much farther to the south."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Section0074.txt", "text": "They must still be on the same side of the river as the high hide. In that case, they ought to be able to make their way up onto the ridge road, somewhere to the left. That road would lead them back to the clearing, and the remaining trailer. And safety. He nudged Levine, pointed to the right. “Go there!” Levine turned the car. Thorne clicked the radio. “Sarah.” “Yes, Doc.” “We’re going back to the trailer on the ridge road.” “Okay,” Sarah said. “We’ll find you”. She looked back at Kelly. “Where’s the ridge road?” “I think it’s that one up there,” Kelly said, pointing to the spine of the ridge, on the cliffs high above them. “Okay,” Sarah said. She gunned the bike forward. The Jeep rumbled across the plain, deep in silvery grass. They were moving fast. The raptors were no longer visible behind them. “Looks like we lost them,” Thorne said. “Maybe,” Levine said. When he had pulled out of the streambed, he had seen several animals dart off to the left. They would now be hidden in the grass. He wasn’t sure they would give up so easily. The Jeep was roaring toward the cliffs. Directly ahead he saw a curving switchback road, running up from the valley floor. That was the ridge road, he felt sure. Now that the terrain was smoother, Thorne crawled back between the seats and crouched over the cage. He peered in through the bars at Arby, who was groaning softly. Half the boy’s face was slick with blood, and his shirt was soaked. But his eyes were open, and he seemed to be moving his arms and legs. Thorne leaned close to the bars. “Hey, son,” he said gently. “Can you hear me?” Arby nodded, moaning. “How you doing there?” “Been better,” Arby said. The Jeep ground onto the dirt road, and headed upward along the switchbacks. Levine felt a sense of relief as they moved higher, away from the valley. He was finally on the ridge road, and he was going to be safe. He looked up, toward the crest. And then he saw the dark shapes in the moonlight, already at the top of the road, hopping up and down. Raptors. Waiting for him. He pulled to a stop. “What do we do now?” “Move over,” Thorne said grimly. “I’ll take it from here.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0075.txt", "text": "At the Edge of Chaos Thorne came up onto the ridge, and turned left, accelerating. The road stretched ahead in the moonlight, a narrow strip running between a rock wall to his left, and a sheer cliff falling away on the right. Twenty feet above him, on the ridge, he saw the raptors, leaping and snorting as they ran parallel to the Jeep. Levine saw them too. “What are we going to do?” he said. Thorne shook his head. “Look in the tool kit. Look in the glove compartment. Get anything you can find.” Levine bent over, fumbling in darkness. But Thorne knew they were in trouble. Their gun was gone. They were in a Jeep with a cloth top, and the raptors were all around them. He guessed he was probably about half a mile from the clearing, and the trailer. Half a mile to go. Thorne slowed as he came into the next curve, moving the car away from the plunging drop of the cliff. Rounding the curve, he saw a raptor crouched in the middle of the road, facing them, its head lowered menacingly. Thorne accelerated toward it. The raptor leapt up in the air, legs raised high. It landed on the hood of the car, claws squealing as they raked metal. It smashed against the windshield, the glass streaking spiderwebs. With the animal’s body lying against the windshield, Thorne couldn’t see anything. On this dangerous road, he slammed on the brakes. “Hey!” Levine shouted, tumbling forward. The raptor on the hood slid off to the side. Now Thorne could see again, and he stamped on the gas. Levine fell back again as the car moved forward. But three raptors were charging the car from the side. One jumped onto the running board and locked its jaws on the side mirror. The animal’s glaring eye was close to Thorne’s face. He swung the wheel left, scraping the car along the rocky face of the road. Ten yards ahead a boulder protruded. He glanced at the raptor, which continued to hold on tenaciously, right to the moment when the boulder smashed into the side mirror, tearing it away. The raptor was gone. The road widened a little. Thorne had more room to maneuver now. He felt a heavy thump, and looked up to see the canvas top sagging above his head. Claws slashed down by his ear, ripping through the canvas. He swung the car right, then left again. The claws pulled out, but the animal was still up there, its body still indenting the cloth. Beside him, Levine produced a big hunting knife, and thrust it upward through the cloth. Immediately, another claw raked downward, slashing Levine’s hand. He yelled in pain, dropping the knife. Thorne bent over, reaching down to the floor for it. In the rearview mirror, he saw two more raptors in the road behind him, chasing the Jeep. They were gaining on him. But the road was broader now, and he accelerated."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0075.txt", "text": "The raptor on the roof peered over the top, looking in through the broken windshield. Thorne held the knife in his fist and jabbed it straight up with full force, again and again. It didn’t seem to make any difference. As the road curved, he jerked the wheel right, then back, the whole Jeep tilting, and the raptor on the roof lost its grip and rolled backward off the top. It tore most of the canvas roof away as it went. The animal bounced on the ground and hit the two pursuing raptors. The impact knocked all three over the side; they fell snarling down the cliff face. “That does it!” Levine shouted. But a moment later, another raptor jumped down from the cliff and ran forward, only a few feet from the Jeep. And lightly, almost easily, the raptor leapt up into the back of it. In the passenger seat, Levine stared. The raptor was fully inside the Jeep, its head low, arms up, jaws wide, in an unmistakable attack posture. The raptor hissed at him. Levine thought, It’s all over. He was shocked: his entire body broke out in sweat, he felt dizzy, and he realized in a single instant there was nothing he could do, that he was moments from death. The creature hissed again, snapping its jaws, crouching to lunge—and then suddenly white foam appeared at the corners of its mouth, and its eyes rolled back. Foam bubbled out of its jaws. It began to twitch, its body going into spasms. It fell over on its side in the back of the car. Behind them he now saw Sarah on the motorcycle, and Kelly holding the rifle. Thorne slowed, and Sarah pulled alongside them. She handed the key to Levine. “For the cage!” she shouted. Levine took it numbly, almost dropped it. He was in shock. Moving slowly. Dumbly. I nearly died, he thought. “Get her gun!” Thorne said. Levine looked off to the left, where more raptors were still racing along, parallel to the car. He counted six, but there were probably more. He tried to count again, his mind working slowly— “Get the damned gun!” Levine took the gun from Kelly, feeling the cold metal of the barrel in his hands. But now the car sputtered, the engine coughing, dying, then coughing again. Jerking forward. “What’s that?” he said, turning to Thorne. “Trouble,” Thorne said. “We’re out of gas.” Thorne popped the car into neutral, and it rolled forward, losing speed. Ahead was a slight rise, and beyond that, across a curve, he could see the road sloped down again. Sarah was on the motorcycle behind them, shaking her head. Thorne realized his only hope was to make it over the rise. He said to Levine, “Unlock the cage. Get him out of there.” Levine was suddenly moving quickly, almost panicky, but crawled back, and got the key in the lock. The cage creaked open. He helped Arby out."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0075.txt", "text": "Thorne watched the speedometer as the needle fell. They were going twenty-five miles an hour … then twenty … then fifteen. The raptors, running alongside, began to move closer, sensing the car was in trouble. Fifteen miles an hour. Still falling. “He’s out,” Levine said, from the back. He clanged the cage shut. “Push the cage off,” Thorne said. The cage rolled off the back, bouncing down the hill. Ten miles an hour. The car seemed to be creeping. And then they were over the rise, moving down the other side, gaining speed again. Twelve miles an hour. Fifteen. Twenty. He careened around the curves, trying not to touch the brakes. Levine said, “We’ll never make it to the trailer!” He was screaming at the top of his lungs, eyes wide with fear. “I know.” Thorne could see the trailer off to the left, but separated from them by a gentle rise in the road. They could not get there. But up ahead the road forked, sloping down to the right, toward the laboratory. And if he remembered correctly, that road was all downhill. Thorne turned right, away from the trailer. He saw the big roof of the laboratory, a flat expanse in the moonlight. He followed the road past the laboratory, down around the back, toward the worker village. He saw the manager’s house to the right, and the convenience store, with the gas pumps in front. Was there a chance they might still have gasoline? “Look!” Levine said, pointing behind them. “Look! Look!” Thorne glanced over his shoulder and saw that the raptors were dropping back, giving up the chase. In the vicinity of the laboratory, they seemed to hesitate. “They’re not following us any more!” Levine shouted. “Yeah,” Thorne said. “But where’s Sarah?” Behind them, Sarah’s motorcycle was nowhere to be seen."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0076.txt", "text": "Trailer Sarah Harding twisted the handlebars, and the motorcycle shot forward over the low rise in the road ahead. She crested and came down again, heading toward the trailer. Behind her, four raptors snarled in pursuit. She accelerated, trying to get ahead of them, to gain precious yards. Because they were going to need it. She leaned back, and shouted to Kelly, “Okay! This has to be fast!” “What?” Kelly shouted. “When we get to the trailer, you jump off and run in. Don’t wait for me. Understand?” Kelly nodded, tensely. “Whatever happens, don’t wait for me!” “Okay.” Harding roared up to the trailer, braked hard. The bike skidded on the wet grass, banged into the metal siding. But Kelly was already leaping off, scrambling up toward the door, going into the trailer. Sarah had wanted to get the bike inside, but she saw the raptors were very close, too close. She pushed the bike toward them and in a single motion stepped up and threw herself through the trailer door, landing on her back on the floor. She twisted her body around and kicked the door shut with her legs, just as the first of the raptors slammed against it. Inside the dark trailer, she held the door shut as the animals pounded it repeatedly. She felt for a lock on the door, but couldn’t find one. “Ian. Does this door lock?” She heard Malcolm’s voice, dreamy in the darkness. “Life is a crystal,” he said. “Ian. Try and pay attention.” Then Kelly was alongside her, hands moving up and down. The raptors thumped against the door. After a moment she said, “It’s down here. By the floor.” Harding heard a metallic click, and stepped away. Kelly reached out, took her hand. The raptors were pounding and snarling outside. “It’ll be okay,” Harding said reassuringly. She went over to Malcolm, still lying on the bed. The raptors snapped and lunged at the window near his head, their claws raking the glass. Malcolm watched them calmly. “Noisy bastards, aren’t they?” By his side, the first-aid kit was open, a syringe on the cushion. He had probably injected himself again. Through the windows, the animals stopped throwing themselves against the glass. She heard the sound of scraping metal, from over by the door, and then saw that the raptors were dragging the motorbike away from the trailer. They were hopping up and down on it in fury. It wouldn’t be long before they punctured the tires. “Ian,” she said. “We have to do this fast.” “I’m in no rush,” he said calmly. She said, “What kind of weapons have you got here?” “Weapons … oh … I don’t know.…” He sighed. “What do you want weapons for?” “Ian, please.” “You’re talking so fast,” he said. “You know, Sarah, you really ought to try to relax.” In the darkened trailer, Kelly was frightened, but she was reassured at the no-nonsense way Sarah talked about weapons."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0076.txt", "text": "And Kelly was beginning to see that Sarah didn’t let anything stop her, she just went and did it. This whole attitude of not letting other people stop you, of believing that you could do what you wanted, was something she found herself imitating. Kelly listened to Dr. Malcolm’s voice and knew that he would be of no help. He was on drugs and he didn’t care. And Sarah didn’t know her way around the trailer. Kelly did; she had searched the trailer earlier, looking for food. And she seemed to remember … In the darkness, she pulled open the drawers quickly. She squinted, trying to see. She was sure she remembered one drawer, low down, had contained a pack marked with a skull and crossbones. That pack might have some kind of weapons, she thought. She heard Sarah say, “Ian: try and think.” And she heard Dr. Malcolm say, “Oh, I have been, Sarah. I’ve had the most wonderful thoughts. You know, all those carcasses at the raptor site present a wonderful example of—” “Not now, Ian.” Kelly went through the drawers, leaving them open so she would know which ones she had already checked. She moved down the trailer, and then her hand touched rough canvas. She leaned forward. Yes, this was it. Kelly pulled out a square canvas pack that was surprisingly heavy. She said, “Sarah. Look.” Sarah Harding took the pack to the window, where moonlight shone in. She unzipped the pack and stared at the contents. The pack was divided into padded sections. She saw three square blocks made of some substance that felt rubbery. And there was a small silver cylinder, like a small oxygen bottle. “What is all this stuff?” “We thought it was a good idea,” Malcolm said. “But now I’m not sure it was. The thing is that—” “What is it?” she said, interrupting. She had to keep him focused. His mind was drifting. “Nonlethals,” Malcolm said. “Alexander’s ragtime band. We wanted to have—” “What’s this?” she said, holding up one of the blocks in front of his face. “Area-dispersal smoke cube. What you do is—” “Just smoke?” she said. “It just makes smoke?” “Yes, but—” “What’s this?” she said, raising the silver cylinder. It had writing on it. “Cholinesterase bomb. Releases gas. Produces short-term paralysis when it goes off. Or so they say.” “How short?” “A few minutes, I think, but—” “How does it work?” she said, turning it in her hand. There was a cap at the end, with a locking pin. She started to pull it off, to get a look at the mechanism. “Don’t!” he said. “That’s how you do it. You pull the pin and throw. Goes off in three seconds.” “Okay,” she said. Hastily, she packed up the medical kit, throwing the syringe inside, shutting the lid. “What are you doing?” Malcolm said, alarmed. “We’re getting out of here,” she said, as she moved to the door. Malcolm sighed."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0076.txt", "text": "“It’s so nice to have a man around the house,” he said. The cylinder sailed high through the air, tumbling in the moonlight. The raptors were about five yards away, clustered around the bike. One of the animals looked up and saw the cylinder, which landed in the grass a few yards away. Sarah stood by the door, waiting. Nothing happened. No explosion. Nothing. “Ian! It didn’t work.” Curious, one raptor hopped over toward where the cylinder had landed in the grass. It ducked down, and when it raised its head, it held the cylinder glinting in its jaws. She sighed. “It didn’t work.” “Oh, never mind,” Malcolm said calmly. The raptor shook its head, biting into the cylinder. “What do we do now?” Kelly said. There was a loud explosion, and a cloud of dense white smoke blasted outward across the clearing. The raptors disappeared in the cloud. Harding closed the door quickly. “Now what?” Kelly said. With Malcolm leaning on her shoulder, they moved across the clearing in the night. The gas cloud had dissipated, several minutes before. The first raptor they found in the grass was lying on its side, eyes open, absolutely motionless. But it wasn’t dead: Harding could see the steady pulse in the neck. The animal was merely paralyzed. She said to Malcolm, “How long will it last?” “Have no idea,” Malcolm said. “Much wind?” “There’s no wind, Ian.” “Then it should last a bit.” They moved forward. Now the raptors lay all around them. They stepped around the bodies, smelling the rotten odor of carnivores. One of the animals lay across the bike. She eased Malcolm down to the ground, where he sat, sighing. After a moment, he began to sing: “I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten, look away …” Harding tugged at the motorcycle handlebars, trying to pull the bike from beneath the raptor. The animal was too heavy. Kelly said, “Let me,” and reached for the handlebars. Harding went forward. Without hesitating, she bent over and put her arms around the raptor’s neck, and pulled the head upward. She felt a wave of revulsion. Hot scaly skin scraped her arms and cheek. She grunted as she leaned back, raising the animal. “In Dixie land … duh-duh-duh-duh … to live and die in Dixie …” She said to Kelly, “Got it?” “Not yet,” Kelly said, pulling on the handlebars. Harding’s face was inches from the velociraptor’s head and jaws. The head flopped back and forth as she adjusted her grip. Close to her face, the open eye stared at her, unseeing. Harding tugged, trying to lift the animal higher. “Almost …” Kelly said. Harding groaned, lifting. The eye blinked. Frightened, Harding dropped the animal. Kelly pulled the bike away. “Got it!” “Away, away … away down south … in Dixie …” Harding came around the raptor. Now the big leg twitched. The chest began to move. “Let’s go,” she said. “Ian, behind me."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0076.txt", "text": "Kelly, on the handlebars.” “Away … away … a-way down south …” “Let’s go,” Harding said, climbing on the bike. She kept her eyes on the raptor. The head gave a convulsive jerk. The eye blinked again. It was definitely waking up. “Let’s go, let’s go. Let’s go!”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0077.txt", "text": "Village Sarah drove the motorcycle down the hill toward the worker village. Looking past Kelly, Sarah saw the Jeep parked at the store, not far from the gas pumps. She braked to a stop, and they all climbed off in the moonlight. Kelly opened the door to the store, and helped Malcolm inside. Sarah rolled the motorcycle into the store, and closed the door. “Doc?” she said. “We’re over here,” Thorne said. “With Arby.” By the moonlight filtering in through the windows, she could see the store looked very much like an abandoned roadside convenience stand. There was a glass-walled refrigerator of soft drinks, the cans obscured by mold on the glass. A wire rack nearby held candy bars and Twinkies, the wrappers speckled green, crawling with larvae. In the adjacent magazine rack, the pages were curled, the headlines five years old. To one side were rows of basic supplies: toothpaste, aspirin, suntan lotion, shampoo, combs and brushes. Alongside this were racks of clothing, tee shirts and shorts, socks, tennis rackets, bathing suits. And a few souvenirs: key chains, ashtrays, and drinking glasses. In the center of the room was a little island with a computer cash register, a microwave, and a coffee maker. The microwave door hung wide; some animal had made a nest inside. The coffee maker was cracked, and laced with cobwebs. “What a mess,” Malcolm said. “Looks fine to me,” Sarah Harding said. The windows were all barred. The walls seemed solid enough. The canned goods would still be edible. She saw a sign that said “Restrooms,” so maybe there was plumbing, too. They should be safe here, at least for a while. She helped Malcolm to lie down on the floor. Then she went over to where Thorne and Levine were working on Arby. “I brought the first-aid kit,” she said. “How is he?” “Pretty bruised,” Thorne said. “Some gashes. But nothing broken. Head looks bad.” “Everything hurts,” Arby said. “Even my mouth.” “Somebody see if there’s a light,” she said. “Let me look, Arby. Okay, you’re missing a couple of teeth, that’s why. But that can be fixed. The cut on your head isn’t so bad.” She swabbed it clean with gauze, turned to Thorne. “How long until the helicopter comes?” Thorne looked at his watch. “Two hours.” “And where does it land?” “The pad is several miles from here.” Working on Arby, she nodded. “Okay. So we have two hours to get to the pad.” Kelly said, “How can we do that? The car’s out of gas.” “Don’t worry,” Sarah said. “We’ll figure something out. It’s going to be fine.” “You always say that,” Kelly said. “Because it’s always true,” Sarah said. “Okay, Arby, I need you to help now. I’m going to sit you up, and get your shirt off.…” * * * Thorne moved off to one side with Levine. Levine was wild-eyed, his body moving in a twitchy way. The drive in the Jeep seemed to have finished him off."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0077.txt", "text": "“What is she talking about?” he said. “We’re trapped here. Trapped!” There was hysteria in his voice. “We can’t go anywhere. We can’t do anything. I’m telling you, we’re all going to d—” “Keep it down,” Thorne said, grabbing his arm, leaning close. “Don’t upset the kids.” “What difference does it make?” Levine said. “They’re going to find out sooner or—Ow! Take it easy.” Thorne was squeezing his arm hard. He leaned close to Levine. “You’re too old to act like an asshole,” he said quietly. “Now, pull yourself together, Richard. Are you listening to me, Richard?” Levine nodded. “Good. Now, Richard, I’m going to go outside, and see if the pumps work.” “They can’t possibly work,” Levine said. “Not after five years. I’m telling you, it’s a waste of—” “Richard,” Thorne said. “We have to check the pumps.” There was a pause. The two men looked at each other. “You mean you’re going outside?” Levine said. “Yes.” Levine frowned. Another pause. Crouched over Arby, Sarah said, “Where are the lights, guys?” “Just a minute,” Thorne said to her. He leaned close to Levine. “Okay?” “Okay,” Levine said, taking a breath. Thorne went to the front door, opened it, and stepped out into darkness. Levine closed the door behind him. Thorne heard a click as the door locked. He immediately turned, and rapped softly. Levine opened the door a few inches, peering out. “For Christ’s sake,” Thorne whispered. “Don’t lock it!” “But I just thought—” “Don’t lock the damn door!” “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” “For Christ’s sake,” Thorne said. He closed the door again, and turned to face the night. Around him, the worker village was silent. He heard only the steady drone of cicadas in the darkness. It seemed almost too quiet, he thought. But perhaps it was just the contrast from the snarling raptors. Thorne stood with his back to the door for a long time, staring out at the clearing. He saw nothing. Finally he walked over to the Jeep, opened the side door, and fumbled in the dark for the radio. His hand touched it; it had slid under the passenger seat. He pulled it out and carried it back to the store, knocked on the door. Levine opened it, said, “It’s not lock—” “Here.” Thorne handed him the radio, closed the door again. Again, he paused, watching. Around him, the compound was silent. The moon was full. The air was still. He moved forward and peered closely at the gas pumps. The handle of the nearest one was rusted, and draped with spiderwebs. He pulled the nozzle up, and flicked the latch. Nothing happened. He squeezed the nozzle handle. No liquid came out. He tapped the glass window on the pump that showed the number of gallons, and the glass fell out in his hand. Inside, a spider scurried across the metal numerals. There was no gas. They had to find gas, or they’d never get to the helicopter. He frowned at the pumps, thinking."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0077.txt", "text": "They were simple, the kind of very reliable pumps you found at a remote construction site. And that made sense, because after all, this was an island. He paused. This was an island. That meant everything came in by plane, or boat. Most times, probably by boat. Small boats, where supplies were offloaded by hand. Which meant … He bent over, examining the base of the pump in the moonlight. Just as he thought, there were no buried gas tanks. He saw a thick black PVC pipe running at an angle just under the ground. He could see the direction the pipe was going—around the side of the store. Thorne followed it, moving cautiously in the moonlight. He paused for a moment to listen, then moved on. He came around to the side and saw just what he expected to see: fifty-gallon metal drums, ranged along the side wall. There were three of them, connected by a series of black hoses. That made sense. All the gasoline on the island would have had to come here in drums. He tapped the drums softly with a knuckle. They were hollow. He lifted one, hoping to hear the slosh of liquid at the bottom. They needed only a gallon or two— Nothing. The drums were empty. But surely, he thought, there must be more than three drums. He did a quick calculation in his head. A lab this large would have had a half-dozen support vehicles, maybe more. Even if they were fuel-efficient, they’d burn thirty or forty gallons a week. To be safe, the company would have stored at least two months’ supply, perhaps six months’ supply. That meant ten to thirty drums. And steel drums were heavy, so they probably stored them close by. Probably just a few yards … He turned slowly, looking. The moonlight was bright, and he could see well. Beyond the store, there was an open space, and then clumps of tall rhododendron bushes which had overgrown the path leading to the tennis court. Above the bushes, the chain-link fence was laced with creeping vines. To the left was the first of the worker cottages. He could see only the dark roof. To the right of the court, nearer the store, there was thick foliage, although he saw a gap— A path. He moved forward, leaving the store behind. Approaching the dark gap in the bushes he saw a vertical line, and realized it was the edge of an open wooden door. There was a shed, back in the foliage. The other door was closed. As he came closer, he saw a rusted metal sign, with flaking red lettering. The letters were black in the moonlight. PRECAUCION NON FUMARE INFLAMMABLE He paused, listening. He heard the raptors snarling in the distance, but they seemed far away, back up on the hill. For some reason they still had not approached the village. Thorne waited, heart pounding, staring forward at the dark entrance to the shed."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0077.txt", "text": "At last he decided it wasn’t going to get any easier. They needed gas. He moved forward. The path to the shed was wet from the night’s rain, but the shed was dry inside. His eyes adjusted. It was a small place, perhaps twelve by twelve. In the dim light he saw a dozen rusted drums, standing on end. Three or four more, on their sides. Thorne touched them all quickly, one after another. They were light: empty. Every one, empty. Feeling defeated, Thorne moved back toward the entrance to the shed. He paused for a moment, staring out at the moonlit night. And then, as he waited, he heard the unmistakable sound of breathing. Inside the store, Levine moved from window to window, trying to follow Thorne’s progress. His body was jumpy with tension. What was Thorne doing? He had gone so far from the store. It was very unwise. Levine kept glancing at the front door, wishing he could lock it. He felt so unsafe with the door unlocked. Now Thorne had gone off into the bushes, disappearing entirely from view. And he had been gone a long time. At least a minute or two. Levine stared out the window, and bit his lip. He heard the distant snarl of the raptors, and realized that they had remained up at the entrance to the laboratory. They hadn’t followed the vehicles down, even now. Why not? he wondered. The question was welcome in his mind. Calming, almost soothing. A question to answer. Why had the raptors stayed up at the laboratory? All kinds of explanations occurred to him. The raptors had an atavistic fear of the laboratory, the place of their birth. They remembered the cages and didn’t want to be captured again. But he suspected the most likely explanation was also the simplest—that the area around the laboratory was some other animal’s territory, it was scent-marked and demarcated and defended, and the raptors were reluctant to enter it. Even the tyrannosaur, he remembered now, had gone through the territory quickly, without stopping. But whose territory? Levine stared out the window impatiently, as he waited. “What about the lights?” Sarah called, from across the room. “I need light here.” “In a minute,” Levine said. At the entrance to the shed, Thorne stood silently, listening. He heard soft, snorting exhalations, like a quiet horse. A large animal, waiting. The sound was coming from somewhere to his right. Thorne looked over, slowly. He saw nothing at all. Moonlight shone brightly over the worker village. He saw the store, the gas pumps, the dark shape of the Jeep. Looking to his right, he saw an open space, and clumps of rhododendron bushes. The tennis court beyond. Nothing else. He stared, listening hard. The soft snorting continued. Hardly louder than a faint breeze. But there was no breeze: the trees and bushes were not moving. Or were they? Thorne had the sense that something was wrong."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0077.txt", "text": "Something right before his eyes, something that he could see but couldn’t see. With the effort of staring, he began to think his eyes were playing tricks on him. He thought he detected a slight movement in the bushes to the right. The pattern of the leaves seemed to shift in the moonlight. Shift, and stabilize again. But he wasn’t sure. Thorne stared forward, straining. And as he looked he began to think that it wasn’t the bushes that had caught his eye, but rather the chain-link fence. For most of its length, the fence was overgrown with an irregular tangle of vines, but in a few places the regular diamond pattern of links was visible. And there was something strange about that pattern. The fence seemed to be moving, rippling. Thorne watched carefully. Maybe it is moving, he thought. Maybe there’s an animal inside the fence, pushing against it, making it move. But that didn’t seem quite right. It was something else.… Suddenly, lights came on inside the store. They shone through the barred windows, casting a geometric pattern of dark shadows across the open clearing, and onto the bushes by the tennis court. And for a moment—just a moment—Thorne saw that the bushes beside the tennis court were oddly shaped, and that they were actually two dinosaurs, seven feet tall, standing side by side, staring right at him. Their bodies seemed to be covered in a patchwork pattern of light and dark that made them blend in perfectly with leaves behind them, and even with the fence of the tennis court. Thorne was confused. Their concealment had been perfect—too perfect—until the lights from the store windows had shone out and caught them in the sudden bright glare. Thorne watched, holding his breath. And then he realized that the leafy light-and-dark pattern went only partway up their bodies, to mid-thorax. Above that, the animals had a kind of diamond-shaped crisscross pattern that matched the fence. And as Thorne stared, the complex patterns on their bodies faded, the animals turned a chalky white, and then a series of vertical striped shadows began to appear, which exactly matched the shadows cast by the windows. And before his eyes, the two dinosaurs disappeared from view again. Squinting, with concentrated effort, he could just barely distinguish the outlines of their bodies. He would never have been able to see them at all, had he not already known they were there. They were chameleons. But with a power of mimicry unlike any chameleon Thorne had ever seen. Slowly, he backed away into the shed, moving deeper into darkness. “My God!” Levine exclaimed, staring out the window. “Sorry,” Harding said. “But I had to turn on the lights. That boy needs help. I can’t do it in the dark.” Levine did not answer her. He was staring out the window, trying to comprehend what he had just seen. He now realized what he had glimpsed the day Diego was killed."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Section0077.txt", "text": "That brief momentary sense that something was wrong. Levine now knew what it was. But it was quite beyond anything that was known among terrestrial animals and— “What is it?” she said, standing alongside him at the window. “Is it Thorne?” “Look,” Levine said. She stared out through the bars. “At the bushes? What? What am I supposed to—” “Look,” he said. She watched for a moment longer, then shook her head. “I’m sorry.” “Start at the bottom of the bushes,” Levine told her. “Then let your eyes move up very slowly.… Just look … and you’ll see the outline.” He heard her sigh. “I’m sorry.” “Then turn out the lights again,” he said. “And you’ll see.” She turned the lights out, and for a moment Levine saw the two animals in sharp relief, their bodies pale white with vertical stripes in the moonlight. Almost immediately, the pattern started to fade. Harding came back, pushed in alongside him, and this time she saw the animals instantly. Just as Levine knew she would. “No shit,” she said. “There are two of them?” “Yes. Side by side.” “And … is the pattern fading?” “Yes. It’s fading.” As they watched, the striped pattern on their skins was replaced by the leafy pattern of the rhododendrons behind them. Once again, the two dinosaurs blended into invisibility. But such complex patterning implied that their epidermal layers were arranged in a manner similar to the chromatophores of marine invertebrates. The subtlety of shading, the rapidity of the changes all suggested— Harding frowned. “What are they?” she asked. “Chameleons of unparalleled skill, obviously. Although I’m not sure one is entirely justified in referring to them as chameleons, since technically chameleons have only the ability—” “What are they?” Sarah said impatiently. “Actually, I’d say they’re Carnotaurus sastrei. Type specimen’s from Patagonia. Three meters in height, with distinctive heads—you notice the short, bulldog snouts, and the pair of large horns above the eyes? Almost like wings—” “They’re carnivores?” “Yes, of course, they have the—” “Where’s Thorne?” “He went into that clump of bushes to the right, some time ago. I haven’t seen him, but—” “What do we do?” she said. “Do?” Levine said. “I’m not sure I follow you.” “We have to do something,” she said, speaking slowly, as if he were a child. “We have to help Thorne get back.” “I don’t know how,” Levine said. “Those animals must weigh five hundred pounds each. And there are two of them. I told him not to go out in the first place. But now …” Harding frowned. Staring out, she said, “Go turn the lights back on.” “I’d prefer to—” “Go turn the lights back on!” Levine got up irritably. He had been relishing his remarkable discovery, a truly unanticipated feature of dinosaurs—although not, of course, entirely without precedent among related vertebrates—and now this little musclebound female was barking orders at him. Levine was offended. After all, she was not much of a scientist. She was a naturalist."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "Section0077.txt", "text": "A field devoid of theory. One of those people who poked around in animal crap and imagined they were doing original research. A nice outdoor life, is all it amounted to. It wasn’t science by any stretch— “On!” Harding shouted, looking out the window. He flicked the lights on, and started to head back to the window. “Off!” Hastily, he went back and turned them off. “On!” He turned them on again. She got up from the window, and crossed the room. “They didn’t like that,” she said. “It bothered them.” “Well, there’s probably a refractory period—” “Yeah, I think so. Here. Open these.” She scooped up a handful of flashlights from one of the shelves, handed them to him, then went and got batteries from an adjacent wire rack. “I hope these still work.” “What are you going to do?” Levine said. “We,” she said, grimly. “We.” * * * Thorne stood in the darkness of the shed, staring outward through the open doors. Someone had been turning the lights on and off inside the store. Then, for a while they remained on. But now suddenly they went off again. The area in front of the shed was lit only by moonlight. He heard movement, a soft rustling. He heard the breathing again. And then he saw the two dinosaurs, walking upright with stiff tails. Their skin patterns seemed to shift as they walked, and it was difficult to follow them, but they were moving toward the shed. They arrived at the entrance, their bodies silhouetted against the moonlight beyond, their outlines finally clear. They looked like small tyrannosaurs, except they had protuberances above the eyes, and they had very small, stubby forelimbs. The carnivores ducked their squarish heads down, and looked into the shed cautiously. Snorting, sniffing. Their tails swinging slowly behind them. They were really too big to come inside, and for a moment he hoped that they would not. Then the first of them lowered its head, growled, and stepped through the entrance. Thorne held his breath. He was trying to think what to do, but he couldn’t think of anything at all. The animals were methodical, the first one moving aside so the second could enter as well. Suddenly, from along the side of the store, a half-dozen glaring lights shone out in bright beams. The lights moved, splashed on the dinosaurs’ bodies. The beams began to move back and forth in slow, erratic patterns, like searchlights. The dinosaurs were clearly visible, and they didn’t like it. They growled and tried to step away from the lights, but the beams moved continuously, searching them out, crisscrossing over their bodies. As the lights passed over their torsos, the skin paled in response, reproducing the movement of the beams, after the lights had moved on. Their bodies streaking white, fading to dark, streaking white again. The lights never stopped moving, except when they shone into the faces of the dinosaurs, and into their eyes."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "Section0077.txt", "text": "The big eyes blinked beneath their hooded wings; the animals twitched their heads and ducked away, as if annoyed by flies. The dinosaurs became agitated. They turned, backing out of the shed, and bellowed loudly at the moving lights. Still the lights moved, relentlessly swinging back and forth in the night. The pattern of movement was complex, confusing. The dinosaurs bellowed again, and took a menacing step toward the lights. But it was half-hearted. They clearly didn’t like being around these moving sources. After a moment, they shuffled off, the lights following them, driving them away past the tennis courts. Thorne moved forward. He heard Harding say, “Doc? Better get out of there, before they decide to come back.” Thorne moved quickly toward the lights. He found himself standing beside Levine and Harding. They were swinging fistfuls of flashlights back and forth. They all went back to the store. Inside, Levine slammed the door shut, and sagged back against it. “I was never so frightened in my entire life.” “Richard,” Harding said coldly. “Get a grip on yourself.” She crossed the room, and placed the flashlights on the counter. “Going out there was insane,” Levine said, wiping his forehead. He was drenched in sweat, his shirt stained dark. “Actually, it was a slam dunk,” Harding said. She turned to Thorne. “You could see they had a refractory period for skin response. It’s fast compared to, say, an octopus, but it’s still there. My assumption was that those dinosaurs were like all animals that rely on camouflage. They’re basically ambushers. They’re not particularly fast or active. They stand motionless for hours in an unchanging environment, disappearing into the background, and they wait until some unsuspecting meal comes along. But if they have to keep adjusting to new light conditions, they know they can’t hide. They get anxious. And if they get anxious enough, they finally just run away. Which is what happened.” Levine turned and glared angrily at Thorne. “This was all your fault. If you hadn’t gone out there that way, just wandering off—” “Richard,” Harding said, cutting him off. “We need gas or we’ll never get out of here. Don’t you want to get out of here?” Levine said nothing. He sulked. “Well,” Thorne said, “there wasn’t any gas in the shed anyway.” “Hey, everybody,” Sarah said. “Look who’s here!” Arby came forward, leaning on Kelly. He had changed into clothes from the store: a pair of swimming trunks and a tee shirt that said “InGen Bioengineering Labs” and beneath, “We Make The Future.” Arby had a black eye, a swollen cheekbone, and a cut that Harding had bandaged on his forehead. His arms and legs were badly bruised. But he was walking, and he managed a crooked smile. Thorne said, “How do you feel, son?” Arby said, “You know what I want more than anything, right now?” “What?” Thorne said. “Diet Coke,” Arby said. “And a lot of aspirin.” Sarah bent over Malcolm."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "Section0077.txt", "text": "He was humming softly, staring upward. “How is Arby?” he asked. “He’ll be okay.” “Does he need any morphine?” Malcolm asked. “No, I don’t think so.” “Good,” Malcolm said. He stretched out his arm, rolling up the sleeve. * * * Thorne cleaned the nest out of the microwave, and heated up some canned beef stew. He found a package of paper plates decorated in a Halloween motif—pumpkins and bats—and spooned the food onto the plates. The two kids ate hungrily. He gave a plate to Sarah, then turned to Levine. “What about you?” Levine was staring out the window. “No.” Thorne shrugged. Arby came over, holding his plate. “Is there any more?” “Sure,” Thorne said. He gave him his own plate. Levine went over and sat with Malcolm. Levine said, “Well, at least we were right about one thing. This island was a true lost world—a pristine, untouched ecology. We were right from the beginning.” Malcolm looked over, and raised his head. “Are you joking?” he said. “What about all the dead apatosaurs?” “I’ve been thinking about that,” Levine said. “The raptors killed them, obviously. And then the raptors—” “Did what?” Malcolm said. “Dragged them to their nest? Those animals weigh fifty tons, Richard. A hundred raptors couldn’t drag them. No, no.” He sighed. “The carcasses must have floated to a bend in the river, where they beached. The raptors made their nest at a source of convenient food supply—dead apatosaurs.” “Well, possibly …” “But why so many dead apatosaurs, Richard? Why do none of the animals attain adulthood? And why are there so many predators on the island?” “Well. We need more data, of course—” Levine began. “No, we don’t,” Malcolm said. “Didn’t you go through the lab? We already know the answer.” “What is it?” Levine said, irritably. “Prions,” Malcolm said, closing his eyes. Levine frowned. “What’re prions?” Malcolm sighed. “Ian,” Levine said. “What are prions?” “Go away,” Malcolm said, waving his hand. Arby was curled up in a corner, near sleep. Thorne rolled up a tee shirt, and put it under the boy’s head. Arby mumbled something, and smiled. In a few moments, he began to snore. Thorne got up and went over to Sarah, who was standing by the window. Outside, the sky was beginning to lighten above the trees, turning pale blue. “How much time now?” she said. Thorne looked at his watch. “Maybe an hour.” She started to pace. “We’ve got to get gas,” she said. “If we have gas, we can drive the Jeep to the helicopter site.” “But there’s no gas,” Thorne said. “There must be some, somewhere.” She continued to pace. “You tried the pumps.…” “Yes. They’re dry.” “What about inside the lab?” “I don’t think so.” “Where else? What about the trailer?” Thorne shook his head. “It’s just a passive tow-trailer. The other unit has an auxiliary generator and some gas tanks. But it went over the cliff.” “Maybe the tanks didn’t rupture when it fell."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "Section0077.txt", "text": "We still have the motorcycle. Maybe I can go out there and—” “Sarah,” he said. “It’s worth a try.” “Sarah—” From the window, Levine said softly, “Heads up. We have visitors.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0078.txt", "text": "Good Mother In the predawn light, the dinosaurs came out of the bushes and went directly toward the Jeep. There were six of them, big brown duckbills fifteen feet high, with curving snouts. “Maiasaurs,” Levine said. “I didn’t know there were any here.” “What are they doing?” The huge animals clustered around the Jeep, and immediately began to tear it apart. One ripped away the canvas top. Another poked at the roll bar, rocking the vehicle back and forth. “I don’t understand,” Levine said. “They’re hadrosaurs. Herbivores. This aggressiveness is quite uncharacteristic.” “Uh-huh,” Thorne said. As they watched, the maiasaurs tipped the Jeep over. The vehicle crashed over on its side. One of the adults reared up, and stood on the side panels. Its huge feet crushed the vehicle inward. But when the Jeep fell over, two white Styrofoam cases tumbled out onto the ground. The maiasaurs seemed to be focused on these cases. They nipped at the Styrofoam, tossing chunks of white around the ground. They moved hurriedly, in a kind of frenzy. “Something to eat?” Levine said. “Some kind of dinosaur catnip? What?” Then the top of one case tore away, and they saw a cracked egg inside. Protruding from the egg was a wrinkled bit of flesh. The maiasaurs slowed. Their movements were now cautious, gentle. They honked and grunted. The big bodies of the animals blocked their view. There was a squeaking sound. “You’re kidding,” Levine said. On the ground, a tiny animal moved about. Its body was pale brown, almost white. It tried to stand, but flopped down at once. It was barely a foot long, with wrinkled folds of flesh around its neck. In a moment, a second animal tumbled out beside it. Harding sighed. Slowly, one of the maiasaurs ducked its huge head down, and gently scooped the baby up in its broad bill. It kept its mouth open as it raised its head. The baby sat calmly on the adult’s tongue, looking around with its tiny head as it rose high into the air. The second baby was picked up. The adults milled around for a moment, as if unsure whether there was more to do, and then, honking loudly, they all moved off. Leaving behind a crumpled, shattered vehicle. Thorne said, “I guess gas is no longer a problem.” “I guess not,” Sarah said. Thorne stared at the wreckage of the Jeep, shaking his head. “It’s worse than a head-on collision,” he said. “It looks like it’s been put in a compactor. Just wasn’t built for those sorts of stresses.” Levine snorted. “Engineers in Detroit didn’t expect a five-ton animal to stand on it.” “You know,” Thorne said, “I would have liked to see how our own car stood up under that.” “You mean, because we beefed it up?” “Yes,” Thorne said. “We really built it to take fantastic stresses. Huge stresses."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0078.txt", "text": "Ran it through computer programs, added those honeycomb panels, the whole—” “Wait a minute,” Harding said, turning away from the window. “What are you talking about?” “The other car,” Thorne said. “What other car?” “The car we brought,” he said. “The Explorer.” “Of course!” she said, suddenly excited. “There’s another car! I completely forgot! The Explorer!” “Well, it’s history now,” Thorne said. “It shorted out last night, when I was coming back to the trailer. I ran it through a puddle and it shorted out.” “So? Maybe it still—” “No,” Thorne said, shaking his head. “A short like that’d blow the VR. It’s an electric car. It’s dead.” “I’m surprised you don’t have circuit breakers for that.” “Well, we never used to put them in, although on this latest version …” He trailed off. He shook his head. “I can’t believe it.” “The car has circuit breakers?” “Yes. Eddie put them in, last minute.” “So the car might still run?” “Yes, it probably would, if you reset the breakers.” “Where is it?” she said. She was heading for the motorcycle. “I left it on that side road that runs from the ridge road down to the hide. But Sarah—” “It’s our only chance,” she said. She pulled on her radio headset, adjusted the microphone to her cheek, and rolled the motorcycle to the door. “Call me,” she said. “I’m going to go find us a car.” They watched through the windows. In the early-morning light, she climbed onto the motorcycle, and roared off up the hill. Levine watched her go. “What do you figure her odds are?” Thorne just shook his head. The radio crackled. “Doc.” Thorne picked it up. “Yes, Sarah.” “I’m coming up the hill now. I see … there’s six of them.” “Raptors?” “Yeah. They’re, uh … Listen. I’m going to try another path. I see a—” The radio crackled. “Sarah?” She was breaking up. “—sort of a game trail that—here—think I better—” “Sarah,” Thorne said. “You’re breaking up.” “—do now. So just—ish me luck.” Over the radio, they heard the hum of the bike. Then they heard another sound, which might have been an animal snarl, and might have been more static. Thorne bent forward, holding the radio close to his ear. Then, abruptly, the radio clicked and was silent. He said, “Sarah?” There was no answer. “Maybe she turned it off,” Levine said. Thorne shook his head. “Sarah?” Nothing. “Sarah? Are you there?” They waited. Nothing. “Hell,” Thorne said. Time passed slowly. Levine stood by the window, staring out. Kelly was snoring in a corner. Arby lay next to Malcolm, fast asleep. And Malcolm was humming tunelessly. Thorne sat on the floor in the center of the room, leaning back against the checkout counter. Every so often, he’d pick up the radio and try to call Sarah, but there was never any answer. He tried all six channels. There was no answer on any of them. Eventually he stopped trying. The radio crackled."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0078.txt", "text": "“—ate these damned things. Never work right.” A grunt. “Can’t figure out what—things—damn.” Across the room, Levine sat forward. Thorne grabbed the radio. “Sarah? Sarah?” “Finally,” she said, her voice crackling. “Where the hell have you been, Doc?” “Are you all right?” “Of course I’m all right.” “There’s something wrong with your radio. You’re breaking up.” “Yeah? What should I do?” “Try screwing down the cover on your battery pack. It’s probably loose.” “No. I mean, what should I do about the car?” Thorne said, “What?” “I’m at the car, Doc. I’m there. What should I do?” Levine glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes until the helicopter arrives,” he said. “You know, she just might make it.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0079.txt", "text": "Dodgson Dodgson awoke, aching and stiff, on the floor of the concrete utility shed. He got to his feet, and looked out the window. He saw streaks of red in a pale-blue sky. He opened the door to the utility shed, and went outside. He was very thirsty, and his body was sore. He started walking beneath the canopy of trees. The jungle around him was silent in the early morning. He needed water. More than anything, he needed water. Somewhere off to his left, he heard the soft gurgle of a stream. He headed toward it, moving more quickly. Through the trees, he could see the sky growing lighter. He knew that Malcolm and his party were still here. They must have some plan to get off the island. If they could get off, he could too. He came over a low rise, and looked down at a gully and a flowing stream. It looked clear. He hurried down toward it, wondering if it was polluted. He decided he didn’t care. Just before he reached the stream, he tripped over a vine and fell, swearing. He got to his feet, and looked back. Then he saw it wasn’t a vine he had tripped over. It was the strap of a green backpack. Dodgson tugged at the strap, and the whole backpack slid out of the foliage. The pack had been torn apart, and it was crusty with dried blood. As he pulled it, the contents clattered out among the ferns. Flies were buzzing everywhere. But he saw a camera, a metal case for food, and a plastic water bottle. He searched quickly through the surrounding ferns. But he didn’t find much else, except some soggy candy bars. Dodgson drank the water, and then realized he was very hungry. He popped open the metal case, hoping for some decent food. But the case didn’t contain food. It was filled with foam packing. And in the center of the packing was a radio. He flicked it on. The battery light glowed strongly. He flicked from one channel to another, hearing static. Then a man’s voice. “Sarah? This is Thorne. Sarah?” After a moment, a woman’s voice: “Doc. Did you hear me? I said, I’m at the car.” Dodgson listened, and smiled. So there was a car. In the store, Thorne held the radio close to his cheek. “Okay,” he said. “Sarah? Listen carefully. Get in the car, and do exactly what I tell you.” “Okay fine,” she said. “But tell me first. Is Levine there?” “He’s here.” The radio clicked. She said, “Ask him if there’s any danger from a green dinosaur that’s about four feet tall and has a domed forehead.” Levine nodded. “Tell her yes. They’re called pachycephalosaurs.” “He says yes,” Thorne said. “They’re pachycephalo-somethings, and you should be careful. Why?” “Because there’s about fifty of them, all around the car.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0080.txt", "text": "Explorer The Explorer was sitting in the middle of a shady section of the road, with overhanging trees above. The car had stopped just beyond a depression, where there had no doubt been a large puddle the night before. Now the puddle had become a mudhole, thanks to the dozen or so animals that sat in it, splashed in it, drank from it, and rolled at its edges. These were the green dome-headed dinosaurs that she had been watching for the last few minutes, trying to decide what to do. Because not only were they near the mudhole, they were also located in front of the car, and around the sides of the car. She had watched the pachycephalosaurs with uneasiness. Harding had spent a lot of time on the ground with wild animals, but usually animals she knew well. From long experience, she knew how closely she could approach, and under what circumstances. If this were a herd of wildebeest, she would walk right in without hesitation. If it were a herd of American buffalo, she would be cautious, but she’d still go in. And if it were a herd of African buffalo, she wouldn’t go anywhere near them. She pushed the microphone against her cheek and said, “How much time left?” “Twenty minutes.” “Then I better get in there,” she said. “Any ideas?” There was a pause. The radio crackled. “Levine says nobody knows anything about these animals, Sarah.” “Great.” “Levine says a complete skeleton has never been recovered. So nobody has even a guess about their behavior, except that they’re probably aggressive.” “Great,” she said. She was looking at the situation of the car, and the overhanging trees. It was a shady area, peaceful and quiet in the early-morning light. The radio crackled. “Levine says you might try walking slowly in, and see if the herd lets you through. But no quick movements, no sudden gestures.” She stared at the animals and thought: They have those domed heads for a reason. “No thanks,” she said. “I’m going to try something else.” “What?” In the store, Levine said, “What’d she say?” “She said she was going to try something else.” “Like what?” Levine said. He went to the window and looked out. The sky was growing lighter. He frowned. There was some consequence to that, he thought. Something he knew in the back of his mind, but wasn’t thinking about. Something about daylight … And territory. Territory. Levine looked out at the sky again, trying to put it together. What difference did it make that daylight was coming? He shook his head, gave it up for the moment. “How long to reset the breakers?” “Just a minute or two,” Thorne said. “Then there might still be time,” Levine said. There was static hiss from the radio, and they heard Harding say, “Okay, I’m above the car.” “You’re where?” “I’m above the car,” she said."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0080.txt", "text": "“In a tree.” Harding climbed out on the branch, moving farther from the trunk, feeling it bend under her weight. The branch seemed supple. She was now ten feet above the car, swinging lower. Few of the animals below had looked up at her, but the herd seemed to be restless. Animals sitting in the mud got up, and began to turn and mill. She saw their tails flicking back and forth anxiously. She moved farther out, and the branch bent lower. It was slippery from the night’s rain. She tried to gauge her position above the car. It looked pretty good, she thought. Suddenly, one of the animals charged the trunk of the tree she was in, butting it hard. The impact was surprisingly forceful. The tree swayed, her branch swinging up and down, while she struggled to hold on. Oh shit, she thought. She rose up into the air, came down again, and then she lost her grip. Her hands slipped on wet leaves and wet bark, and she fell free. At the last moment, she saw that she would miss the car entirely. Then she hit the ground, landing hard in muddy earth. Right beside the animals. The radio crackled. “Sarah?” Thorne said. There was no answer. “What’s she doing now?” Levine began to pace nervously. “I wish we could see what she’s doing.” In the corner of the room, Kelly got up, rubbing her eyes. “Why don’t you use the video?” Thorne said, “What video?” Kelly pointed to the cash register. “That’s a computer.” “It is?” “Yeah. I think so.” * * * Kelly yawned as she sat in the chair facing the cash register. It looked like a dumb terminal, which meant it probably didn’t have access to much, but it was worth a try anyway. She turned it on. Nothing happened. She flicked the power switch back and forth. Nothing. Idly, she swung her legs, and kicked a wire beneath the table. She bent over and saw that the terminal was unplugged. So she plugged it in. The screen glowed, and a single word appeared: LOGIN: To proceed further, she knew she needed a password. Arby had a password. She glanced over and saw that he was still asleep. She didn’t want to wake him up. She remembered that he had written it down on a piece of paper and stuck it in his pocket. Maybe it was still in his clothes, she thought. She crossed the room, found the bundle of his wet, muddy clothes, and began going through the pockets. She found his wallet, the keys to his house, and some other stuff. Finally she found a piece of paper in his back pocket. It was damp, and streaked with mud. The ink had smeared, but she could still read his writing: VIG/&*849/ Kelly took the paper and went back to the computer. She typed in all the characters carefully, and pressed the return key."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0080.txt", "text": "The screen went blank, and then a new screen came up. She was surprised. It was different from the screen she had seen earlier, in the trailer. She was in the system. But the whole thing looked different. Maybe because this wasn’t the radionet, she thought. She must be logged into the actual laboratory system. It had more graphics because the terminal was hard-wired. Maybe they even ran optical pipe out here. Across the room, Levine said, “Kelly? How about it?” “I’m working on it,” she said. Cautiously, she began to type. Rows of icons appeared rapidly across the screen, one after another. She knew she was looking at a graphic interface of some kind, but the meaning of the images wasn’t obvious to her, and there were no explanations. The people who had used this system were probably trained to know what the images meant. But Kelly didn’t know. She wanted to get into the video system, yet none of the pictures suggested anything to do with video. She moved the cursor around, wondering what to do. She decided she’d have to guess. She picked the diamond-shaped icon on the lower left, and clicked on it. “Uh-oh,” she said, alarmed. Levine looked over. “Something wrong?” “No,” she said. “It’s fine.” She quickly clicked on the header, and got back to the previous screen. This time she tried one of the triangular-shaped icons. The screen changed again: That’s it, she thought. Immediately the image popped off, and the actual video images began to flash up on the screen. On this little cash-register monitor, the pictures were tiny, but now she was in familiar territory, and she moved around quickly, moving the cursor, manipulating the images. “What are you looking for?” she said. “The Explorer,” Thorne said. She clicked the screen. The image zoomed up. “Got it,” she said. Levine said, “You do?” He sounded surprised. Kelly looked at him and said, “Yeah, I do.” The two men came and stared at the screen over her shoulder. They could see the Explorer, on a shaded road. They could see the pachycephalosaurs, lots of them, milling around the car. The animals were poking at the tires and the front fender. But they didn’t see Sarah anywhere. “Where is she?” Thorne said. Sarah Harding was underneath the car, lying on her face in the mud. She had crawled there after she fell—it was the only place to go—and now she was staring out at the animals’ feet milling all around her. She said, “Doc. Are you there? Doc? Doc.” But the damned radio wasn’t working again. The pachys were stamping and snorting, trying to get at her under the car. Then she remembered that Thorne had said something about screwing down the battery pack. She reached behind her back, and found the pack, and twisted the cover shut tight. Immediately, her earpiece began to crackle with static. “Doc,” she said. “Where are you?” Thorne said. “I’m under the car.” “Why?"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0080.txt", "text": "Did you already try it?” “Try what?” “Try to start it. To start the car.” “No,” she said, “I didn’t try to start it, I fell.” “Well, as long as you’re under there, you can check the breakers,” Thorne said. “The breakers are under the car?” “Some of them. Look up by the front wheels.” She twisted her body, sliding in the mud. “Okay. I’m looking.” “There’s a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left.” “I see it.” “Can you open it?” “I think so.” She crawled forward, and pulled at the latch. The lid came down. She was staring at three black switches. “I see three switches and they are all pointing up.” “Up?” “Toward the front of the car.” “Hmmm,” Thorne said. “That doesn’t make sense. Can you read the writing?” “Yes. It says ‘15 VV’ and then ‘02 R.’ ” “Okay,” he said. “That explains it.” “What?” “The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?” “No, Doc. I’m soaking wet, lying in the damn mud.” “Well then, use your shirtsleeve or something.” Harding pulled herself forward, approaching the bumper. The nearest pachys snorted and banged on the bumper. They leaned down and twisted their heads, trying to get to her. “They have very bad breath,” she said. “Say again?” “Never mind.” She flipped the switches, one after another. She heard a hum, from the car above her. “Okay. I did it. The car is making a noise.” “That’s fine,” Thorne said. “What do I do now?” “Nothing. You better wait.” She lay back in the mud, looking at the feet of the pachys. They were moving, tramping all around her. “How much time left?” she said. “About ten minutes.” She said, “Well, I’m stuck under here, Doc.” “I know.” She looked at the animals. They were on all sides of the car. If anything, they seemed to be growing more active and excited. They stamped their feet and snuffled impatiently. Why were they so worked up? she wondered. And then, suddenly, they all thundered off. They ran toward the front of the car, and away, up the road. She twisted her body and watched them go. There was silence. “Doc?” she said. “Yeah.” “Why’d they leave?” “Stay under the car,” Thorne said. “Doc?” “Don’t talk.” The radio clicked off. She waited, not sure what was happening. She had heard the tension in Thorne’s voice. She didn’t know why. But now she heard a soft scuffling sound, and looking over, saw two feet standing by the driver’s side of the car. Two feet in muddy boots. Men’s boots. Harding frowned. She recognized the boots. She recognized the khaki trousers, even though they were now caked with mud. It was Dodgson. The man’s boots turned to face the door. She heard the door latch click. Dodgson was getting in the car. Harding acted so swiftly, she was not aware of thinking."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "Section0080.txt", "text": "Grunting, she swung her body around sideways, reached out with her arms, grabbed both ankles, and pulled hard. Dodgson fell, giving a yell of surprise. He landed on his back, and turned, his face dark and angry. He saw her and scowled. “No shit,” he said. “I thought I finished you off on the boat.” Harding went red with rage, and started to crawl out from under the car. Dodgson scrambled to his knees as she was halfway out, but then she felt the ground begin to shake. And she immediately knew why. She saw Dodgson look over his shoulder, and flatten himself on the ground. Hurriedly, he started to crawl under the car beside her. She turned in the mud, looking down along the length of the car. And she saw a tyrannosaurus coming up the road toward them. The ground vibrated with each step. Now Dodgson was crawling toward the center of the car, pushing himself close to her, but she ignored him. She watched the big feet with the splayed claws as they came alongside the car, and stopped. Each foot was three feet long. She heard the tyrannosaur growling. She looked at Dodgson. His eyes were wide with terror. The tyrannosaur paused beside the car. The big feet shifted. She heard the animal somewhere above, sniffing. Then, growling again, the head came down. The lower jaw touched the ground. She could not see the eye, just the lower jaw. The tyrannosaur sniffed again, long and slow. It could smell them. Beside her, Dodgson was trembling uncontrollably. But Harding was strangely calm. She knew what she had to do. Quickly, she shifted her body, twisting around, moving so her head and shoulders were braced against the rear wheel of the car. Dodgson turned to look at her just as her boots began to push against his lower legs. Pushing them out from beneath the car. Terrified, Dodgson struggled, trying to push back, but her position was much stronger. Inch by inch, his boots moved out into the cold morning light. Then his calves. She grunted as she pushed, concentrating every ounce of her energy. In a high-pitched voice, Dodgson said, “What the hell are you doing?” She heard the tyrannosaur growling. She saw the big feet move. Dodgson said, “Stop it! Are you crazy? Stop it!” But Harding didn’t stop. She got her boot on his shoulder, and pushed once more. For a while Dodgson struggled against her, and then suddenly his body moved easily, and she saw that the tyrannosaur had his legs in its jaws and was pulling Dodgson out from under the car. Dodgson wrapped his hands around her boot, trying to hold on, trying to drag her with him. She put her other boot on his face and kicked hard. He let go. He slid away from her. She saw his terrified face, ashen, mouth open. No words came out."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "Section0080.txt", "text": "She saw his fingers, digging into the mud, leaving deep gouges as he was pulled away. And then his body was dragged out. Everything was strangely quiet. She saw Dodgson spin around onto his back, and look upward. She saw the shadow of the tyrannosaur fall across him. She saw the big head come down, the jaws wide. And she heard Dodgson begin to scream as the jaws closed around his body, and he was lifted up. Dodgson felt himself rise high into the air, twenty feet above the ground, and all the time he continued to scream. He knew at any moment the animal would snap its great jaws shut, and he would die. But the jaws never closed. Dodgson felt stabbing pain in his sides, but the jaws never closed. Still screaming, Dodgson felt himself carried back into the jungle. High branches of trees lashed his face. The hot breath of the animal whooshed in snorts over his body. Saliva dripped onto his torso. He thought he would pass out from terror. But the jaws never closed. Inside the store, they stared at the tiny monitor as Dodgson was carried away in the jaws of the tyrannosaur. Over the radio, they heard his tinny distant screams. “You see?” Malcolm said. “There is a God.” Levine was frowning. “The rex didn’t kill him.” He pointed to the screen. “Look, there, you can see his arms are still moving. Why didn’t it kill him?” Sarah Harding waited until the screams faded. She crawled out from beneath the car, standing up in the morning light. She opened the door and got behind the wheel. The key was in the ignition; she gripped it with muddy fingers. She twisted it. There was a chugging sound, and then a soft whine. All the dashboard lights came on. Then silence. Was the car working? She turned the wheel and it moved easily. So the power steering was on. “Doc.” “Yes, Sarah.” “The car’s working. I’m coming back.” “Okay,” he said. “Hurry.” She put it in drive, and felt the transmission engage. The car was unusually quiet, almost silent. Which was why she was able to hear the faint thumping of a distant helicopter."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0081.txt", "text": "Daylight She was driving beneath a thick canopy of trees, back toward the village. She heard the sound of the helicopter build in intensity. Then it roared overhead, unseen through the foliage above. She had the window down, and was listening. It seemed to move off to her right, toward the south. The radio clicked. “Sarah.” “Yes, Doc.” “Listen: we can’t communicate with the helicopter.” “Okay,” she said. She understood what had to be done. “Where’s the landing site?” “South. About a mile. There’s a clearing. Take the ridge road.” She was coming up to the fork. She saw the ridge road going off to the right. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going.” “Tell them to wait for us,” Thorne said. “Then come back and get us.” “Everybody okay?” she said. “Everybody’s fine,” Thorne said. She followed the road, hearing a change in the sound of the helicopter. She realized it must be landing. The rotors continued, a low whirr, which meant the pilot wasn’t going to shut down. The road curved off to the left. The sound of the helicopter was now a muted thumping. She accelerated, driving fast, careening around the corner. The road was still wet from the rains the night before. She wasn’t raising a cloud of dust behind her. There was nothing to tell anyone that she was here. “Doc. How long will they wait?” “I don’t know,” Thorne said, over the radio. “Can you see it?” “Not yet,” she said. Levine stared out the window. He looked at the lightening sky, through the trees. The streaks of red were gone. It was now a bright even blue. Daylight was definitely coming. Daylight … And then he put it together. He shivered as he realized. He went to the window on the opposite side, looked out toward the tennis court. He stared at the spot where the carnotauruses had been the night before. They were gone now. Just as he feared. “This is bad,” he said. “It’s only just now eight,” Thorne said, glancing at his watch. “How long will it take her?” Levine said. “I don’t know. Three or four minutes.” “And then to get back?” Levine said. “Another five minutes.” “I hope we make it that long.” He was frowning unhappily. “Why?” Thorne said. “We’re okay.” “In a few minutes,” Levine said, “we’ll have direct sun shining down outside.” “So what?” Thorne said. The radio clicked. “Doc,” Sarah said. “I see it. I see the helicopter.” Sarah came around a final curve and saw the landing site off to her left. The helicopter was there, blades spinning. She saw another junction in the road, with a narrow road leading left down a hill, into jungle, and then out to the clearing. She drove down it, descending a series of switchbacks, forcing her to go slow. She was now back in the jungle, beneath the canopy of trees. The ground leveled out, she splashed across a narrow stream, and accelerated forward."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0081.txt", "text": "Directly ahead there was a gap in the tree canopy, and sunlight on the clearing beyond. She saw the helicopter. Its rotors were beginning to spin faster—it was leaving! She saw the pilot behind the bubble, wearing dark glasses. The pilot checked his watch, shook his head to the copilot, and then began to lift off. Sarah honked her horn, and drove madly forward. But she knew they could not hear her. Her car bounced and jolted. Thorne was saying, “What is it? Sarah! What’s happening?” She drove forward, leaning out the window, yelling “Wait! Wait!” But the helicopter was already rising into the air, lifting up out of her view. The sound began to fade. By the time her car burst out of the jungle into the clearing, she saw the helicopter heading away, disappearing over the rocky rim of the island. And then it was gone. “Let’s stay calm,” Levine said, pacing the little store. “Tell her to get back right away. And let’s stay calm.” He seemed to be talking to himself. He walked from one wall to the next, pounding the wooden planks with his fist. He shook his head unhappily. “Just tell her to hurry. You think she can be back in five minutes?” “Yes,” Thorne said. “Why? What is it, Richard?” Levine pointed out the window. “Daylight,” he said. “We’re trapped here in daylight.” “We were trapped here all night, too,” Thorne said. “We made it okay.” “But daylight is different,” Levine said. “Why?” “Because at night,” he said, “this is carnotaurus territory. Other animals don’t come in. We saw no other animals at all around here, last night. But once daylight comes, the carnotaurus can’t hide any more. Not in open spaces, in direct sunlight. So they’ll leave. And then this won’t be their territory any more.” “Which means?” Levine glanced at Kelly, over by the computer. He hesitated, then said, “Just take my word for it. We have to get out of here right away.” “And go where?” Sitting at the computer, Kelly listened to Thorne talking to Dr. Levine. She fingered the piece of paper with Arby’s password on it. She felt very nervous. The way Dr. Levine was talking was making her nervous. She wished Sarah was back by now. She would feel better when Sarah was here. Kelly didn’t like to think about their situation. She had been holding herself together, keeping up her spirits, until the helicopter came. But now the helicopter had come and gone. And she noticed neither of the men was talking about when it would come back. Maybe they knew something. Like it wasn’t coming back. Dr. Levine was saying they had to get out of the store. Thorne was asking Dr. Levine where he wanted to go. Levine said. “I’d prefer to get off this island, but I don’t see how we can. So I suppose we should make our way back to the trailer."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0081.txt", "text": "It’s the safest place now.” Back to the trailer, she thought. Where she and Sarah had gone to get Malcolm. Kelly didn’t want to go back to the trailer. She wanted to go home. Tensely, Kelly smoothed out the piece of damp paper, pressing it flat on the table beside her. Dr. Levine came over. “Stop fooling around,” he said. “See if you can find Sarah.” “I want to go home,” Kelly said. Levine sighed. “I know, Kelly,” he said. “We all want to go home.” And he walked away again, moving quickly, tensely. Kelly pushed the paper away, turning it over, and sliding it under the keyboard, in case she should need the password again. As she did so, her eye was caught by some writing on the other side. She pulled the paper out again. She saw: SITE B LEGENDS EAST WING LABORATORY OUTLYING CONVENIENCE STORE GAS STATION MGRS HOUSE SECURITY ONE RIVER DOCK SWAMP ROAD MTN VIEW ROAD WEST WING ASSEMBLY BAY MAIN CORE WORKER VILLAGE POOL/TENNIS JOG PATH SECURITY TWO BOATHOUSE RIVER ROAD CLIFF ROAD LOADING BAY ENTRANCE GEO TURBINE GEO CORE PUTTING GREENS GAS LINES THERMAL LINES SOLAR ONE RIDGE ROAD HOLDING PENS She realized at once what it was: a screen shot from Levine’s apartment. From the night when Arby had been recovering files from the computer. It seemed like a million years ago, another lifetime. But it had really been only … what? Two days ago. She remembered how proud Arby had been when he had recovered the data. She remembered how they had all tried to make sense of this list. Now, of course, all these names had meaning. They were all real places: the laboratory, the worker village, the convenience store, the gas station.… She stared at the list. You’re kidding, she thought. “Dr. Thorne,” she said. “I think you better look at this.” Thorne stared as she pointed at the list. “You think so?” he said. “That’s what it says: a boathouse.” “Can you find it, Kelly?” “You mean, find it on the video?” She shrugged. “I can try.” “Try,” Thorne said. He glanced at Levine, who was across the room, pounding on the walls again. He picked up the radio. “Sarah? It’s Doc.” And the radio crackled. “Doc? I’ve had to stop for a minute.” “Why?” Thorne said. Sarah Harding was stopped on the ridge road. Fifty yards ahead, she saw the tyrannosaur, going down the road away from her. She could see that he had Dodgson in his mouth. And somehow, Dodgson was still alive. His body was still moving. She thought she could hear him scream. She was surprised to find she had no feeling about him at all. She watched dispassionately as the tyrannosaur left the road, and headed off down a slope, back into the jungle. Sarah started the car, and drove cautiously forward."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "Section0081.txt", "text": "At the computer console, Kelly flicked through video images, one after another, until finally she found it: a wooden dock, enclosed inside a shed or a boathouse, open to the air at the far end. The interior of the boathouse looked in pretty good shape; there weren’t a lot of vines and ferns growing over things. She saw a powerboat tied up, rocking against the dock. She saw three oil drums to one side. And out the back of the boathouse there was open water, and sunlight; it looked like a river. “What do you think?” she said to Thorne. “I think it’s worth a try,” he said, looking over her shoulder. “But where is it? Can you find a map?” “Maybe,” she said. She flicked the keys, and managed to get back to the main screen, with its perplexing icons. Arby awoke, yawned, and came over to look at what she was doing. “Nice graphics. You logged on, huh?” “Yeah,” she said. “I did. But I’m having a little trouble figuring it out.” Levine was pacing, staring out the windows. “This is all well and good,” he said, “but it is getting brighter out there by the minute. Don’t you understand? We need a way out of here. This building is single-wall construction. It’s fine for the tropics, but it’s basically a shack.” “It’ll do,” Thorne said. “For three minutes, maybe. I mean, look at this,” Levine said. He walked to the door, rapped it with his knuckles. “This door is just—” With a crash, the wood splintered around the lock, and the door swung open. Levine was thrown aside, landing hard on the floor. A raptor stood hissing in the doorway."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0082.txt", "text": "A Way Out Sitting at the console, Kelly was frozen in terror. She watched as Thorne ran forward from the side, throwing the full weight of his body against the door, slamming it hard against the raptor. Startled, the animal was knocked back. The door closed on its clawed hand. Thorne leaned against the door. On the other side, the animal snarled and pounded. “Help me!” Thorne shouted. Levine scrambled to his feet and ran forward, adding his weight. “I told you!” Levine shouted. Suddenly there were raptors all around the store. Snarling, they threw themselves at the windows, denting the steel bars, pushing them in toward the glass. They slammed against the wooden walls, knocking down shelves, sending cans and bottles clattering to the floor. In several places, the wood began to splinter on the walls. Levine looked back at her: “Find a way out of here!” Kelly stared. The computer was forgotten. “Come on, Kel,” Arby said. “Concentrate.” She turned back to the screen, unsure what to do. She clicked on the cross in the left corner. Nothing happened. She clicked on the upper-left circle. Suddenly, icons began to print out rapidly, filling the screen. “Don’t worry, there must be a key to explain it,” Arby said. “We just need to know what—” But Kelly was not listening, she was pressing more buttons and moving the cursor, already trying to get something to happen, to get a help screen, something. Anything. Suddenly, the whole screen began to twist, to distort. “What did you do?” Arby said, in alarm. Kelly was sweating. “I don’t know,” she said. She pulled her hands away from the keyboard. “It’s worse,” Arby said. “You made it worse.” The screen continued to squeeze together, the icons shifting, distorting slowly as they watched. “Come on, kids!” Levine shouted. “We’re trying!” Kelly said. Arby said, “It’s becoming a cube.” Thorne pushed the big glass-walled refrigerator in front of the door. The raptor slammed against the metal, rattling the cans inside. “Where are the guns?” Levine said. “Sarah has three in her car.” “Great.” At the windows, some of the bars were now so deeply dented that they broke the glass. Along the right-hand wall, the wood was splintering, tearing open big gaps. “We have to get out of here,” Levine shouted at Kelly. “We have to find a way!” He ran to the rear of the store, to the bathrooms. But a moment later he returned. “They’re back there, too!” It was happening fast, all around them. On the screen, she now saw a rotating cube, turning in space. Kelly didn’t know how to stop it. “Come on, Kel,” Arby said, peering at her through swollen eyes. “You can do it. Concentrate. Come on.” Everyone in the room was shouting. Kelly stared at the cube on the screen, feeling hopeless and lost. She didn’t know what she was doing any more. She didn’t know why she was there."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0082.txt", "text": "She didn’t know what the point of anything was. Why wasn’t Sarah here? Standing beside her, Arby said, “Come on. Do the icons one at a time, Kel. You can do it. Come on. Stay with it. Focus.” But she couldn’t focus. She couldn’t click on the icons, they were rotating too fast on the screen. There must be parallel processors to handle all the graphics. She just stared at it. She found herself thinking of all sorts of things—thoughts that just came unbidden into her mind. The cord under the desk. Hard-wired. Lots of graphics. Sarah talking to her in the trailer. “Come on, Kel. You have to do this now. Find a way out.” In the trailer, Sarah said: Most of what people tell you will be wrong. “It’s important, Kel,” Arby said. He was trembling as he stood beside her. She knew he concentrated on computers as a way to block things out. As a way to— The wall splintered wide, an eight-inch plank cracking inward, and a raptor stuck his head through, snarling, snapping his jaws. She kept thinking of the cord under the desk. The cord under the desk. Her legs had kicked the cord under the desk. The cord under the desk. Arby said, “It’s important.” And then it hit her. “No,” she said to him. “It’s not important.” And she dropped off the seat, crawling down under the desk to look. “What are you doing?” Arby screamed. But already Kelly had her answer. She saw the cable from the computer going down into the floor, through a neat hole. She saw a seam in the wood. Her fingers scrabbled at the floor, pulling at it. And suddenly the panel came away in her hands. She looked down. Darkness. Yes. There was a crawlspace. No, more. A tunnel. She shouted, “Here!” The refrigerator fell forward. The raptors crashed through the front door. From the sides, other animals tore through the walls, knocking over the display cases. The raptors sprang into the room, snarling and ducking. They found the bundle of Arby’s wet clothes and snapped at them, ripping them apart in fury. They moved quickly, hunting. But the people were gone."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0083.txt", "text": "Escape Kelly was in the lead, holding a flashlight. They moved, single file, along damp concrete walls. They were in a tunnel four feet square, with flat metal racks of cables along the left side. Water and gas pipes ran near the ceiling. The tunnel smelled moldy. She heard the squeak of rats. They came to a Y-junction. She looked both ways. To the right was a long straight passageway, going into darkness. It probably led to the laboratory, she thought. To the left was a much shorter section of tunnel, with stairs at the end. She went left. She crawled up through a narrow concrete shaft, and pushed open a wooden trapdoor at the top. She found herself in a small utility building, surrounded by cables and rusted pipes. Sunlight streamed in through broken windows. The others climbed up beside her. She looked out the window, and saw Sarah Harding driving down the hill toward them. Harding drove the Explorer along the edge of the river. Kelly was sitting beside her in the front seat. They saw a wooden sign for the boathouse up ahead. “So it was the graphics that gave you the clue, Kelly?” Harding said, admiringly. Kelly nodded. “I just suddenly realized, it didn’t matter what was actually on the screen. What mattered was there was a lot of data being manipulated, millions of pixels spinning there, and that meant there had to be a cable. And if there was a cable, there must be a space for it. And enough space that workmen could repair it, all of that.” “So you looked under the desk.” “Yes,” she said. “That’s very good,” Harding said. “I think these people owe you their lives.” “Not really,” Kelly said, with a little shrug. Sarah shot her a look. “All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don’t you take it away from yourself.” The road was muddy alongside the river, and heavily overgrown with plants. They heard the distant cries of the dinosaurs, somewhere behind them. Harding maneuvered around a fallen tree, and then they saw the boathouse ahead. “Uh-oh,” Levine said. “I have a bad feeling.” From the outside, the building was in ruins, and heavily overgrown with vines. The roof had caved in in several places. No one spoke as Harding pulled the Explorer up in front of a pair of broad double doors sealed with a rusted padlock. They climbed out of the car and walked forward in ankle-deep mud. “You really think there’s a boat in there?” Arby said doubtfully. Malcolm leaned on Harding, while Thorne threw his weight against the door. Rotten timbers creaked, then splintered. The padlock fell to the ground. Harding said, “Here, hold him,” and put Malcolm’s arm over Thorne’s shoulder. Then she kicked a hole in the door wide enough to crawl through. Immediately she went inside, into darkness. Kelly hurried in after her."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0083.txt", "text": "“What do you see?” Levine said, pulling planks away to widen the hole. A furry spider scurried up the boards, jumping away. “There’s a boat here, all right,” Harding said. “And it looks okay.” Levine pushed his head through the hole. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “We just might get out of here, after all.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0084.txt", "text": "Exit Lewis Dodgson fell. Tumbling through the air, he dropped from the mouth of the tyrannosaur, and landed hard on an earthen slope. The breath was knocked out of him, his head slammed down, and he was dizzy for a moment. He opened his eyes, and saw a sloping bank of dried mud. He smelled a sour odor of decay. And then he heard a sound that chilled him: it was a high-pitched squeaking. He got up on one elbow, and saw he was in the tyrannosaur nest. The sloping mound of dried mud was all around him. Now there were three infants here, including one with a piece of aluminum wrapped around its leg. The infants were squeaking with excitement as they toddled toward him. Dodgson scrambled to his feet, unsure of what to do. The other adult tyrannosaur was on the far side of the nest, purring and snorting. The one that had brought him was standing over him. Dodgson watched the babies moving toward him, with their downy necks and their sharp little jaws. And then he turned to run. In an instant, the big adult brought his head down, knocking Dodgson over. Then the tyrannosaur raised its head again, and waited. Watching. What the hell is going on? Dodgson thought. Cautiously, he got to his feet again. And again, he was knocked down. The infants squeaked and came closer. He saw that their bodies were covered in bits of flesh and excrement. He could smell them. He got up on all fours, and began crawling away. Something grabbed his leg, holding him. He looked back and saw that his leg was in the jaws of the tyrannosaur. The big animal held it gently for a moment. Then it bit down decisively. The bones snapped and crunched. Dodgson screamed in pain. He could no longer move. He could no longer do anything but scream. The babies toddled forward eagerly. For a few seconds they kept their distance, heads darting forward to take quick bites. But then, when Dodgson did not move away, one hopped up on his leg, and began to bite at the bleeding flesh. The second jumped on his crotch, and pecked with razor-sharp jaws at his waist. The third came right alongside his face, and with a single snap bit into his cheek. Dodgson howled. He saw the baby eating the flesh of his own face. His blood was dripping down its jaws. The baby threw its head back and swallowed the cheek, and then turned, opened its jaws again, and closed over Dodgson’s neck."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0086.txt", "text": "Departure The boat left the jungle river behind, and moved into darkness. The walls of the cave echoed the throb of the engines as Thorne steered the boat through the swift tidal current. To their left, a waterfall splashed down, a ray of light on cascading water. And then they burst out, moving beyond the high cliff wall and the crashing surf, into the open ocean. Kelly gave a cheer, and threw her arms around Arby, who winced and smiled. Levine looked back at the island. “I have to admit, I never thought we’d make it. But with our cameras in place, and the uplink working, I expect we can continue to gather the data, until we finally get our answer about extinction.” Sarah Harding stared at him. “Maybe we will, and maybe we won’t.” “Why not? It’s a perfect Lost World.” She stared at him in disbelief. “It’s nothing of the sort,” she said. “Too many predators, remember?” “Well, so it may appear, but we don’t know—” “Richard,” she said. “Ian and I checked the records. They made a mistake on that island, many years ago. Back when the lab was still in production.” “What mistake?” “They were manufacturing infant dinosaurs, and they didn’t know what to feed them. For a while they gave them goat’s milk, which was fine. It’s very hypoallergenic. But as the carnivores grew, they fed them a special animal-protein extract. And the extract was made from ground-up sheep.” Levine said, “So? What’s wrong with that?” “In a zoo, they never use sheep extract,” she said. “Because of the danger of infection.” “Infection,” Levine repeated, in a low voice. “What kind of infection?” “Prions,” Malcolm said, from the other side of the boat. Levine looked blank. “Prions,” Harding said, “are the simplest disease-causing entities known, even simpler than viruses. They’re just protein fragments. They’re so simple, they can’t even invade a body—they have to be passively ingested. But once eaten, they cause disease: scrapie, in sheep; mad-cow disease; and kuru, a brain disease in human beings. And the dinosaurs developed a prion-disease called DX, from a bad batch of sheep protein extract. The lab battled it for years, trying to get rid of it.” “You’re saying they didn’t?” “For a while, it seemed as if they did. The dinosaurs were flourishing. But then something happened. The disease began to spread. The prions are excreted in feces, so it is possible—” “Excreted in feces?” Levine said. “The compys were eating feces.…” “Yes, the compys are all infected. The compys are scavengers; they spread the protein over carcasses, and other scavengers became infected. Eventually, all the raptors were infected. Raptors attack healthy animals, not always successfully. One bite, and the animal becomes infected. And so, bit by bit, the infection spread through the island again. That’s why the animals die early. And the rapid die-off supports a much larger predator population than you would expect—” Levine was visibly anxious."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "Section0086.txt", "text": "“You know,” he said, “one of the compys bit me.” “I wouldn’t worry,” Harding said. “There may be a mild encephalitis, but it’s usually just a headache. We’ll get you to a doctor in San José.” Levine began to sweat. He wiped his forehead with his hand. “Actually, I don’t feel very good at all.” “It takes a week, Richard,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Levine sank back in his seat unhappily. “But the point,” she said, “is that I doubt this island will be able to tell you very much about extinction.” Malcolm stared back at the dark cliffs for a moment, and then began to speak. “Maybe that’s the way it should be,” he said. “Because extinction has always been a great mystery. It’s happened five major times on this planet, and not always because of an asteroid. Everyone’s interested in the Cretaceous die-out that killed the dinosaurs, but there were die-outs at the end of the Jurassic and the Triassic as well. They were severe, but they were nothing compared to the Permian extinction, which killed ninety percent of all life on the planet, on the seas and on the land. No one knows why that catastrophe happened. But I wonder if we are the cause of the next one.” “How is that?” Kelly said. “Human beings are so destructive,” Malcolm said. “I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that’s our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.” Kelly shook her head. She turned away from Malcolm and moved up the boat, to sit alongside Thorne. “Are you listening to all that?” Thorne said. “I wouldn’t take any of it too seriously. It’s just theories. Human beings can’t help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies. And they change. When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston. You know what that is? No? Well, it doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t real anyway. They also believed that four humors controlled behavior. And they believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Now we believe the earth is four billion years old, and we believe in photons and electrons, and we think human behavior is controlled by things like ego and self-esteem. We think those beliefs are more scientific and better.” “Aren’t they?” Thorne shrugged. “They’re still just fantasies. They’re not real. Have you ever seen a self-esteem? Can you bring me one on a plate? How about a photon? Can you bring me one of those?” Kelly shook her head. “No, but …” “And you never will, because those things don’t exist. No matter how seriously people take them,” Thorne said. “A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "Section0086.txt", "text": "They’ll say, ‘You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?’ They’ll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies.” Thorne shook his head. “And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That’s the sea. That’s real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That’s all real. You see all of us together? That’s real. Life is wonderful. It’s a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn’t really anything else. Now look at that compass, and tell me where south is. I want to go to Puerto Cortés. It’s time for us all to go home.”"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "Section0087.txt", "text": "Acknowledgments This novel is entirely fiction, but in writing it, I have drawn on the work of researchers in many different fields. I am especially indebted to the work, and the speculations, of John Alexander, Mark Boguski, Edwin Colbert, John Conway, Philip Currie, Peter Dodson, Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould, Donald Griffin, John Holland, John Horner, Fred Hoyle, Stuart Kauffman, Christopher Langton, Ernst Mayr, Mary Midgley, John Ostrom, Norman Packard, David Raup, Jeffrey Schank, Manfred Schroeder, George Gaylord Simpson, Bruce Weber, John Wheeler, and David Weishampel. It remains only to say that the views expressed in this novel are mine, not theirs, and to remind the reader that a century and a half after Darwin, nearly all positions on evolution remain strongly contended, and fiercely debated."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "autor.txt", "text": "MICHAEL CRICHTON (Chicago, Illinois, 23th October 1942 - Los Ángeles, California, 4th November 2008) was an American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted into films. His literary works are usually based on the action genre and heavily feature technology. His novels epitomize the techno-thriller genre of literature, often exploring technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his future history novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background. He was the author of, among others, The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Congo, Travels, Sphere, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, State of Fear, Next (the final book published before his death), Pirate Latitudes (published November 24, 2009), and a final unfinished techno-thriller, Micro, which was published in November 2011."}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "citas.txt", "text": "“What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.” ALBERT EINSTEIN “Deep in the chaotic regime, slight changes in structure almost always cause vast changes in behavior. Complex controllable behavior seems precluded.” STUART KAUFFMAN “Sequelae are inherently unpredictable.” IAN MALCOLM"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "info.txt", "text": "Original Title: The Lost World Michael Crichton, 1995 Illustrator: Gregory Wenzel, David Cain (Map), David Nakabayashi (Computer graphics) Cover Design: Sharadore Digital Editor: Sharadore ePub base r1.2"}
{"ID": "The Lost World -- Michael Crichton -- 1995 -- ePubLibre -- 9a5d50610e191792d85980874e14fa36 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "sinopsis.txt", "text": "It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since that extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end — the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, the island indefinitely closed to the public. There are rumors that something has survived."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith Patricia Highsmith THE PRICE OF SALT CHAPTER 1 THE LUNCH HOUR in the co-workers' cafeteria at Frankenberg's had reached its peak. There was no room left at any of the long tables, and more and more people were arriving to wait back of the wooden barricades by the cash register. People who had already got their trays of food wandered about between the tables in search of a spot they could squeeze into, or a place that somebody was about to leave, but there was no place. The roar of dishes, chairs, voices, shuffling feet, and the bra-a-ack of the turnstiles in the bare-walled room was like the din of a single huge machine. Therese ate nervously, with the \"Welcome to Frankenberg\" booklet propped up in front of her against a sugar container. She had read the thick booklet through last week, in the first day of training class, but she had nothing else with her to read, and in the co-workers' cafeteria, she felt it necessary to concentrate on something. So she read again about vacation benefits, the three weeks' vacation given to people who had worked fifteen years at Frankenberg's, she ate the hot plate special of the day--a grayish slice of roast beef with a ball of mashed potatoes covered with brown gravy, a heap of peas, and a tiny paper cup of horseradish. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have worked fifteen years in Frankenberg's department store, and she found she was unable to. \"Twenty-five Yearers\" got four weeks' vacation, the booklet said. Frankenberg's also provided a camp for summer and winter vacationers. They should have a church, too, she thought, and a hospital for the birth of babies. The store was organized so much like a prison, it frightened her now and then to realize she was a part of it. She turned the page quickly, and saw in big black script across two pages:\"Are You Frankenberg Material?\" She glanced across the room at the windows and tried to think of something else. Of the beautiful black and red Norwegian sweater she had seen at Saks and might buy for Richard for Christmas, if she couldn't find a better-looking wallet than the ones she had seen for twenty dollars. Of the possibility of driving with the Kellys next Sunday up to West Point to see a hockey game. The great square window across the room looked like a painting by--Who was it? Mondrian. The little square section of window in the corner open to a white sky. And no bird to fly in or out. What kind of a set would one make for a play that took place in a department store? She was back again. But it's so different with you, Terry, Richard had said to her. You've got an absolute conviction you'll be out of it in a few weeks and the others haven't. Richard said she could be in France next summer. Would be."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "Richard wanted her to go with him, and there was really nothing that stood in the way of her going with him. And Richard's friend Phil McElroy had written him that he might be able to get her a job with a theatre group next month. Therese had not met Phil yet, but she had very little faith that he could get her a job. She had combed New York since September, gone back and combed it a few times more, and she hadn't found anything. Who gave a job in the middle of the winter to a stage designer apprentice just beginning to be an apprentice? It didn't seem real either that she might be in Europe with Richard next summer, sitting with him in sidewalk cafes, walking with him in Aries, finding the places Van Gogh had painted, she and Richard choosing towns to stop in for a while and paint. It seemed less real these last few days since she had been working at the store. She knew what bothered her at the store. It was the sort of thing she wouldn't try to tell Richard. It was that the store intensified things that had always bothered her, as long as she could remember. It was the waste actions, the meaningless chores that seemed to keep her from doing what she wanted to do, might have done--and here it was the complicated procedures with money bags, coat checkings, and time clocks that kept people even from serving the store as efficiently as they might--the sense that everyone was incommunicado with everyone else and living on an entirely wrong plane, so that the meaning, the message, the love, or whatever it was that each life contained, never could find its expression. It reminded her of conversations at tables, on sofas, with people whose words seemed to hover over dead, unstirrable things, who never touched a string that played. And when one tried to touch a live string, looked at one with faces as masked as ever, making a remark so perfect in its banality that one could not even believe it might be subterfuge. And the loneliness, augmented by the fact one saw within the store the same faces day after day, the few faces one might have spoken to and never did, or never could. Not like the face on the passing bus that seems to speak, that is seen once and at least is gone forever. She would wonder, standing in the time-clock queue in the basement every morning, her eyes sorting out unconsciously the regular employees from the temporary ones, just how she had happened to land here--she had answered an ad, of course, but that didn't explain fate--and what was coming next instead of a stage-designing job. Her life was a series of zigzags. At nineteen, she was anxious. \"You must learn to trust people, Therese. Remember that,\" Sister Alicia had often told her. And often, quite often, Therese tried to apply it."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "\"Sister Alicia,\" Therese whispered carefully, the sibilant syllables comforting her. Therese sat up again and picked up her fork, because the cleanup boy was working in her direction. She could see Sister Alicia's face, bony and reddish like pink stone when the sunlight was on it, and the starched blue billow of her bosom. Sister Alicia's big bony figure coming around a corner in a hall, between the white enamel tables in the refectory, Sister Alicia in a thousand places, her small blue eyes always finding her out among the other girls, seeing her differently, Therese knew, from all the other girls, yet the thin pink lips always set in the same straight line. She could see Sister Alicia handing her the knitted green gloves wrapped in tissue, not smiling, only presenting them to her directly, with hardly a word, on her eighth birthday. Sister Alicia telling her with the same straight mouth that she must pass her arithmetic. Who else had cared if she passed her arithmetic? Therese had kept the green gloves at the bottom of her tin locker at school, for years after Sister Alicia had gone away to California. The white tissue had become limp and crackle-less like ancient cloth, and still she had not worn the gloves. Finally, they were too small to wear. Someone moved the sugar container, and the propped booklet fell flat. Therese looked at the pair of hands across from her, a woman's plump, aging hands, stirring her coffee, breaking a roll now with a trembling eagerness, daubing half the roll greedily into the brown gravy of the plate that was identical with Therese's. The hands were chapped, there was dirt in the parallel creases of the knuckles, but the right hand bore a conspicuous silver filigree ring set with a clear green stone, the left a gold wedding ring, and there were traces of red polish in the corners of the nails. Therese watched the hand carry a forkful of peas upward, and she did not have to look at the face to know what it would be like. It would be like all the fifty-year-old faces of women who worked at Frankenberg's, stricken with an ever-lasting exhaustion and terror, the eyes distorted behind glasses that enlarged or made smaller, the cheeks splotched with rouge that did not brighten the gray-ness underneath. Therese could not look. \"You're a new girl, aren't you?\" The voice was shrill and clear in the din, almost a sweet voice. \"Yes,\" Therese said, and looked up. She remembered the face. It was the face whose exhaustion had made her see all the other faces. It was the woman Therese had seen creeping down the marble stairs from the mezzanine at about six thirty one evening when the store was empty, sliding her hands down the broad marble banister to take some of the weight from her bunioned feet. Therese had thought: she is not ill, she is not a beggar, she simply works here."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "\"Are you getting along all right?\" And here was the woman smiling at her, with the same terrible creases under her eyes and around her mouth. Her eyes were actually alive now, and rather affectionate. \"Are you getting along all right?\" the woman repeated, for there was a great clatter of voices and dishes all around them. Therese moistened her lips. \"Yes, thank you.\" \"Do you like it here?\" Therese nodded. \"Finished?\" A young man in a white apron gripped the woman's plate with an imperative thumb. The woman made a tremulous, dismissing gesture. She pulled her saucer of canned sliced peaches toward her. The peaches, like slimy little orange fishes, slithered over the edge of the spoon each time the spoon lifted, all except one which the woman would eat. \"I'm on the third floor in the sweater department. If you want to ask me anything\"--the woman said with nervous uncertainty, as if she were trying to deliver a message before they would be cut off or separated--\"come up and talk to me sometime. My name is Mrs. Robichek, Mrs. Ruby Robichek, five forty-four.\" \"Thank you very much,\" Therese said. And suddenly the woman's ugliness disappeared, because her reddish brown eyes behind the glasses were gentle, and interested in her. Therese could feel her heart beating, as if it had come to life. She watched the woman get up from the table, and watched her short, thick figure move away until it was lost in the crowd that waited behind the barricade. Therese did not visit Mrs. Robichek, but she looked for her every morning when the employees trickled into the building around a quarter to nine, and she looked for her in the elevators and in the cafeteria. She never saw her, but it was pleasant to have someone to look for in the store. It made all the difference in the world. Nearly every morning when she came to work on the seventh floor, Therese would stop for a moment to watch a certain toy train. The train was on a table by itself near the elevators. It was not a big fine train like the one that ran on the floor at the back of the toy department, but there was a fury in its tiny pumping pistons that the bigger trains did not possess. Its wrath and frustration on the closed oval track held Therese spellbound. Awrr rr rr rrgh! it said as it hurled itself blindly into the papier-mache tunnel. And Urr rr rr rrgh! as it emerged. The little train was always running when she stepped out of the elevator in the morning, and when she finished work in the evening. She felt it cursed the hand that threw its switch each day. In the jerk of its nose around the curves, in its wild dashes down the straight lengths of track, she could see a frenzied and futile pursuit of a tyrannical master."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "It drew three Pullman cars in which minuscule human figures showed flinty profiles at the windows, behind these an open boxcar of real miniature lumber, a boxcar of coal that was not real, and a caboose that snapped round the curves and clung to the fleeing train like a child to its mother's skirts. It was like something gone mad in imprisonment, something already dead that would never wear out, like the dainty, springy-footed foxes in the Central Park Zoo, whose complex footwork repeated and repeated as they circled their cages. This morning, Therese turned away quickly from the train, and went on toward the doll department where she worked. At five past nine, the great block-square toy department was coming to life. Green cloths were being pulled back from the long tables. Mechanical toys began to toss balls into the air and catch them, shooting galleries popped and their targets rotated. The table of barnyard animals squawked, cackled, and brayed. Behind Therese, a weary rat-tat-tat--tat-tat had started up, the drumbeats of the giant tin soldier who militantly faced the elevators and drummed all day. The arts and handicrafts table gave out a smell of fresh modeling clay, reminiscent of the art room at school when she was very small, and also of a kind of vault on the school grounds, rumored to be the real tomb of someone, that she had used to stick her nose into through iron bars. Mrs. Hendrickson, section manager of the doll department, was dragging dolls from the stock shelves and seating them, splay legged, atop the glass counters. Therese said hello to Miss Martucci, who stood at the counter counting the bills and coins from her moneybag with such concentration she could give Therese only a deeper nod of her rhythmically nodding head. Therese counted twenty-eight fifty from her own moneybag, recorded it on a slip of white paper for the sales receipts envelope, and transferred the money by denominations into her drawer in the cash register. By now, the first customers were emerging from the elevators, hesitating a moment with the bewildered, somewhat startled expressions that people always had on finding themselves in the toy department, then starting off on weaving courses. \"Do you have the dolls that wet?\" a woman asked her. \"I'd like this doll, but with a yellow dress,\" a woman said, pushing a doll toward her, and Therese turned and got the doll she wanted out of a stock shelf. The woman had a mouth and cheeks like her mother's, Therese noticed, slightly pocked cheeks under dark-pink rouge, separated by a thin red mouth full of vertical lines. \"Are the Drinksy-Wetsy dolls all this size?\" There was no need of salesmanship. People wanted a doll, any doll, to give for Christmas."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "It was a matter of stooping, pulling out boxes in search of a doll with brown eyes instead of blue, calling Mrs. Hendrickson to open a showcase window with her key, which she did grudgingly if she were convinced the particular doll could not be found in stock, a matter of sidling down the aisle behind the counter to deposit a purchased doll on the mountain of boxes on the wrapping counter that was always growing, always toppling, no matter how often the stock boys came to take the packages away. Almost no children came to the counter. Santa Claus was supposed to bring the dolls, Santa Claus represented by the frantic faces and the clawing hands. Yet there must be a certain good will in all of them, Therese thought, even behind the cool, powdered faces of the women in mink and sable, who were generally the most arrogant, who hastily bought the biggest and most expensive dolls, the dolls with real hair and changes of clothing. There was surely love in the poor people, who waited their turn and asked quietly how much a certain doll cost, and shook their heads regretfully and turned away. Thirteen dollars and fifty cents for a doll only ten inches high. \"Take it,\" Therese wanted to say to them. \"It really is too expensive, but I'll give it to you. Frankenberg's won't miss it.\" But the women in the cheap cloth coats, the timid men huddled inside shabby mufflers would be gone, wistfully glancing at other counters as they made their way back to the elevators. If people came for a doll, they didn't want anything else. A doll was a special kind of Christmas gift, practically alive, the next thing to a baby. There were almost never any children, but now and again one would come up, generally a little girl, very rarely a little boy, her hand held firmly by a parent. Therese would show her the dolls she thought the child might like. She would be patient, and finally a certain doll would bring that metamorphosis in the child's face, that response to make-believe that was the purpose of all of it, and usually that was the doll the child went away with. Then one evening after work, Therese saw Mrs. Robichek in the coffee and doughnut shop across the street. Therese often stopped in the doughnut shop to get a cup of coffee before going home. Mrs. Robichek was at the back of the shop, at the end of the long curving counter, dabbling a doughnut into her mug of coffee. Therese pushed and thrust herself toward her, through the press of girls and coffee mugs and doughnuts. Arriving at Mrs. Robichek's elbow, she gasped, \"Hello,\" and turned to the counter, as if a cup of coffee had been her only objective. \"Hello,\" said Mrs. Robichek, so indifferently that Therese was crushed. Therese did not dare look at Mrs. Robichek again."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "And yet their shoulders were actually pressed together! Therese was half finished with her coffee, when Mrs. Robichek said dully, \"I'm going to take the Independent subway. I wonder if we'll ever get out of here.\" Her voice was dreary, not as it had been the day in the cafeteria. Now she was like the hunched old woman Therese had seen creeping down the stairs. \"We'll get out,\" Therese said reassuringly. Therese forced a path for both of them to the door. Therese was taking the Independent subway, too. She and Mrs. Robichek edged into the sluggish mob at the entrance of the subway, and were sucked gradually and inevitably down the stairs, like bits of floating waste down a drain. They found they both got off at the Lexington Avenue stop, too, though Mrs. Robichek lived on Fifty-fifth Street, just east of Third Avenue. Therese went with Mrs. Robichek into the delicatessen where she was going to buy something for her dinner. Therese might have bought something for her own dinner, but somehow she couldn't in Mrs. Robichek's presence. \"Do you have food at home?\" \"No, I'm going to buy something later.\" \"Why don't you come and eat with me? I'm all alone. Come on.\" Mrs. Robichek finished with a shrug, as if that were less effort than a smile. Therese's impulse to protest politely lasted only a moment. \"Thank you. I'd like to come.\" Then she saw a cellophane wrapped cake on the counter, a fruit cake like a big brown brick topped with red cherries, and she bought it to give to Mrs. Robichek. It was a house like the one Therese lived in, only brown-stone and much darker and gloomier. There were no lights at all in the halls, and when Mrs. Robichek put on the light in the third-floor hall, Therese saw that the house was not very clean. Mrs. Robichek's room was not very clean either, and the bed was unmade. Did she get up as tired as she went to bed, Therese wondered. Therese was left standing in the middle of the room while Mrs. Robichek moved on dragging feet toward the kitchenette, carrying the bag of groceries she had taken from Therese's hands. Now that she was home, Therese felt, where no one could see her, she allowed herself to look as tired as she really was. Therese could never remember how it began. She could not remember the conversation just before and the conversation didn't matter, of course. What happened was that Mrs. Robichek edged away from her, strangely, as if she were in a trance, suddenly murmuring instead of talking, and lay down flat on her back on the unmade bed. It was the continued murmuring, the faint smile of apology, and the terrible, shocking ugliness of the short, heavy body with the bulging abdomen, and the apologetically tilted head still politely looking at her, that she could not make herself listen."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "\"I used to have my own dress shop in Queens. Oh, a fine big one,\" Mrs. Robichek said, and Therese caught the note of boasting and began to listen despite herself, hating it. \"You know, the dresses with the V at the waist and the little buttons running up. You know, three, five years ago--\" Mrs. Robichek spread her stiff hands inarticulately across her waist. The short hands did not nearly span the front half of herself. She looked very old in the dim lamplight that made the shadows under her eyes black. \"They called them Caterina dresses. You remember? I designed them. They come out of my shop in Queens. They famous, all right!\" Mrs. Robichek got up from the bed and went to a small trunk that stood against the wall. She opened it, talking all the while, and began to drag out dresses of dark, heavy looking material, which she let fall on the floor. Mrs. Robichek held up a garnet-red velvet dress with a white collar and tiny white buttons that came to a V down the front of the narrow bodice. \"See, I got lots of them. I made them. Other stores copied.\" Above the white collar of the dress, which she gripped with her chin, Mrs. Robichek's ugly head was tilted grotesquely. \"You like this? I give you one. Come here. Come here, try one on.\" Therese was repelled by the thought of trying one on. She wished Mrs. Robichek would lie down and rest again, but obediently Therese got up, as if she had no will of her own, and came toward her. Mrs. Robichek pressed a black velvet dress upon Therese with trembling and importunate hands, and Therese suddenly knew how she would wait on people in the store, thrusting sweaters upon them helter skelter, for she could not have performed the same action in any other way. For four years, Therese remembered, Mrs. Robichek had said she had worked at Frankenberg's. \"You like the green one better? Try it on.\" And in the instant Therese hesitated, she dropped it and picked up another, the dark-red one. \"I sell five of them to girls at the store, but you I give one. Left over, but they still in style. You like this one better?\" Therese liked the red better. She liked red, especially garnet-red, and she loved red velvet. Mrs. Robichek pressed her toward a corner where she could take off her clothing and lay it on an armchair. But she did not want the dress, did not want to be given it. It reminded her of being given clothing at the Home, hand-me-downs, because she was considered practically as one of the orphan girls, who made up half the school, who never got packages from outside. Therese pulled off her sweater and felt completely naked. She gripped her arms above the elbow, and her flesh there felt cold and sensation less."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "\"I sewed,\" Mrs. Robichek was saying ecstatically to herself, \"how I sewed, morning to night! I managed four girls. But my eyes got bad. One blind, this one. Put the dress on.\" She told Therese about the operation on the eye. It was not blind, only partially blind. But it was very painful. Glaucoma. It still gave her pain. That and her back. And her feet. Bunions. Therese realized she was relating all her troubles and her bad luck so that she, Therese, would understand why she had sunk so low as to work in a department store. \"It fits?\" Mrs. Robichek asked confidently. Therese looked in the mirror in the wardrobe door. It showed a long thin figure with a narrowish head that seemed ablaze at the outline, bright yellow fire running down to the bright red bar on either shoulder. The dress hung in straight draped folds down almost to her ankles. It was the dress of queens in fairy tales, of a red deeper than blood. She stepped back, and pulled in the looseness of the dress behind her, so it fitted her ribs and her waist, and she looked back at her own dark-hazel eyes in the mirror. Herself meeting herself. This was she, not the girl in the dull plaid skirt and the beige sweater, not the girl who worked in the doll department at Frankenberg's. \"Do you like it?\" Mrs. Robichek asked. Therese studied the surprisingly tranquil mouth, whose modeling she could see distinctly, though she wore no more lipstick than she might if someone had kissed her. She wished she could kiss the person in the mirror and make her come to life, yet she stood perfectly still, like a painted portrait. \"If you like it, take it,\" Mrs. Robichek urged impatiently, watching from a distance, lurking against the wardrobe as saleswomen lurk while women try on coats and dresses in front of mirrors in department stores. But it wouldn't last, Therese knew. She would move, and it would be gone. Even if she kept the dress, it would be gone, because it was a thing of a minute, this minute. She didn't want the dress. She tried to imagine the dress in her closet at home, among her other clothing, and she couldn't. She began to unbutton the buttons, to unfasten the collar. \"You like it, yes?\" Mrs. Robichek asked as confidently as ever. \"Yes,\" Therese said firmly, admitting it. She couldn't get the hook and eye unfastened at the back of the collar. Mrs. Robichek had to help her, and she could hardly wait. She felt as if she were being strangled. What was she doing here? How did she happen to have put on a dress like this? Suddenly Mrs. Robichek and her apartment were like a horrible dream that she had just realized she was dreaming. Mrs. Robichek was the hunchbacked keeper of the dungeon. And she had been brought here to be tantalized. \"What's the matter?"}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "A pin stick you?\" Therese's lips opened to speak, but her mind was too far away. Her mind was at a distant point, at a distant vortex that opened on the scene in the dimly lighted, terrifying room where the two of them seemed to stand in desperate combat. And at the point of the vortex where her mind was, she knew it was the hopelessness that terrified her and nothing else. It was the hopelessness of Mrs. Robichek's ailing body and her job at the store, of her stack of dresses in the trunk, of her ugliness, the hopelessness of which the end of her life was entirely composed. And the hopelessness of herself, of ever being the person she wanted to be and of doing the things that person would do. Had all her life been nothing but a dream, and was this real? It was the terror of this hopelessness that made her want to shed the dress and flee before it was too late, before the chains fell around her and locked. It might already be too late. As in a nightmare, Therese stood in the room in her white slip, shivering, unable to move. \"What's the matter? You cold? It's hot.\" It was hot. The radiator hissed. The room smelled of garlic and the fustiness of old age, of medicines, and of the peculiar metallic smell that was Mrs. Robichek's own. Therese wanted to collapse in the chair where her skirt and sweater lay. Perhaps if she lay on her own clothing, she thought, it wouldn't matter. But she shouldn't lie down at all. If she did, she was lost. The chains would lock, and she would be one with the hunchback. Therese trembled violently. She was suddenly out of control. It was a chill, not merely fright or tiredness. \"Sit down,\" Mrs. Robichek's voice said from a distance, and with shocking unconcern and boredom, as if she were quite used to girls feeling faint in her room, and from a distance, too, her dry, rough-tipped fingers pressed against Therese's arms. Therese struggled against the chair, knowing she was going to succumb to it, and even aware that she was attracted to it for that reason. She dropped into the chair, felt Mrs. Robichek tugging at her skirt to pull it from under her, but she couldn't make herself move. She was still at the same point of consciousness, however, still had the same freedom to think, even though the dark arms of the chair rose about her. Mrs. Robichek was saying, \"You stand up too much at the store. It's hard these Christmases. I seen four of them. You got to learn how to save yourself a little.\" Creeping down the stairs clinging to the banister. Save herself by eating lunch in the cafeteria."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "Taking shoes off bunioned feet like the row of women perched on the radiator in the women's room, fighting for a bit of the radiator to put a newspaper on and sit for five minutes. Therese's mind worked very clearly. It was astonishing how clearly it worked, though she knew she was simply staring into space in front of her, and that she could not have moved if she had wanted to. \"You just tired, you baby,\" Mrs. 'Robichek said, tucking a woolen blanket about her shoulders in the chair. \"You need to rest, standing up all day and standing up tonight, too.\" A line from Richard's Eliot came to Therese. That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all. She wanted to say it, but she could not make her lips move. Something sweet and burning was in her mouth. Mrs. Robichek was standing in front of her, spooning something from a bottle, and pushing the spoon between her lips. Therese swallowed it obediently, not caring if it were poison. She could have moved her lips now, could have gotten up from the chair, but she didn't want to move. Finally, she lay back in the chair, and let Mrs. Robichek cover her with the blanket, and she pretended to go to sleep. But all the while she watched the humpbacked figure moving about the room, putting away the things from the table, undressing for bed. She watched Mrs. Robichek remove a big laced corset and then a strap device that passed around her shoulders and partially down her back. Therese closed her eyes then in horror, pressed them tight shut, until the creaking of a spring and a long groaning sigh told her that Mrs. Robichek had gone to bed. But that was not all. Mrs. Robichek reached for the alarm clock and wound it, and without lifting her head from the pillow, groped with the clock for the straight chair beside the bed. In the dark, Therese could barely see her arm rise and fall four times before the clock found the chair. I shall wait fifteen minutes until she is asleep and then go, Therese thought. And because she was tired, she tensed herself to hold back that spasm, that sudden seizure that was like falling, that came every night long before sleep, yet heralded sleep. It did not come. So after what she thought was fifteen minutes, Therese dressed herself and went out the door silently. It was easy, after all, simply to open the door and escape. It was easy, she thought, because she was not really escaping at all. CHAPTER 2 \"TERRY, remember that fellow Phil McElroy I told you about? The one with the stock company? Well, he's in town, and he says you've got a job in a couple of weeks.\" \"A real job? Where?\" \"A show in the Village. Phil wants to see us tonight. I'll tell you about it when I see you."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "I'll be over in about twenty minutes. I'm just leaving school now.\" Therese ran up the three flights of stairs to her room. She was in the middle of washing up, and the soap had dried on her face. She stared down at the orange washcloth in the basin. \"A job!\" she whispered to herself. The magic word. She changed into a dress, and hung a short silver chain with a St. Christopher medallion, a birthday present from Richard, around her neck, and combed her hair with a little water so it would look neater. Then she set some loose sketches and cardboard models just inside the closet where she could reach them easily when Phil McElroy asked to see them. No, I haven't had much actual experience, she would have to say, and she felt a sink of failure. She hadn't even an apprentice's job behind her, except that two-day job in Montclair, making the cardboard model that the amateur group had finally used, if that could be called a job. She had taken two courses in scenic design in New York, and she had read a lot of books. She could hear Phil McElroy--an intense and very busy young man, probably, a little annoyed at having come to see her for nothing--saying regretfully that she wouldn't do after all. But with Richard present, Therese thought, it wouldn't be quite as crushing as if she were alone. Richard had quit or been fired from about five jobs since she had known him. Nothing bothered Richard less than losing and finding jobs. Therese remembered being fired from the Pelican Press a month ago, and she winced. They hadn't even given her notice, and the only reason she had been fired, she supposed, was that her particular research assignment had been finished. When she had gone in to speak to Mr. Nussbaum, the president, about not being given notice, he had not known, or had pretended not to know, what the term meant. \"Notiz?--Wuss?\" he had said indifferently, and she had turned and fled, afraid of bursting into tears in his office. It was easy for Richard, living at home with a family to keep him cheerful. It was easier for him to save money. He had saved about two thousand in a two-year hitch in the Navy, and a thousand more in the year since. And how long would it take her to save the fifteen hundred dollars that a junior membership in the stage designers' union cost? After nearly two years in New York, she had only about five hundred dollars of it. \"Pray for me,\" she said to the wooden Madonna on the bookshelf. It was the one beautiful thing in her apartment, the wooden Madonna she had bought the first month she had been in New York. She wished there were a better place for it in the room than on the ugly bookshelf."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "The bookshelf was like a lot of fruit crates stacked up and painted red. She longed for a bookshelf of natural-colored wood, smooth to the touch and sleek with wax. She went down to the delicatessen and bought six cans of beer and some blue cheese. Then when she came upstairs, she remembered the original purpose of her going to the store, to buy some meat for dinner. She and Richard had planned to have dinner in tonight. That might be changed now, but she didn't like to take it on her own initiative to alter plans where Richard was concerned, and she was about to run down again for the meat when Richard's long ring sounded. She pressed the release button. Richard came up the steps at a run, smiling. \"Did Phil call?\" \"No,\" she said. \"Good. That means he's coming.\" \"When?\" \"In a few minutes, I guess. He probably won't stay long.\" \"Does it really sound like a definite job?\" \"Phil says so,\" \"Do you know what kind of play it is?\" \"I don't know anything except they need somebody for sets, and why not you?\" Richard looked her over critically, smiling. \"You look swell tonight. Don't be nervous, will you? It's just a little company in the Village, and you've probably got more talent than all the rest of them put together.\" She took the overcoat he had dropped on a chair and hung it in the closet. Under the overcoat was a roll of charcoal paper he had brought from art school. \"Did you do something good today?\" she asked. \"So so. That's something I want to work on at home,\" he said carelessly. \"We had that redheaded model today, the one I like.\" Therese wanted to see his sketch, but she knew Richard probably didn't think it good enough. Some of his first paintings were good, like the lighthouse in blues and blacks that hung over her bed, that he had done when he was in the Navy and just starting to paint. But his life drawing was not good yet, and Therese doubted that it ever would be. There was a new charcoal smudge all over one knee of his tan cotton trousers. He wore a shirt inside the red and black checked shirt, and buckskin moccasins that made his big feet look like shapeless bear paws. He was more like a lumberjack or a professional athlete of some sort, Therese thought, than anything else. She could more easily imagine him with an ax in his hand than a paintbrush. She had seen him with an ax once, cutting wood in the yard back of his house in Brooklyn. If he didn't prove to his family that he was making some progress in his painting, he would probably have to go into his father's bottled gas business this summer, and open the branch in Long Island that his father wanted him to. \"Will you have to work this Saturday?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "she asked, still afraid to talk about the job. \"Hope not. Are you free?\" She remembered now, she was not. \"I'm free Friday,\" she said resignedly. \"Saturday's a late day.\" Richard smiled. \"It's a conspiracy.\" He took her hands and drew her arms around his waist, his restless prowling of the room at an end. \"Maybe Sunday? The family asked if you could come out for dinner, but we don't have to stay long. I could borrow a truck and we could drive somewhere in the afternoon.\" \"All right.\" She liked that and so did Richard, sitting up in front of the big empty gas tank, and driving anywhere, as free as if they rode a butterfly. She took her arms from around Richard. It made her feel self-conscious and foolish, as if she stood embracing the stem of a tree, to have her arms around Richard. \"I did buy a steak for tonight, but they stole it at the store.\" \"Stole it? From where?\" ' \"Off the shelf where we keep our handbags. The people they hire for Christmas don't get any regular lockers.\" She smiled at it now, but this afternoon, she had almost wept. Wolves, she had thought, a pack of wolves, stealing a bloody bag of meat just because it was food, a free meal. She had asked all the salesgirls if they had seen it, and they had all denied it. Bringing meat into the store wasn't allowed, Mrs. Hendrickson had said indignantly. But what was one to do, if all the meat stores closed at six o'clock? Richard lay back on the studio couch. His mouth was thin and its line uneven, half of it downward slanting, giving an ambiguity to his expression, a look sometimes of humor, sometimes of bitterness, a contradiction that his rather blank and frank blue eyes did nothing to clarify. He said slowly and mockingly, \"Did you go down to the lost and found? Lost, one pound of beefsteak. Answers to the name Meatball.\" Therese smiled, looking over the shelves in her kitchenette. \"Do you think you're joking? Mrs. Hendrickson did tell me to go down to the lost and found.\" Richard gave a hooting laugh and stood up. \"There's a can of corn here and I've got lettuce for a salad. And there's bread and butter. Shall I go get some frozen pork chops?\" Richard reached a long arm over her shoulder and took the square of pumpernickel bread from the shelf. \"You call that bread? It's fungus. Look at it, blue as a mandrill's behind. Why don't you eat bread once you buy it?\" \"I use that to see in the dark with. But since you don't like it--\" She took it from him and dropped it into the garbage bag. \"That wasn't the bread I meant anyway.\" \"Show me the bread you meant.\" The doorbell shrieked right beside the refrigerator, and she jumped for the button. \"That's them,\" Richard said. There were two young men."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "Richard introduced them as Phil McElroy and his brother, Dannie. Phil was not at all what Therese had expected. He did not look intense or serious or even particularly intelligent. And he scarcely glanced at her when they were introduced. Dannie stood with his coat over his arm until Therese took it from him. She could not find an extra hanger for Phil's coat, and Phil took it back and tossed it onto a chair, half on the floor. It was an old dirty polo coat. Therese served the beer and cheese and crackers, listening all the while for Phil and Richard's conversation to turn to the job. But they were talking about things that had happened since they had seen each other last in Kingston, New York. Richard had worked for two weeks last summer on some murals in a roadhouse there, where Phil had had a job as a waiter. \"Are you in the theatre, too?\" she asked Dannie. \"No, I'm not,\" Dannie said. He seemed shy, or perhaps bored and impatient to leave. He was older than Phil and a little more heavily built. His dark-brown eyes moved thoughtfully from object to object in the room. \"They haven't got anything yet but a director and three actors,\" Phil said to Richard, leaning back on the couch. \"A fellow I worked with in Philly once is directing. Raymond Cortes. If I recommend you, it's a cinch you'll get in,\" he said with a glance at Therese. \"He promised me the part of the second brother in the play. It's called Small Rain.\" \"A comedy?\" Therese asked. \"Comedy. Three acts. Have you done any sets so far by yourself?\" \"How many sets will it take?\" Richard asked, just as she was about to answer. \"Two at the most; and they'll probably get by on one. Georgia Halloran has the lead. Did you happen to see that Sartre thing they did in the fall down there? She was in that.\" \"Georgia?\" Richard smiled. \"Whatever happened with her and Rudy?\" Disappointedly, Therese heard their conversation settling down on Georgia and Rudy and other people she didn't know. Georgia might have been one of the girls Richard had had an affair with, Therese supposed. He had once mentioned about five. She couldn't remember any of their names except Celia. \"Is this one of your sets?\" Dannie asked her, looking at the cardboard model that hung on the wall, and when she nodded, he got up to see it. And now, Richard and Phil were talking about a man who owed Richard money from somewhere. Phil said he had seen the man last night in the San Remo bar. Phil's elongated face and his clipped hair was like an El Greco, Therese thought, yet the same features in his brother looked like an American Indian. And the way Phil talked completely destroyed the illusion of El Greco."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "He talked like any of the people one saw in Village bars, young people who were supposed to be writers or actors, and who usually did nothing. \"It's very attractive,\" Dannie said, peering behind one of the little suspended figures. \"It's a model for Petrushka. The fair scene,\" she said, wondering if he would know the ballet. He might be a lawyer, she thought, or even a doctor. There were yellowish stains on his fingers, not the stains of cigarettes. Richard said something about being hungry, and Phil said he was starving, but neither of them ate any of the cheese that was in front of them. \"We're due in half an hour, Phil,\" Dannie repeated. Then a moment later, they were all standing up, putting on their coats. \"Let's eat out somewhere, Terry,\" Richard said. \"How about the Czech place up on Second?\" \"All right,\" she said, trying to sound agreeable. This was the end of it, she supposed, and nothing was definite. She had an impulse to ask Phil a crucial question, but she didn't. And on the street, they began to walk downtown instead of up. Richard walked with Phil, and only glanced back once or twice at her, as if to see if she were still there. Dannie held her arm at the curbs, and across the patches of dirty slippery stuff, neither snow nor ice, that were the remains of a snowfall three weeks ago. \"Are you a doctor?\" she asked Dannie. \"Physicist,\" Dannie replied. \"I'm taking graduate courses at N. Y. U. now.\" He smiled at her, but the conversation stopped there for a while. Then he said, \"That's a long way from stage designing, isn't it.\" She nodded. \"Quite a long way.\" She started to ask him if he intended to do any work pertaining to the atom bomb, but she didn't, because what would it matter if he did or didn't? \"Do you know where we're going?\" she asked. He smiled broadly, showing square white teeth. \"Yes. To the subway. But Phil wants a bite somewhere first.\" They were walking down Third Avenue. And Richard was talking to Phil about their going to Europe next summer. Therese felt a throb of embarrassment as she walked along behind Richard, like a dangling appendage, because Phil and Dannie would naturally think she was Richard's mistress. She wasn't his mistress, and Richard didn't expect her to be in Europe. It was a strange relationship, she supposed, and who would believe it? Because from what she had seen in New York, everybody slept with everybody they had dates with more than once or twice. And the two people she had gone out with before Richard--Angelo and Harry--had certainly dropped her when they discovered she didn't care for an affair with them. She had tried to have an affair with Richard three or four times in the year she had known him, though with negative results; Richard said he preferred to wait."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "He meant wait until she cared more for him. Richard wanted to marry her, and she was the first girl he had ever proposed to, he said. She knew he would ask her again before they left for Europe, but she didn't love him enough to marry him. And yet she would be accepting most of the money for the trip from him, she thought with a familiar sense of guilt. Then the image of Mrs. Semco, Richard's mother, came before her, smiling approval on them, on their marrying, and Therese involuntarily shook her head. \"What's the matter?\" Dannie asked. \"Nothing.\" \"Are you cold?\" \"No. Not at all.\" But he tucked her arm closer anyway. She was cold, and felt rather miserable in general. It was the half dangling, half cemented relationship with Richard, she knew. They saw more and more of each other, without actually growing closer. She still wasn't in love with him, not after ten months, and maybe she never could be, though the fact remained that she liked him better than any one person she had ever known, certainly any man. Sometimes she thought she was in love with him, waking up in the morning and looking blankly at the ceiling, remembering suddenly that she knew him, remembering suddenly his face shining with affection for her because of some gesture of affection on her part, before her sleepy emptiness had time to fill up with the realization of what time it was, what day, what she had to do, the soldier substance that made up one's life. But the feeling bore no resemblance to what she had read about love. Love was supposed to be a kind of blissful insanity. Richard didn't act blissfully insane either, in fact. \"Oh, everything's called St. Germain-des-Pres!\" Phil shouted with a wave of his hand. \"I'll give you some addresses before you go. How long do you think you'll be there?\" A truck with rattling, slapping chains turned in front of them, and Therese couldn't hear Richard's answer. Phil went into the Riker's shop on the corner of Fifty-third Street. \"We don't have to eat here. Phil just wants to stop a minute.\" Richard squeezed her shoulder as they went in the door. \"It's a great day, isn't it, Terry? Don't you feel it?- It's your first real job!\" Richard was convinced, and Therese tried hard to realize it might be a great moment. But she couldn't recapture even the certainty she remembered when she had looked at the orange washcloth in the basin after Richard's telephone call. She leaned against the stool next to Phil's, and Richard stood beside her, still talking to him. The glaring white light on the white tile walls and the floor seemed brighter than sunlight, for here there were no shadows. She could see every shiny black hair in Phil's eyebrows, and the rough and smooth spots on the pipe Dannie held in his hand, unlighted."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "She could see the details of Richard's hand that hung limply out of his overcoat sleeve, and she was conscious again of their incongruity with his limber, long-boned body. They were thick, even plump looking hands, and they moved in the same inarticulate, blind way if they picked up a salt shaker or the handle of a suitcase. Or stroked her hair, she thought. The insides of his hands were extremely soft, like a girl's, and a little moist. Worst of all, he generally forgot to clean his nails, even when he took the trouble to dress up. Therese had said something about it a couple of times to him, but she felt now that she couldn't say anything more without irritating him. Dannie was watching her. She was held by his thoughtful eyes for a moment, then she looked down. Suddenly she knew why she couldn't recapture the feeling she had before: she simply didn't believe Phil McElroy could get her a job on his recommendation. \"Are you worried about that job?\" Dannie was standing beside her. \"No.\" \"Don't be. Phil can give you some tips.\" He poked his pipe stem between his lips, and seemed to be about to say something else, but he turned away. She half listened to Phil's conversation with Richard. They were talking about boat reservations. Dannie said, \"By the way, the Black Cat Theatre's only a couple of blocks from Morton Street where I live. Phil's staying with me, too. Come and have lunch with us, will you?\" \"Thanks very much. I'd like to.\" It probably wouldn't be, she thought, but it was nice of him to ask her. \"What do you think, Terry?\" Richard said. \"Is March too soon to go to Europe? It's better to go early than wait till everything's so crowded over there.\" \"March sounds all right,\" she said. \"There's nothing to stop us, is there? I don't care if I don't finish the winter term at school.\" \"No, there's nothing to stop us.\" It was easy to say. It was easy to believe all of it, and just as easy not to believe any of it. But if it were all true, if the job were real, the play a success, and she could go to France with at least a single achievement behind her--Suddenly, Therese reached out for Richard's arm, slid her hand down it to his fingers. Richard was so surprised, he stopped in the middle of a sentence. The next afternoon, Therese called the Watkins number that Phil had given her. A very efficient sounding girl answered. Mr. Cortes was not there, but they had heard about her through Phil McElroy. The job was hers, and she would start work December twenty-eighth at fifty dollars a week. She could come in beforehand and show Mr. Cortes some of her work, if she wanted to, but it wasn't necessary, not if Mr. McElroy had recommended her so highly."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.19", "chapter": "index_split_000.txt", "text": "Therese called up Phil to thank him, but nobody answered the telephone. She wrote him a note, in care of the Black Cat Theatre."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_001.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 3 \"ROBERTA WALLS, the youngest D. S. in the toy department, paused just long enough in her midmorning flurry to whisper to Therese, \"If we don't sell this twenty-four ninety-five suitcase today, it'll be marked down Monday and the department'll take a two-dollar loss!\" Roberta nodded at the brown pasteboard suitcase on the counter, thrust her load of gray boxes into Miss Martucci's hands, and hurried on. Down the long aisle, Therese watched the salesgirls make way for Roberta. Roberta flew up and down counters and from one corner of the floor to the other, from nine in the morning until six at night. Therese had heard that Roberta was trying for another promotion. She wore red harlequin glasses, and unlike the other girls, always pushed the sleeves of her green smock up above her elbows. Therese saw her flit across an aisle and stop Mrs. Hendrickson with an excited message delivered with gestures. Mrs. Hendrickson nodded agreement, Roberta touched her shoulder familiarly, and Therese felt a small start of jealousy. Jealousy, though she didn't care in the least for Mrs. Hendrickson, even disliked her. \"Do you have a doll made of cloth that cries?\" Therese didn't know of such a doll in stock, but the woman was positive Frankenberg's had it, because she had seen it advertised. Therese pulled out another box, from the last spot it might possibly be, and it wasn't. \"Wotcha lookin' fuh?\" Miss Santini asked her. Miss Santini had a cold. \"A doll made of cloth that cries,\" Therese said. Miss Santini had been especially courteous to her lately. Therese remembered the stolen meat. But now Miss Santini only lifted her eyebrows, stuck out her bright red underlip with a shrug, and I went on. \"Made of cloth? With pigtails?\" Miss Martucci, a lean, straggly haired Italian girl with a long nose like a wolf's looked at Therese. \"Don't let Roberta hear you,\" Miss Martucci said with a glance around her. \"Don't let anybody hear you, but those dolls are in the basement.\" \"Oh.\" The upstairs toy department was at war with the basement toy department. The tactics were to force the customer into buying on the seventh floor, where everything was more expensive. Therese told the woman the dolls were in the basement. \"Try and sell this today,\" Miss Davis said to her as she sidled past, slapping the battered imitation alligator suitcase with her red-nailed hand. Therese nodded. \"Do you have any stiff-legged dolls? One that stands up?\" Therese looked at the middle-aged woman with the crutches that thrust her shoulders high. Her face was different from all the other faces across the counter, gentle, with a certain cognizance in the eyes as if they actually saw what they looked at. \"That's a little bigger than I wanted,\" the woman said when Therese showed her a doll. \"I'm sorry. Do you have a smaller one?\" \"I think so.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_001.txt", "text": "Therese went farther down the aisle, and was aware that the woman followed her on her crutches, circling the press of people at the counter, so as to save Therese walking back with the doll. Suddenly Therese wanted to take infinite pains, wanted to find exactly the doll the woman was looking for. But the next doll wasn't quite right, either. The doll didn't have real hair. Therese tried in another place and found the same doll with real hair. It even cried when it bent over. It was exactly what the woman wanted. Therese laid the doll down carefully in fresh tissue in a new box. \"That's just perfect,\" the woman repeated. \"I'm sending this to a friend in Australia who's a nurse. She graduated from nursing school with me, so I made a little uniform like ours to dress a doll in. Thank you so much. And I wish you a merry Christmas!\" \"Merry Christmas to you!\" Therese said, smiling. It was the first merry Christmas she had heard from a customer. \"Have you had your relief yet, Miss Belivet?\" Mrs. Hendrickson asked her, as sharply as if she reproached her. Therese hadn't had it. She got her pocketbook and the novel she was reading from the shelf under the wrapping counter. The novel was Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which Richard was anxious for her to read. How anyone could have read Gertrude Stein without reading any Joyce, Richard said, he didn't know. She felt a bit inferior when Richard talked with her about books. She had browsed all over the bookshelves at school, but the library assembled by the Order of St. Margaret had been far from catholic, she realized now, though it had included such unexpected writers as Gertrude Stein. The hall to the employees' rest rooms was blocked by big shipping carts piled high with boxes. Therese waited to get through. \"Pixie!\" one of the shipping cart boys shouted to her. Therese smiled a little because it was silly. Even down in the cloakroom in the basement, they yelled \"Pixie!\" at her morning and night. \"Pixie, waiting for me?\" the raw-edged voice roared again, over the crash and bump of the stock carts. She got through, and dodged a shipping cart that hurtled toward her with a clerk aboard. \"No smoking here!\" shouted a man's voice, the very growly voice of an executive, and the girls ahead of Therese who had lighted cigarettes blew their smoke in the air and said loudly in chorus just before they reached the refuge of the women's room, \"Who does he think he is, Mr. Frankenberg?\" \"Yoo-hoo! Pixie!\" \"Ah'm juss bahdin mah tahm, Pixie!\" A shipping cart skidded in front of her, and she struck her leg against its metal corner. She went on without looking down at her leg, though pain began to blossom there, like a slow explosion."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_001.txt", "text": "She went on into the different chaos of women's voices, women's figures, and the smell of disinfectant. Blood was running to her shoe, and her stocking was torn in a jagged hole. She pushed some skin back into place, and feeling sickened, leaned against the wall and held to a water pipe. She stayed there a few seconds, listening to the confusion of voices among the girls at the mirror. Then she wet toilet paper and daubed until the red was gone from her stocking, but the red kept coming. \"It's all right, thanks,\" she said to a girl who bent over her for a moment, and the girl went away. Finally, there was nothing to do but buy a sanitary napkin from the slot machine. She used a little of the cotton from inside it, and tied it on her leg with the gauze. And then it was time to go back to the counter. Their eyes met at the same instant, Therese glancing up from a box she was opening, and the woman just turning her head so she looked directly at Therese. She was tall and fair, her long figure graceful in the loose fur coat that she held open with a hand on her waist. Her eyes were gray, colorless, yet dominant as light or fire, and caught by them, Therese could not look away. She heard the customer in front of her repeat a question, and Therese stood there, mute. The woman was looking at Therese, too, with a preoccupied expression as if half her mind were on whatever it was she meant to buy here, and though there were a number of salesgirls between them, Therese felt sure the woman would come to her. Then Therese saw her walk slowly toward the counter, heard her heart stumble to catch up with the moment it had let pass, and felt her face grow hot as the woman came nearer and nearer. \"May I see one of those valises?\" the woman asked, and leaned on the counter, looking down through the glass top. The damaged valise lay only a yard away. Therese turned around and got a box from the bottom of a stack, a box that had never been opened. When she stood up, the woman was looking at her with the calm gray eyes that Therese could neither quite face nor look away from. \"That's the one I like, but I don't suppose I can have it, can I?\" she said, nodding toward the brown valise in the show window behind Therese. Her eyebrows were blond, curving around the bend of her forehead. Her mouth was as wise as her eyes, Therese thought, and her voice was like her coat, rich and supple, and somehow full of secrets. \"Yes,\" Therese said. Therese went back to the stockroom for the key. The key hung just inside the door on a nail, and no one was allowed to touch it but Mrs. Hendrickson."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_001.txt", "text": "Miss Davis saw her and gasped, but Therese said, \"I need it,\" and went out. She opened the show window and took the suitcase down and laid it on the counter. \"You're giving me the one on display?\" She smiled as if she understood. She said casually, leaning both forearms on the counter, studying the contents of the valise, \"They'll have a fit, won't they?\" \"It doesn't matter,\" Therese said. \"All right. I'd like this. That's C. O. D. And what about clothes? Do these come with it?\" There were cellophane wrapped clothes in the lid of the suitcase, with a price tag on them. Therese said, \"No, they're separate. If you want doll clothes--these aren't as good as the clothes in the dolls' clothing department across the aisle.\" \"Oh! Will this get to New Jersey before Christmas?\" \"Yes, it'll arrive Monday.\" If it didn't, Therese thought, she would deliver it herself. \"Mrs. H. F. Aird,\" the woman's soft, distinct voice said, and Therese began to print it on the green C. O. D. slip. The name, the address, the town appeared beneath the pencil point like a secret Therese would never forget, like something stamping itself in her memory forever. \"You won't make any mistakes, will you?\" the woman's voice asked. Therese noticed the woman's perfume for the first time, and instead of replying, could only shake her head. She looked down at the slip to which she was laboriously adding the necessary figures, and wished with all her power to wish anything, that the woman would simply continue her last words and say, \"Are you really so glad to have met me? Then why can't we see each other again? Why can't we even have lunch together today?\" Her voice was so casual and she might have said it so easily. But nothing came after the \"will you?\" nothing to relieve the shame of having been recognized as a new salesgirl, hired for the Christmas rush, inexperienced and liable to make mistakes. Therese slid the book toward her for her signature. Then the woman picked up her gloves from the counter, and turned, and slowly went away, and Therese watched the distance widen and widen. Her ankles below the fur of the coat were pale and thin. She wore plain black suede shoes with high heels. \"That's a C. O. D. order?\" Therese looked into Mrs. Hendrickson's ugly, meaningless face. \"Yes, Mrs. Hendrickson.\" \"Don't you know you're supposed to give the customer the strip at the top? How do you expect them to claim the purchase when it comes? Where's the customer? Can you catch her?\" \"Yes.\" She was only ten feet away, across the aisle at the dolls' clothing counter."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_001.txt", "text": "And with the green slip in her hand, she hesitated a moment, then carried it around the counter, forcing herself to advance, because she was suddenly abashed by her appearance, the old blue skirt, the cotton blouse-- whoever assigned the green smocks had missed her--and the humiliating flat shoes. And the horrible bandage through which the blood was probably showing again. \"I'm supposed to give you this,\" she said, laying the miserable little scrap beside the hand on the edge of the counter, and turning away. Behind the counter again, Therese faced the stock boxes, sliding them thoughtfully out and back, as if she were looking for something. Therese waited until the woman must have finished at the counter and gone away. She was conscious of the moments passing like irrevocable time, irrevocable happiness, for in these last seconds, she might turn and see the face she would never see again. She was conscious, too, dimly now and with a different horror, of the old, unceasing voices of customers at the counter calling for assistance, calling to her, and of the low, humming rrrrr of the little train, part of the storm that was closing in and separating her from the woman. But when she turned finally, she looked directly into the gray eyes again. The woman was walking toward her, and as if time had turned back, she leaned on the counter again and gestured to a doll and asked to see it. Therese got the doll and dropped it with a clatter on the glass counter, and the woman glanced at her. \"Sounds unbreakable,\" the woman said. Therese smiled. \"Yes, I'll get this, too,\" she said in the quiet slow voice that made a pool of silence in the tumult around them. She gave her name and address again, and Therese took it slowly from her lips, as if she did not already know it by heart. \"That really will arrive before Christmas?\" \"It'll come Monday at the latest. That's two days before Christmas.\" \"Good. I don't mean to make you nervous.\" Therese tightened the knot in the string she had put around the doll box, and the knot mysteriously came open. \"No,\" she said. In an embarrassment so profound there was nothing left to defend, she got the knot tied under the woman's eyes. \"It's a rotten job, isn't it?\" \"Yes. \" Therese folded the C. O. D. slips around the white string, and fastened them with a pin. \"So forgive me for complaining.\" Therese glanced at her, and the sensation returned that she knew her from somewhere, that the woman was about to reveal herself, and they would both laugh then, and understand. \"You're not complaining. But I know it'll get there.\" Therese looked across the aisle, where the woman had stood before, and saw the tiny slip of green paper still on the counter. \"You really are supposed to keep that C. O. D. slip.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_001.txt", "text": "Her eyes changed with her smile now, brightened with a gray, colorless fire that Therese almost knew, almost could place. \"I've gotten things before without them. I always lose them.\" She bent to sign the second C. O. D. slip. Therese watched her go away with a step as slow as when she had come, saw her look at another counter as she passed it, and slap her black gloves across her palm twice, three times. Then she disappeared into an elevator. And Therese turned to the next customer. She worked with an indefatigable patience, but her figures on the sales slips bore faint tails where the pencil jerked convulsively. She went to Mr. Logan's office, which seemed to take hours, but when she looked at the clock, only fifteen minutes had passed, and now it was time to wash up for lunch. She stood stiffly in front of the rotating towel, drying her hands, feeling unattached to anything or anyone, isolated. Mr. Logan had asked her if she wanted to stay on after Christmas. She could have a job downstairs in the cosmetic department. Therese had said no. In the middle of the afternoon, she went down to the first floor and bought a card in the greeting-card department. It was not a very interesting card, but at least it was simple, in plain blue and gold. She stood with the pen poised over the card, thinking of what she might have written--\"You are magnificent\" or even \"I love you\"--finally writing quickly the excruciatingly dull and impersonal: \"Special salutations from Frankenberg's.\" She added her number 645-A in lieu of a signature. Then she went down to the post office in the basement, hesitated at the letter drop, losing her nerve suddenly at the sight of her hand holding the letter half in the slot. What would happen? She was going to leave the store in a few days, anyway. What would Mrs. H. F. Aird care? The blond eyebrows would perhaps lift a little, she would look at the card a moment, then forget it. Therese dropped it. On the way home, an idea came to her for a stage set, a house interior with more depth than breadth, with a kind of vortex down the center, from which rooms would go off on either side. She wanted to begin the cardboard model that night, but at last she only elaborated on her pencil sketch of it. She wanted to see someone--not Richard, not Jack or Alice Kelly downstairs, maybe Stella, Stella Overton, the stage designer she had met during her first weeks in New York. Therese had not seen her, she realized, since she had come to the cocktail party Therese had given before she left her other apartment. Stella was one of the people who didn't know where she lived now."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_001.txt", "text": "Therese was on her way down to the telephone in the hall, when she heard the short quick rings of her doorbell that meant there was a call for her. \"Thank you,\" Therese called down to Mrs. Osborne. It was Richard's usual call around nine o'clock. Richard wanted to know if she felt like seeing a movie tomorrow night. It was the movie at the Sutton they still hadn't seen. Therese said she wasn't doing anything, but she wanted to finish a pillow cover. Alice Kelly had said she could come down and use her sewing machine tomorrow night. And besides, she had to wash her hair. \"Wash it tonight and see me tomorrow night,\" Richard said. \"It's too late. I can't sleep if my head's wet.\" \"I'll wash it tomorrow night. We won't use the tub, just a couple of buckets.\" She smiled. \"I think we'd better not.\" She had fallen into the tub the time Richard had washed her hair. Richard had been imitating the tub drain with writhings and gluggings, and she had laughed so hard, her feet slipped on the floor. \"Well, what about that art show Saturday? It's open Saturday afternoon.\" \"But Saturday's the day I have to work to nine. I can't get away till nine thirty.\" \"Oh. Well, I'll stay around school and meet you on the corner about nine thirty. Forty-fourth and Fifth. All right?\" \"All right.\" \"Anything new today?\" \"No. With you?\" \"No. I'm going to see about boat reservations tomorrow. I'll call you tomorrow night.\" Therese did not telephone Stella at all. The next day was Friday, the last Friday before Christmas, and the busiest day Therese had known since she had been working at Frankenberg's, though everyone said tomorrow would be worse. People were pressed alarmingly hard against the glass counters. Customers she started to wait on got swept away and lost in the gluey current that filled the aisle. It was impossible to imagine any more people crowding onto the floor, but the elevators kept emptying people out. \"I don't see why they don't close the doors downstairs!\" Therese remarked to Miss Martucci, when they were both stooping by a stock shelf. \"What?\" Miss Martucci answered, unable to hear. \"Miss Belivet!\" Somebody yelled, and a whistle blew. It was Mrs. Hendrickson. She had been using a whistle to get attention today. Therese made her way toward her past salesgirls and through empty boxes on the floor. \"You're wanted on the telephone,\" Mrs. Hendrickson told her, pointing to the telephone by the wrapping table. Therese made a helpless gesture that Mrs. Hendrickson had no time to see. It was impossible to hear anything on a telephone now. And she knew it was probably Richard being funny. He had called her once before. \"Hello?\" she said. \"Hello, is this co-worker six forty-five A, Therese Belivet?\" the operator's voice said over clickings and buzzings. \"Go ahead.\" \"Hello?\" she repeated, and barely heard an answer."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_001.txt", "text": "She dragged the telephone off the table and into the stockroom a few feet away. The wire did not quite reach, and she had to stoop on the floor. \"Hello?\" \"Hello,\" the voice said. \"Well--I wanted to thank you for the Christmas card.\" \"Oh. Oh, you're--\" \"This is Mrs. Aird,\" she said. \"Are you the one who sent it? Or not.\" \"Yes,\" Therese said, rigid with guilt suddenly, as if she had been caught in a crime. She closed her eyes and wrung the telephone, seeing the intelligent, smiling eyes again as she had seen them yesterday. \"I'm very sorry if it annoyed you,\" Therese said mechanically, in the voice with which she spoke to customers. The woman laughed. \"This is very funny,\" she said casually, and Therese caught the same easy slur in her voice that she had heard yesterday, loved yesterday, and she smiled herself. \"Is it? Why?\" \"You must be the girl in the toy department.\" \"Yes.\" \"It was extremely nice of you to send me the card,\" the woman said politely. Then Therese understood. She had thought it was from a man, some other clerk who had waited on her. \"It was very nice waiting on you,\" Therese said. \"Was it? Why?\" She might have been mocking Therese. \"Well--since it's Christmas, why don't we meet for a cup of coffee, at least? Or a drink.\" Therese flinched as the door burst open and a girl came into the room, stood right in front of her. \"Yes--I'd like that.\" \"When?\" the woman asked. \"I'm coming in to New York tomorrow in the morning. Why don't we make it for lunch? Do you have any time tomorrow?\" \"Of course. I have an hour, from twelve to one,\" Therese said, staring at the girl's feet in front of her in splayed flat moccasins, the back of her heavy ankles and calves in lisle stockings, shifting like an elephant's legs. \"Shall I meet you downstairs at the Thirty-fourth Street entrance at about twelve?\" \"All right. I--\" Therese remembered now she went to work at one sharp tomorrow. She had the morning off. She put her arm up to ward off the avalanche of boxes the girl in front of her had pulled down from the shelf. The girl herself teetered back onto her. \"Hello?\" she shouted over the noise of tumbling boxes. \"I'm sow--ry,\" Mrs. Zabriskie said irritatedly, plowing out the door again. \"Hello?\" Therese repeated. The line was dead."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_002.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 4 \"HELLO,\" the woman said, smiling. \"Hello.\" \"What's the matter?\" \"Nothing.\" At least, the woman had recognized her, Therese thought. \"Do you have any preference as to restaurants?\" the woman asked on the sidewalk. \"No. It'd be nice to find a quiet one, but there aren't any in this neighborhood.\" \"You haven't time for the East Side? No, you haven't, if you've only got an hour. I think I know a place a couple of blocks west on this street. Do you think you have time?\" \"Yes, certainly.\" It was twelve fifteen already. Therese knew she would be terribly late, and it didn't matter at all. They did not bother to talk on the way. Now and then the crowds made them separate, and once the woman glanced at Therese, across a pushcart full of dresses, smiling. They went into a restaurant with wooden rafters and white tablecloths, that miraculously was quiet, and not half filled. They sat down in a large wooden booth, and the woman ordered an old-fashioned without sugar, and invited Therese to have one, or a sherry, and when Therese hesitated, sent the waiter away with the order. She took off her hat and ran her fingers through her blond hair, once on either side, and looked at Therese. \"And where did you get the nice idea of sending me a Christmas card?\" \"I remembered you,\" Therese said. She looked at the small pearl earrings, that were somehow no lighter than her hair itself, or her eyes. Therese thought her beautiful, though her face was a blur now because she could not bear to look at it directly. She got something out of her handbag, a lipstick and compact, and Therese looked at her lipstick case--golden like a jewel, and shaped like a sea chest. She wanted to look at the woman's mouth, but the gray eyes so close drove her away, flickering over her like fire. \"You haven't been working there very long, have you?\" \"No. Only about two weeks.\" \"And you won't be much longer--probably.\" She offered Therese a cigarette. Therese took one. \"No. I'll have another job.\" She leaned toward the lighter the woman was holding for her, toward the slim hand with the oval red nails and a sprinkling of freckles on its back. \"And do you often get inspired to send post cards?\" \"Post cards?\" \"Christmas cards?\" She smiled at herself. \"Of course not,\" Therese said. \"Well, here's to Christmas.\" She touched Therese's glass and drank. \"Where do you live? In Manhattan?\" Therese told her. On Sixty-third Street. Her parents were dead, she said. She had lived in New York the past two years, and before that at a school in New Jersey. Therese did not tell her that the school was semi-religious, Episcopalian. She did not mention Sister Alicia whom she adored and thought of so often, with her pale-blue eyes and her ugly nose and her loving sternness."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_002.txt", "text": "Because since yesterday morning, Sister Alicia had been thrust far away, far below the woman who sat opposite her. \"And what do you do in your spare time?\" The lamp on the table made her eyes silvery, full of liquid light. Even the pearl at her earlobe looked alive, like a drop of water that a touch might destroy. \"I--\" Should she tell her she usually worked on her stage models? Sketched and painted sometimes, carved things like cats' heads and tiny figures to go in her ballet sets, but that she liked best to take long walks practically anywhere, liked best simply to dream? Therese felt she did not have to tell her. She felt the woman's eyes could not look at anything without understanding completely. Therese took some more of her drink, liking it, though it was like the woman to swallow, she thought, terrifying, and strong. The woman nodded to the waiter, and two more drinks arrived. \"I like this.\" \"What?\" Therese asked. \"I like it that someone sent me a card, someone I didn't know. It's the way things should be at Christmas. And this year I like it especially.\" \"I'm glad.\" Therese smiled, wondering if she were serious. \"You're a very pretty girl,\" she said. \"And very sensitive, too, aren't you?\" She might have been speaking of a doll, Therese thought, so casually had she told her she was pretty. \"I think you are magnificent,\" Therese said with the courage of the second drink, not caring how it might sound, because she knew the woman knew anyway. She laughed, putting her head back. It was a sound more beautiful than music. It made a little wrinkle at the corner of her eyes, and it made her purse her red lips as she drew on her cigarette. She gazed past Therese for a moment, her elbows on the table and her chin propped up on the hand that held her cigarette. There was a long line, from the waist of her fitted black suit up to the widening shoulder, and then the blond head with the fine, unruly hair held high. She was about thirty or thirty-two, Therese thought, and her daughter, for whom she had bought the valise and the doll, would be perhaps six or eight. Therese could imagine the child, blond haired, the face golden and happy, the body slim and well proportioned, and always playing. But the child's face, unlike the woman's with its short cheeks and rather Nordic compactness, was vague and nondescript. And the husband? Therese could not see him at all. Therese said, \"I'm sure you thought it was a man who sent you the Christmas card, didn't you?\" \"I did,\" she said through a smile. \"I thought it just might be a man in the ski department who'd sent it.\" \"I'm sorry.\" \"No, I'm delighted.\" She leaned back in the booth. \"I doubt very, much if I'd have gone to lunch with him. No, I'm delighted.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_002.txt", "text": "The dusky and faintly sweet smell of her perfume came to Therese again, a smell suggestive of dark-green silk, that was hers alone, like the smell of a special flower. Therese leaned closer toward it, looking down at her glass. She wanted to thrust the table aside and spring into her arms, to bury her nose in the green and gold scarf that was tied close about her neck. Once the backs of their hands brushed on the table, and Therese's skin there felt separately alive now, and rather burning. Therese could not understand it, but it was so. Therese glanced at her face that was somewhat turned away, and again she knew that instant of half-recognition. And knew, too, that it was not to be believed. She had never seen the woman before. If she had, could she have forgotten? In the silence, Therese felt they both waited for the other to speak, yet the silence was not an awkward one. Their plates had arrived. It was creamed spinach with an egg on top, steamy and buttery smelling. \"How is it you live alone?\" the woman asked, and before Therese knew it, she had told the woman her life story. But not in tedious detail. In six sentences, as if it all mattered less to her than a story she had read somewhere. And what did the facts matter after all, whether her mother was French or English or Hungarian, or if her father had been an Irish painter, or a Czechoslovakian lawyer, whether he had been successful or not, or whether her mother had presented her to the Order of St. Margaret as a troublesome, bawling infant, or as a troublesome, melancholy eight-year-old? Or whether she had been happy there? Because she was happy now, starting today. She had no need of parents or background. \"What could be duller than past history!\" Therese said, smiling. \"Maybe futures that won't have any history.\" Therese did not ponder it. It was right. She was still smiling, as if she had just learned how to smile and did not know how to stop. The woman smiled with her, amusedly, and perhaps she was laughing at her, Therese thought. \"What kind of a name is Belivet?\" she asked. \"It's Czech. It's changed,\" Therese explained awkwardly. \"Originally--\" \"It's very original.\" \"What's your name?\" Therese asked. \"Your first name?\" \"My name? Carol. Please don't ever call me Carole.\" \"Please don't ever call me Therese,\" Therese said, pronouncing the \"th.\" \"How do you like it pronounced? Therese?\" \"Yes. The way you do,\" she answered. Carol pronounced her name the French way, Terez. She was used to a dozen variations, and sometimes she herself pronounced it differently. She liked the way Carol pronounced it, and she liked her lips saying it. An indefinite longing, that she had been only vaguely conscious of at times before, became now a recognizable wish. It was so absurd, so embarrassing a desire, that Therese thrust it from her mind."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_002.txt", "text": "\"What do you do on Sundays?\" Carol asked! \"I don't always know. Nothing in particular. What do you do?\" \"Nothing--lately. If you'd like to visit me sometime, you're welcome to. At least there's some country around where I live. Would you like to come out this Sunday?\" The gray eyes regarded her directly now, and for the first time, Therese faced them. There was a measure of humor in them, Therese saw. And what else? Curiosity and a challenge, too. \"Yes,\" Therese said. \"What a strange girl you are.\" \"Why?\" \"Flung out of space,\" Carol said."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 5 RICHARD WAS STANDING on the street corner, waiting for her, shifting from, foot to foot in the cold. She wasn't cold at all tonight, she realized suddenly, even though other people on the streets were hunched in their overcoats. She took Richard's arm and squeezed it affectionately tight. \"Have you been inside?\" she asked. She was ten minutes late. \"Of course not. I was waiting.\" He pressed his cold lips and nose into her cheek. \"Did you have a rough day?\" \"No.\" The night was very black, in spite of the Christmas lights on some of the lampposts. She looked at Richard's face in the flare of his match. The smooth slab of his forehead overhung his narrowed eyes, strong looking as a whale's front, she thought, strong enough to batter something in. His face was like a face sculpted in wood, planed smooth and unadorned. She saw his eyes open like unexpected spots of blue sky in the darkness. He smiled at her. \"You're in a good mood tonight. Want to walk down the block? You can't smoke in there. Like a cigarette?\" \"No, thanks.\" They began to walk. The gallery was just beside them, a row of lighted windows, each with a Christmas wreath, on the second floor of the big building. Tomorrow she would see Carol, Therese thought, tomorrow morning at eleven. She would see her only ten blocks from here, in a little more than twelve hours. She started to take Richard's arm again, and suddenly felt self-conscious about it. Eastward, down Forty-third Street, she saw Orion exactly spread in the center of the sky between the buildings. She had used to look at him from windows in school, from the window of her first New York apartment. \"I got our reservations today,\" Richard said. \"The President Taylor sailing March seventh. I talked with the ticket fellow, and I think he can get us outside rooms, if I keep after him.\" \"March seventh?\" She heard the start of excitement in her voice, though she did not want to go to Europe now at all. \"About ten weeks off,\" Richard said, taking her hand. \"Can you cancel the reservation in case I can't go?\" She could as well tell him now that she didn't want to go, she thought, but he would only argue, as he had before when she hesitated. \"Oh, of course, Terry!\" And he laughed. Richard swung her hand as they walked. As if they were lovers, Therese thought. It would be almost like love, what she felt for Carol, except that Carol was a woman. It was not quite insanity, but it was certainly blissful. A silly word, but how could she possibly be happier than she was now, and had been since Thursday? \"I wish we could share one together,\" Richard said. \"Share what?\" \"Share a room!\" Richard boomed out, laughing, and Therese noticed the two people on the sidewalk who turned to look at them."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "\"Should we have a drink somewhere just to celebrate? We can go in the Mansfield around the corner.\" \"I don't feel like sitting still. Let's have it later.\" They got into the show at half price on Richard's art school passes. The gallery was a series of high-ceilinged, plush carpeted rooms, a background of financial opulence for the commercial advertisements, the drawings, lithographs, illustrations, or whatever that hung in a crowded row on the walls. Richard pored over some of them for minutes at a time, but Therese found them a little depressing. \"Did you see this?\" Richard asked, pointing to a complicated drawing of a lineman repairing a telephone wire that Therese had seen somewhere before, that tonight actually pained her to look at. \"Yes,\" she said. She was thinking of something else. If she stopped scrimping to save money for Europe--which had been silly anyway because she wasn't going--she could buy a new coat. There would be sales right after Christmas. The coat she had now was a kind of black polo coat, and she always felt drab in it. Richard took her arm. \"You haven't enough respect for technique, little girl.\" She gave him a mocking frown, and took his arm again. She felt very close to him suddenly, as warm and happy with him as she had been the first night she met him, at the party down on Christopher Street where Frances Cotter had taken her. Richard had been a little drunk, as he had never been since with her, talking about books and politics and people more positively than she had ever heard him talk since, too. He had talked with her all evening, and she had liked him so very much that night for his enthusiasms, his ambitions, his likes and dislikes, and because it was her first real party and he had made it a success for her. \"You're not looking,\" Richard said. \"It's exhausting. I've had enough when you have.\" Near the door, they met some people Richard knew from the League, a young man, a girl, and a young colored man. Richard introduced Therese to them. She could tell they were not close friends of Richard's, but he announced to all of them. \"We're going to Europe in March.\" And they all looked envious. Outside, Fifth Avenue seemed empty and waiting, like a stage set for some dramatic action. Therese walked along-quickly beside Richard, her hands in her pockets. Somewhere today she had lost her gloves. She was thinking of tomorrow, at eleven o'clock. She wondered if she would possibly still be with Carol this time tomorrow night. \"What about tomorrow?\" Richard asked. \"Tomorrow?\" \"You know. The family asked if you could come out this Sunday and have dinner with us.\" Therese hesitated, remembering. She had visited the Semcos four or five Sunday afternoons."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "They had a big dinner around two o'clock, and then Mr. Semco, a short man with a bald head, would want to dance with her to polkas and Russian folk music on the phonograph. \"Say, you know Mamma wants to make you a dress?\" Richard went on. \"She's already got the material. She wants to measure you for it.\" \"A dress--but that's so much work.\" Therese had a vision of Mrs. Semco's embroidered blouses, white blouses with rows upon rows of stitches. Mrs. Semco was proud of her needlework. Therese did not feel she should accept such a colossal labor. \"She loves it,\" Richard said. \"Well, what about tomorrow? Want to come out around noon?\" \"I don't think I want to this Sunday. They haven't made any great plans, have they?\" \"No,\" Richard said, disappointed. \"You just want to work or something tomorrow?\" \"Yes. I'd rather.\" She didn't want Richard to know about Carol, or even ever meet her. \"Not even take a drive somewhere?\" \"I don't think so, thanks.\" Therese didn't like his holding her hand now. His hand was moist, which made it icy cold. \"You don't think you'll change your mind?\" Therese shook her head. \"No.\" There were some mitigating things she might have said, excuses, but she did not want to lie about tomorrow either, any more than she had already lied. She heard Richard sigh, and they walked along in silence for a while. \"Mamma wants to make you a white dress with lace edging. She's going crazy with frustration with no girls in the family but Esther.\" That was his cousin by marriage, whom Therese had only seen once or twice. \"How is Esther?\" \"Just the same.\" Therese extricated her fingers from Richard's. She was hungry suddenly. She had spent her dinner hour writing something, a kind of letter to Carol that she hadn't mailed and didn't intend to. They caught the uptown bus at Third Avenue, then walked east to Therese's house. Therese did not want to invite Richard upstairs, but she did anyway. \"No, thanks, I'll shove on,\" Richard said. He put a foot on the first step. \"You're in a funny mood tonight. You're miles away.\" \"No, I'm not,\" she said, feeling inarticulate and resenting it. \"You are now. I can tell. After all, don't you--\" \"What,\" she prompted. \"We aren't getting very far, are we?\" he said, suddenly earnest. \"If you don't even want to spend Sundays with me, how're we going to spend months together in Europe?\" \"Well--if you want to call it all off, Richard.\" \"Terry, I love you.\" He brushed his palm over his hair, exasperatedly. \"Of course, I don't want to call it all off, but--\" He broke off again. She knew what he was about to say, that she gave him practically nothing in the way of affection, but he wouldn't say it, because he knew very well that she wasn't in love with him, so why did he really expect her affection?"}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "Yet the simple fact that she wasn't in love with him made Therese feel guilty, guilty about accepting anything from him, a birthday present, or an invitation to dinner at his family's, or even his time. Therese pressed her finger tips hard on the stone banister. \"All right--I know. I'm not in love with you,\" she said. \"That's not what I mean, Terry.\" \"If you ever want to call the whole thing off--I mean, stop seeing me at all, then do it.\" It was not the first time she had said that, either. \"Terry, you know I'd rather be with you than anyone else in the world. That's the hell of it.\" \"Well, if it's hell--\" \"Do you love me at all, Terry? How do you love me?\" Let me count the ways, she thought. \"I don't love you, but I like you. I felt tonight, a few minutes ago,\" she said, hammering the words out however they sounded, because they were true, \"that I felt closer to you than I ever have, in fact.\" Richard looked at her, a little incredulously. \"Do you?\" He started slowly up the steps, smiling, and stopped just below her. \"Then--why not let me stay with you tonight, Terry? Just let's try, will you?\" She had known from his first step toward her that he was going to ask her that. Now she felt miserable and ashamed, sorry for herself and for him, because it was so impossible, and so embarrassing because she didn't want it. There was always that tremendous block of not even wanting to try it, which reduced it all to a kind of wretched embarrassment and nothing more, each time he asked her. She remembered the first night she had let him stay, and she writhed again inwardly. It had been anything but pleasant, and she had asked right in the middle of it, \"Is this right?\" How could it be right and so unpleasant, she had thought. And Richard had laughed, long and loud and with a heartiness that had made her angry. And the second time had been even worse, probably because Richard had thought all the difficulties had been gotten over. It was painful enough to make her weep, and Richard had been very apologetic and had said she made him feel like a brute. And then she had protested that he wasn't. She knew very well that he wasn't, that he was angelic compared to what Angelo Rossi would have been, for instance, if she had slept with him the night he stood here on the same steps, asking the same question. \"Terry, darling--\" \"No,\" Therese said, finding her voice at last. \"I just can't tonight, and I can't go to Europe with you either,\" she finished with an abject and hopeless frankness. Richard's lips parted in a stunned way. Therese could not bear to look at the frown above them. \"Why not?\" \"Because. Because I can't,\" she said, every word agony."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_003.txt", "text": "\"Because I don't want to sleep with you.\" \"Oh, Terry!\" Richard laughed. \"I'm sorry I asked you. Forget about it, honey, will you? And in Europe, too?\" Therese looked away, noticed Orion again, tipped at a slightly different angle, and looked back at Richard. But I can't, she thought. I've got to think about it sometime, because you think about it. It seemed to her that she spoke the words and that they were solid as blocks of wood in the air between them, even though she heard nothing. She had said the words before to him, in her room upstairs, once in Prospect Park when she was winding a kite string. But he wouldn't consider them, and what could she do now, repeat them? \"Do you want to come up for a while anyway?\" she asked, tortured by herself, by a shame she could not really account for. \"No,\" Richard said with a soft laugh that shamed her all the more for its tolerance and its understanding. \"No, I'll go on. Good night, honey. I love you, Terry.\" And with a last look at her, he went."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 6 THERESE STEPPED out into the street and looked, but the streets were empty with a Sunday morning emptiness. The wind flung itself around the tall cement corner of Frankenberg's as if it were furious at finding no human figure there to oppose. No one but her, Therese thought, and grinned suddenly at herself. She might have thought of a more pleasant place to meet than this. The wind was like ice against her teeth. Carol was a quarter of an hour late. If she didn't come, she would probably keep on waiting, all day and into the night. One figure came out of the subway's pit, a splintery thin hurrying figure of a woman in a long black coat under which her feet moved as fast as if four feet were rotating on a wheel. Then Therese turned around and saw Carol in a car drawn up by the curb across the street. Therese walked toward her. \"Hi!\" Carol called, and leaned over to open the door for her. \"Hello. I thought you weren't coming.\" \"Awfully sorry I'm late. Are you freezing?\" \"No.\" Therese got in and pulled the door shut. The car was warm inside, a long dark-green car with dark-green leather upholstery. Carol drove slowly west. \"Shall we go out to the house? Where would you like to go?\" \"It doesn't matter,\" Therese said. She could see freckles along the bridge of Carol's nose. Her short fair hair that made Therese think of perfume held to a light was tied back with the green and gold scarf that circled her head like a band. \"Let's go out to the house. It's pretty out there.\" They drove uptown. It was like riding inside a rolling mountain that could sweep anything before it, yet was absolutely obedient to Carol. \"Do you like driving?\" Carol asked without looking at her. She had a cigarette in her mouth. She drove with her hands resting lightly on the wheel, as if it were nothing to her, as if she sat relaxed in a chair somewhere, smoking. \"Why're you so quiet?\" They roared into the Lincoln Tunnel. A wild, inexplicable excitement mounted in Therese as she stared through the windshield. She wished the tunnel might cave in and kill them both, that their bodies might be dragged out together. She felt Carol glancing at her from time to time. \"Have you had breakfast?\" \"No, I haven't,\" Therese answered. She supposed she was pale. She had started to have breakfast, but she had dropped the milk bottle in the sink, and then given it all up. \"Better have some coffee. It's there in the thermos.\" They were out of the tunnel. Carol stopped by the side of the road. \"There,\" Carol said, nodding at the thermos between them on the seat. Then Carol took the thermos herself and poured some into the cup, steaming and light brown. Therese looked at the coffee gratefully. \"Where'd it come from?\" Carol smiled."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "\"Do you always want to know where things come from?\" The coffee was very strong and a little sweet. It sent strength through her. When the cup was half empty, Carol started the car. Therese was silent. What was there to talk about? The gold four-leaf clover with Carol's name and address on it that dangled from key chain on the dashboard? The stand of Christmas trees they passed on the road? The bird that flew by itself across a swampy looking field? No. Only the things she had written to Carol in the unmailed letter were to be talked about, and that was impossible. \"Do you like the country?\" Carol asked as they turned into a smaller road. They had just driven into a little town and out of it. Now on the driveway that made a great semicircular curve, they approached a white two-story house that had projecting side wings like the paws of a resting lion. There was a metal door mat, a big shining brass mailbox, a dog barking hollowly from around the side of the house, where a white garage showed beyond some trees. The house smelled of some spice, Therese thought, mingled with a separate sweetness that was not Carol's perfume either. Behind her, the door closed with a light, firm double report. Therese turned and found Carol looking at her puzzledly, her lips parted a little as if in surprise, and Therese felt that in the next second Carol would ask, \"What are you doing here?\" as if she had forgotten, or had not meant to bring her here at all. \"There's no one here but the maid. And she's far away,\" Carol said, as if in reply to some question of Therese's. \"It's a lovely house,\" Therese said, and saw Carol's little smile that was tinged with impatience. \"Take off your coat.\" Carol took the scarf from around her head and ran her fingers through her hair. \"Wouldn't you like a little breakfast? It's almost noon.\" \"No, thanks.\" Carol looked around the living room, and the same puzzled dissatisfaction came back to her face. \"Let's go upstairs. It's more comfortable.\" Therese followed Carol up the white wooden staircase, past an oil painting of a small girl with yellow hair and a square chin like Carol's, past a window where a garden with an S-shaped path, a fountain with a blue-green statue appeared for an instant and vanished. Upstairs, there was a short hall with four or five rooms around it. Carol went into a room with green carpet and walls, and took a cigarette from a box on a table. She glanced at Therese as she lighted it. Therese didn't know what to do or say, and she felt Carol expected her to do or say something, anything. Therese studied the simple room with its dark-green carpet and the long green pillowed bench along one wall. There was a plain table of pale wood in the center."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "A game room, Therese thought, though it looked more like a study with its books and music albums and its lack of pictures. \"My favorite room,\" Carol said, walking out of it. \"But that's my room over there.\" Therese looked into the room opposite. It had flowered cotton upholstery and plain blond woodwork like the table in the other room. There was a long plain mirror over the dressing table, and throughout a look of sunlight, though no sunlight was in the room. The bed was a double bed. And there were military brushes on the dark bureau across the room. Therese glanced in vain for a picture of him. There was a picture of Carol on the dressing table, holding up a small girl with blond hair. And a picture of a woman with dark curly hair, smiling broadly, in a silver frame. \"You have a little girl, haven't you?\" Therese asked. Carol opened a wall panel in the hall. \"Yes,\" she said. \"Would you like a coke?\" The hum of the refrigerator came louder now. Through all the house, there was no sound but those they made. Therese did not want the cold drink, but she took the bottle and carried it downstairs after Carol, through the kitchen and into the back garden she had seen from the window. Beyond the fountain were a lot of plants some three feet high and wrapped in burlap bags that looked like something, standing there in a group, Therese thought, but she didn't know what. Carol tightened a string that the wind had loosened. Stooped in the heavy wool skirt and the blue cardigan sweater, her figure looked solid and strong, like her face, but not like her slender ankles. Carol seemed oblivious of her for several minutes, walking about slowly, planting her moccasined feet firmly, as if in the cold flowerless garden she was at last comfortable. It was bitterly cold without a coat, but because Carol seemed oblivious of that, too, Therese tried to imitate her. \"What would you like to do?\" Carol asked. \"Take a walk? Play some records?\" \"I'm very content,\" Therese told her. She was preoccupied with something, and regretted after all inviting her out to the house, Therese felt. They walked back to the door at the end of the garden path. \"And how do you like your job?\" Carol asked in the kitchen, still with her air of remoteness. She was looking into the big refrigerator. She lifted out two plates covered with wax paper. \"I wouldn't mind some lunch, would you?\" Therese had intended to tell her about the job at the Black Cat Theatre. That would count for something, she thought, that would be the single important thing she could tell about herself. But this was not the time. Now she replied slowly, trying to sound as detached as Carol, though she heard her shyness predominating, \"I suppose it's educational."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "I learn how to be a thief, a liar, and a poet all at once.\" Therese leaned back in the straight chair so her head would be in the warm square of sunlight. She wanted to say, and how to love. She had never loved anyone before Carol, not even Sister Alicia. Carol looked at her. \"How do you become a poet?\" \"By feeling things--too much, I suppose,\" Therese answered conscientiously. \"And how do you become a thief?\" Carol licked something off her thumb and frowned. \"You don't want any caramel pudding, do you?\" \"No, thank you. I haven't stolen yet, but I'm sure it's easy there. There are pocketbooks all around, and one just takes something. They steal the meat you buy for dinner.\" Therese laughed. One could laugh at it with Carol. One could laugh at anything with Carol. They had sliced cold chicken, cranberry sauce, green olives, and crisp white celery. But Carol left her lunch and went into the living room. She came back carrying a glass with some whisky in it, and added some water to it from the tap. Therese watched her. Then for a long moment, they looked at each other, Carol standing in the doorway and Therese at the table, looking over her shoulder, not eating. Carol asked quietly, \"Do you meet a lot of people across the counter this way? Don't you have to be careful whom you start talking to?\" \"Oh, yes,\" Therese smiled. \"Or whom you go out to lunch with?\" Carol's eyes sparkled. \"You might run into a kidnaper.\" She rolled the drink around in the iceless glass, then drank it off, the thin silver bracelets on her wrist rattling against the glass. \"Well--do you meet many people this way?\" \"No,\" Therese said. \"Not many? Just three or four?\" \"Like you?\" Therese met her eyes steadily. And Carol looked fixedly at her, as if she demanded another word, another phrase from Therese. But then she set the glass down on the stove top and turned away. \"Do you play the piano?\" \"Some.\" \"Come and play something.\" And when Therese started to refuse, she said imperatively, \"Oh, I don't care how you play. Just play something.\" Therese played some Scarlatti she had learned at the Home. In a chair on the other side of the room. Carol sat listening relaxed and motionless, not even sipping the new glass of whisky and water. Therese played the C major Sonata, which was slowish and rather simple, full of broken octaves, but it struck her as dull, then pretentious in the trill parts, and she stopped. It was suddenly too much, her hands on the keyboard that she knew Carol played, Carol watching her with her eyes half closed, Carol's, whole house around her, and the music that made her abandon herself, made her-defenseless. With a gasp, she dropped her hands in her lap. \"Are you tired?\" Carol asked calmly. The question seemed not of now but of always. \"Yes.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "Carol came up behind her and set her hands on Therese's shoulders. Therese could see her hands in her memory--flexible and strong, the delicate tendons showing as they pressed her shoulders. It seemed an age as her hands moved toward her neck and under her chin, an age of tumult so intense it blotted out the pleasure of Carol's tipping her head back and kissing her lightly at the edge of her hair. Therese did not feel the kiss at all. \"Come with me,\" Carol said. She went with Carol upstairs again. Therese pulled herself up by the banister and was reminded suddenly of Mrs. Robichek. \"I think a nap wouldn't hurt you,\" Carol said, turning down the flowered cotton bedspread and the top blanket. \"Thanks, I'm not really--\" \"Slip your shoes off,\" Carol said softly, but in a tone that commanded obedience. Therese looked at the bed. She had hardly slept the night before. \"I don't think I shall sleep, but if I do--\" \"I'll wake you in half an hour.\" Carol pulled the blanket over her when she lay down. Carol sat down on the edge of the bed. \"How old are you, Therese?\" Therese looked up at her, unable to bear her eyes now but bearing them nevertheless, not caring if she died that instant, if Carol strangled her, prostrate and vulnerable in her bed, the intruder. \"Nineteen.\" How old it sounded. Older than ninety-one. Carol's eyebrows frowned, though she smiled a little. Therese felt that she thought of something so intensely, one might have touched the thought in the air between them. Then Carol slipped her hands under her shoulders, and bent her head down to Therese's throat, and Therese felt the tension go out of Carol's body with the sigh that made her neck warm, that carried the perfume that was in Carol's hair. \"You're a child,\" Carol said, like a reproach. She lifted her head. \"What would you like?\" Therese remembered what she had thought of in the restaurant, and she set her teeth in shame. \"What would you like?\" Carol repeated. \"Nothing, thanks.\" Carol got up and went to her dressing table and lighted a cigarette. Therese watched her through half-closed lids, worried by Carol's restlessness, though she loved the cigarette, loved to see her smoke. \"What would you like, a drink?\" Therese knew she meant water. She knew from the tenderness and the concern in her voice, as if she were a child sick with fever. Then Therese said it: \"I think I'd like some hot milk.\" The corner of Carol's mouth lifted in a smile. \"Some hot milk,\" she mocked. Then she left the room. And Therese lay in a limbo of anxiety and sleepiness all the long while until Carol reappeared with the milk in a straight-sided white cup with a saucer under it, holding the saucer and the cup handle, and closing the door with her foot."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "\"I let it boil and it's got a scum on it,\" Carol said annoyedly. \"I'm sorry.\" But Therese loved it, because she knew this was exactly what Carol would always do, be thinking of something else and let the milk boil. \"Is that the way you like it? Plain like that?\" Therese nodded. \"Ug,\" Carol said, and sat down on the arm of a chair and watched her. Therese was propped on one elbow. The milk was so hot, she could barely let her lip touch it at first. The tiny sips spread inside her mouth and released a melange of organic flavors. The milk seemed to taste of bone and blood, of warm flesh, or hair, saltless as chalk yet alive as a growing embryo. It was hot through and through to the bottom of the cup, and Therese drank it down, as people in fairy tales drink the potion that will transform, or the unsuspecting warrior the cup that will kill. Then Carol came and took the cup, and Therese was drowsily aware that Carol asked her three questions, one that had to do with happiness, one about the store, and one about the future. Therese heard herself answering. She heard her voice rise suddenly in a babble, like a spring that she had no control over, and she-realized she was in tears. She was telling Carol all that she feared and disliked, of her loneliness, of Richard, and of gigantic disappointments. And of her parents. Her mother was not dead. But Therese had not seen her since she was fourteen. Carol, questioned her, and she answered, though she did not want to talk about her mother. Her mother was not that important, not even one of the disappointments. Her father was. Her father was quite different. He had died when she was six--a lawyer of Czechoslovakian descent who all his life had wanted to be a painter. He had been quite different, gentle, sympathetic, never raising his voice in anger against the woman who had nagged at him, because he had been neither a good lawyer nor a good painter. He had never been strong, he had died of pneumonia, but in Therese's mind, her mother had killed him. Carol questioned and questioned her, and Therese told of her mother's bringing her to the school in Montclair when she was eight, of her mother's infrequent visits afterward, for her mother had traveled a great deal around the country. She had been a pianist--no, not a first-rate one, how could she be, but she had always found work because she was pushing. And when Therese was about ten, her mother had remarried. Therese had visited at her mother's house in Long Island in the Christmas holidays, and they had asked her to stay with them, but not as if they wanted her to stay."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "And Therese had not liked the husband, Nick, because he was exactly like her mother, big and dark haired, with a loud voice, and violent and passionate gestures. Therese was sure their marriage would be perfect. Her mother had been pregnant even then, and now there were two children. After a week with them, Therese had returned to the Home. There had been perhaps three or four visits from her mother afterward, always with some present for her, a blouse, a book, once a cosmetic kit that Therese had loathed simply because it reminded her of her mother's brittle, mascaraed eye-lashes, presents handed her self- consciously by her mother, like hypocritical peace offerings. Once her mother had brought the little boy, her half brother, and then Therese had known she was an outsider. Her mother had not loved her father, had chosen to leave her at a school when she was eight, and why did she bother now even to visit her, to claim her at all? Therese would have been happier to have no parents, like half the girls in the school. Finally, Therese had told her mother she did not want her to visit again, and her mother hadn't, and the ashamed, resentful expression, the nervous sidewise glance of the brown eyes, the twitch of a smile and the silence--that was the last she remembered of her mother. Then she had become fifteen. The sisters at the school had known her mother was not writing. They had asked her to write, and she had, but Therese had not answered. Then when graduation came, when she was seventeen, the school had asked her mother for two hundred dollars. Therese hadn't wanted any money from her, had half believed her mother wouldn't give her any, but she had, and Therese had taken it. \"I'm sorry I took it. I never told anyone but you. Some day I want to give it back.\" \"Nonsense,\" Carol said softly. She was sitting on the arm of the chair, resting her chin in her hand, her eyes fixed on Therese, smiling. \"You were still a child. When you forget about paying her back, then you'll be an adult.\" Therese did not answer. \"Don't you think you'll ever want to see her again? Maybe in a few years from now?\" Therese shook her head. She smiled, but the tears still oozed out of her eyes. \"I don't want to talk any more about it.\" \"Does Richard know all this?\" \"No. Just that she's alive. Does it matter? This isn't what matters.\" She felt if she wept enough, it would all go out of her, the tiredness and the loneliness and the disappointment, as though it were in the tears themselves. And she was glad Carol left her alone to do it now. Carol was standing by the dressing table, her back to her. Therese lay rigid in the bed, propped up on her elbow, racked with the half-suppressed sobs. \"I'll never cry again,\" she said."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "\"Yes, you will.\" And a match scraped. Therese took another cleansing tissue from the bed table and blew her nose. \"Who else is in your life besides Richard?\" Carol asked. She had fled them all. There had been Lily, and Mr. and Mrs. Anderson in the house where she had first lived in New York. Frances Cotter and Tim at the Pelican Press. Lois Vavrica, a girl who had been at the Home in Montclair, too. Now who was there? The Kellys who lived on the second floor at Mrs. Osborne's. And Richard. \"When I was fired from that job last month,\" Therese said, \"I was ashamed and I moved--\" She stopped. \"Moved where?\" \"I didn't tell anyone where, except Richard. I just disappeared. I suppose it was my idea of starting a new life, but mostly I was ashamed. I didn't want anyone to know where I was.\" Carol smiled. \"Disappeared! I like that. And how lucky you are to be able to do it. You're free. Do you realize that?\" Therese said nothing. \"No,\" Carol answered herself. Beside Carol on the dressing table, a square gray clock ticked faintly, and as Therese had done a thousand times in the store, she read the time and attached a meaning to it. It was four fifteen and a little more, and suddenly she was anxious lest she had lain there too long, lest Carol might be expecting someone to come to the house. Then the telephone rang, sudden and long like the shriek of a hysterical woman in the hall, and they saw each other start. Carol stood up, and slapped something twice in her palm, as she had slapped the gloves in her palm in the store. The telephone screamed again, and Therese was sure Carol was going to throw whatever it was she held in her hand, throw it across the room against the wall. But Carol only turned and laid the thing down quietly, and left the room. Therese could hear Carol's voice in the hall. She did not want to hear what she was saying. She got up and put her skirt and her shoes on. Now she saw what Carol had held in her hand. It was a shoehorn of tan-colored wood. Anyone else would have thrown it, Therese thought. Then she knew one word for what she felt about Carol: pride. She heard Carol's voice repeating the same tones, and now opening the door to leave, she heard the words, \"I have a guest,\" for the third time calmly presented as a barrier. \"I think it's an excellent reason. What better?... What's the matter with tomorrow? If you--\" Then there was no sound until Carol's first step on the stair, and Therese knew whoever had been talking to her had hung up on her. Who dared, Therese wondered. \"Shouldn't I leave?\" Therese asked. Carol looked at her in the same way she had when they first entered the house. \"Not unless you want to."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "No. We'll take a drive later, if you want to.\" She knew Carol did not want to take another drive. Therese started to straighten the bed. \"Leave the bed.\" Carol was watching her from the hall. \"Just close the door.\" \"Who is it that's coming?\" Carol turned and went into the green room. \"My husband,\" she said. \"Hargess.\" Then the doorbell chimed downstairs, and the latch clicked at the same time. \"No end prompt today,\" Carol murmured. \"Come down, Therese.\" Therese felt sick with dread suddenly, not of the man but of Carol's annoyance at his coming. He was coming up the stairs. When he saw Therese, he slowed, and a faint surprise crossed his face, and then he looked at Carol. \"Harge, this is Miss Belivet,\" Carol said. \"Mr. Aird.\" \"How do you do?\" Therese said. Harge only glanced at Therese, but his nervous blue eyes inspected her from head to toe. He was a heavily built man with a rather pink face. One eyebrow was set higher than the other, rising in an alert peak in the center, as if it might have been distorted by a scar. \"How do you do?\" Then to Carol, \"I'm sorry to disturb you. I only wanted to get one or two things.\" He went past her and opened the door to a room Therese had not seen. \"Things for Rindy,\" he added. \"Pictures on the wall?\" Carol asked. The man was silent. Carol and Therese went downstairs. In the living room Carol sat down, but Therese did not. \"Play some more, if you like,\" Carol said. Therese shook her head. \"Play some,\" Carol said firmly. Therese was frightened by the sudden white anger in her eyes. \"I can't,\" Therese said, stubborn as a mule. And Carol subsided. Carol even smiled. They heard Harge's quick steps cross the hall and stop, then descend the stairs slowly. Therese saw his dark clad figure and then his pinkish blond head appear. \"I can't find that watercolor set. I thought it was in my room,\" he said complainingly. I know where it is.\" Carol got up and started toward the stairs. \"I suppose you want me to take her something for Christmas,\" Harge said. \"Thanks, I'll give the things to her.\" Carol went up the stairs. They are just divorced, Therese thought, or about to be divorced. Harge looked at Therese, almost offered her his cigarette case, and didn't. He had an intense expression that curiously mingled anxiety and boredom. The flesh around his mouth was firm and heavy, rounding into the line of his mouth so that he seemed lipless. He lighted a cigarette for himself. \"Are you from New York?\" he asked. Therese felt the disdain and incivility in the question, like the sting of a slap in the face. \"Yes, from New York,\" she answered. He was on the brink of another question to her, when Carol came down the stairs. Therese had steeled herself to be alone with him for minutes."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "index_split_004.txt", "text": "Now she shuddered as she relaxed, and she knew that he saw it. \"Thanks,\" Harge said as he took the box from Carol. He walked to his overcoat that Therese had noticed on the loveseat, sprawled open with its black arms spread as if it were fighting and would take possession of the house. \"Good-by,\" Harge said to her. He put the overcoat on as he walked to the door. \"Friend of Abby's?\" he murmured to Carol. \"A friend of mine,\" Carol answered. \"Are you going to take the presents to Rindy? When?\" \"What if I gave her nothing, Harge?\" \"Carol--\" He stopped on the porch, and Therese barely heard him say something about making things unpleasant. Then, \"I'm going to see Cynthia now. Can I stop by on the way back? It'll be before eight.\" \"Harge, what's the purpose?\" Carol said wearily. \"Especially when you're so disagreeable.\" \"Because it concerns Rindy.\" Then his voice faded unintelligibly. Then an instant later, Carol came in alone and closed the door. Carol stood against the door with her hands behind her, and they heard the car outside leaving. Carol must have agreed to see him tonight, Therese thought. \"I'll go,\" Therese said. Carol said nothing. There was a deadness in the silence between them now, and Therese grew more uneasy. \"I'd better go, hadn't I?\" \"Yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about Harge. He's not always-so rude. It was a mistake to say I had any guest here at all.\" \"It doesn't matter.\" Carol's forehead wrinkled and she said with difficulty, \"Do you mind if I put you on the train tonight, instead of driving you home?\" \"No.\" She couldn't have borne Carol's driving her home and driving back alone tonight in the darkness. They were silent also in the car. Therese opened the door as soon as the car stopped at the station. \"There's a train in about four minutes,\" Carol said. Therese blurted suddenly, \"Will I see you again?\" Carol only smiled at her, a little reproachfully, as the window between them rose up. \"Au revoir,\" she said. Of course, of course, she would see her again, Therese thought. An idiotic question! The car backed fast and turned away into the darkness. Therese longed for the store again, longed for Monday, because Carol might come in again on Monday. But it wasn't likely. Tuesday was Christmas Eve. Certainly she could telephone Carol by Tuesday, if only to wish her a merry Christmas. But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her-bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 7 THE MAN LOOKED at it, holding it carelessly between thumb and forefinger. He was bald except for long strands of black hair that grew from a former brow line, plastered sweatily down over the naked scalp. His underlip was thrust out with the contempt and negation that had fixed itself on his face as soon as Therese had come to the counter and spoken her first words. \"No,\" he said at last. \"Can't you give me anything for it?\" Therese asked. The lip came out farther. \"Maybe fifty cents.\" And he tossed it back across the counter. Therese's fingers crept over it possessively. \"Well, what about this?\" From her coat pocket she dragged up the silver chain with the St. Christopher medallion. Again the thumb and forefinger were eloquent of scorn, turning the coin like filth. \"Two fifty.\" But it cost at least twenty dollars, Therese started to say, but she didn't because that was what everybody said. \"Thanks.\" She picked up the chain and went out. Who were all the lucky people, she wondered, who had managed to sell their old pocketknives, broken wrist watches and carpenters' planes that hung in clumps in the front window? She could not resist looking back through the window, finding the man's face again under the row of hanging hunting knives. The man was looking at her, too, smiling at her. She felt he understood every move she made. Therese hurried down the sidewalk. In ten minutes, Therese was back. She pawned the silver medallion for two dollars and fifty cents. She hurried westward, ran across Lexington Avenue, then Park, and turned down Madison. She clutched the little box in her pocket until its sharp edges cut her fingers. Sister Beatrice had given it to her. It was inlaid brown wood and mother-of-pearl, in a checked pattern. She didn't know what it was worth in money, but she had assumed it was rather precious. Well, now she knew it wasn't. She went into a leather goods shop. \"I'd like to see the black one in the window--the one with the strap and the gold buckles,\" Therese said to the salesgirl. It was the handbag she had noticed last Saturday morning on the way to meet Carol for lunch. It had looked like Carol, just at a glance. She had thought, even if Carol didn't keep the appointment that day, if she could never see Carol again, she must buy the bag and send it to her anyway. \"I'll take it,\" Therese said. \"That's seventy-one eighteen with the tax,\" the salesgirl said. \"Do you want that gift wrapped?\" \"Yes, please.\" Therese counted six crisp ten-dollar bills across the counter and the rest in singles. \"Can I leave it here till about six thirty tonight?\" Therese left the shop with the receipt in her billfold. It wouldn't do to risk bringing the handbag into the store. It might be stolen, even if it was Christmas Eve. Therese smiled."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "It was her last day of work at the store. And in four more days came the job at the Black Cat. Phil was going to bring her a copy of the play the day after Christmas. She passed Brentano's. Its window was full of satin ribbons, leather- bound books, and pictures of knights in armor. Therese turned back and went into the store, not to buy but to look, just for a moment, to see if there was anything here more beautiful than the handbag. An illustration in one of the counter displays caught her eye. It was a young knight on a white horse, riding through a bouquet-like forest, followed by a line of page boys, the last bearing a cushion with a gold ring on it. She took the leather-bound book in her hand. The price inside the cover was twenty-five dollars. If she simply went to the bank now and got twenty-five dollars more, she could buy it. What was twenty-five dollars? She hadn't needed to pawn the silver medallion. She knew she had pawned it only because it was from Richard, and she didn't want it any longer. She closed the book and looked at the edges of the pages that were like a concave bar of gold. But would Carol really like it, a book of love poems of the middle ages? She didn't know. She couldn't remember the slightest clue as to Carol's taste in books. She put the book down hurriedly and left. Upstairs in the doll department, Miss Santini was strolling along behind the counter, offering everybody candy from a big box. \"Take two,\" she said to Therese. \"Candy department sent 'em up.\" \"I don't mind if I do.\" Imagine, she thought, biting into a nougat, the Christmas spirit had struck the candy department. There was a strange atmosphere in the store today. It was unusually quiet, first of all. There were plenty of customers, but they didn't seem in a hurry, even though it was Christmas Eve. Therese glanced at the elevators, looking for Carol. If Carol didn't come in, and she probably wouldn't, Therese was going to telephone her at six thirty, just to wish her a happy Christmas. Therese knew her telephone number. She had seen it on the telephone at the house. \"Miss Belivet!\" Mrs. Hendrickson's voice called, and Therese jumped to attention. But Mrs. Hendrickson only waved her hand for the benefit of the Western Union messenger who laid a telegram in front of Therese. Therese signed for it in a scribble, and tore it open. It said: MEET YOU DOWNSTAIRS AT 5PM. CAROL. Therese crushed it in her hand. She pressed it hard with her thumb into her palm, and watched the messenger boy who was really an old man walk back toward the elevators. He walked ploddingly, with a stoop that thrust his knees far ahead of him, and his puttees were loose and wobbly."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "\"You look happy,\" Mrs. Zabriskie said dismally to her as she went by. Therese smiled. \"I am.\" Mrs. Zabriskie had a two months' old baby, she had told Therese, and her husband was out of work now. Therese wondered if Mrs. Zabriskie and her husband were in love with each other, and really happy. Perhaps they were, but there was nothing in Mrs. Zabriskie's blank face and her plodding walk that would suggest it. Perhaps once Mrs. Zabriskie had been as happy as she. Perhaps it had gone away. She remembered reading--even Richard once saying--that love usually dies after two years of marriage. That, was a cruel thing, a trick. She tried to imagine Carol's face, the smell of her perfume, becoming meaningless. But in the first place could she say she was in love with Carol? She had come to a question she could not answer. At a quarter to five, Therese went to Mrs. Hendrickson and asked permission to leave a half hour early. Mrs. Hendrickson might have thought the telegram had something to do with it, but she let Therese go without even a complaining look, and that was another thing that made the day a strange one. Carol was waiting for her in the foyer where they had met before. \"Hello!\" Therese said. \"I'm through.\" \"Through what?\" \"Through with working. Here.\" But Carol seemed depressed, and it dampened Therese instantly. She said anyway, \"I was awfully-happy to get the telegram.\" \"I didn't know if you'd be free. Are you free tonight?\" \"Of course.\" And they walked on, slowly, amid the jostling crowd, Carol in her delicate looking suede pumps that made her a couple of inches taller than Therese. It had began to snow about an hour before, but it was stopping already. The snow was no more than a film underfoot, like thin white wool drawn across the street and sidewalk. \"We might have seen Abby tonight, but she's busy,\" Carol said. \"Anyway, we can take a drive, if you'd like. It's good to see you. You're an angel to be free tonight. Do you know what?\" \"No,\" Therese said, still happy in spite of herself, though Carol's mood was disquieting. Therese felt something had happened. \"Do you suppose there's a place to get a cup of coffee around here?\" \"Yes. A little farther east.\" Therese was thinking of one of the sandwich shops between Fifth and Madison, but Carol chose a small bar with an awning in front. The waiter was reluctant at first, and said it was the cocktail hour, but when Carol started to leave, he went away and got the coffee. Therese was anxious about picking up the handbag. She didn't want to do it when Carol was with her, even though the package would be wrapped. \"Did something happen?\" Therese asked. \"Something too long to explain.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "Carol smiled at her but the smile was tired, and a silence followed, an empty silence as if they traveled through space away from each other. Probably Carol had had to break an engagement she had looked forward to, Therese thought. Carol would of course be busy on Christmas Eve. \"I'm not keeping you from doing anything now?\" Carol asked. Therese felt herself growing tense, helplessly. \"I'm supposed to pick up a package on Madison Avenue. It's not far. I can do it now, if you'll wait for me.\" \"All right.\" Therese stood up. \"I can do it in three minutes with a taxi. But I don't think you will wait for me, will you?\" Carol smiled and reached for her hand. Indifferently, Carol squeezed her hand and dropped it. \"Yes, I'll wait.\" The bored tone of Carol's voice was in her ears as she sat on the edge of the taxi seat. On the way back, the traffic was so slow, she got out and ran the last block. Carol was still there, her coffee only half finished. \"I don't want my coffee,\" Therese said, because Carol seemed ready to go. \"My car's downtown. Let's get a taxi down.\" They went down into the business section not far from the Battery. Carol's car was brought up from an underground garage. Carol drove west to the Westside Highway. \"This is better.\" Carol shed her coat as she drove. \"Throw it in back, will you?\" And they were silent again. Carol drove faster, changing her lane to pass cars, as if they had a destination. Therese set herself to say something, anything at all, by the time they reached the George Washington Bridge. Suddenly it occurred to her that if Carol and her husband were divorcing, Carol had been downtown to see a lawyer today. The district there was full of law offices. And something had gone wrong. Why were they divorcing? Because Harge was having an affair with the woman called Cynthia? Therese was cold. Carol had lowered the window beside her, and every time the car sped, the wind burst through and wrapped its cold arms around her. \"That's where Abby lives,\" Carol said, nodding across the river. Therese did not even see any special lights. \"Who's Abby?\" \"Abby? My best friend.\" Then Carol looked at her. \"Aren't you cold with this window open?\" \"No.\" \"You must be.\" They stopped for a red light, and Carol rolled the window up. Carol looked at her, as if really seeing her for the first time that evening, and under her eyes that went from her face to her hands in her lap, Therese felt like a puppy Carol had bought at a roadside kennel, that Carol had just remembered was riding beside her. \"What happened, Carol? Are you getting a divorce now?\" Carol sighed. \"Yes, a divorce,\" she said quite calmly, and started the car. \"And he has the child?\" \"Just tonight.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "Therese was about to ask another question, when Carol said, \"Let's talk about something else.\" A car went by with the radio playing Christmas carols and everyone singing. And she and Carol were silent. They drove past Yonkers, and it seemed to Therese she had left every chance of talking further to Carol somewhere behind on the road. Carol insisted suddenly that she should eat something, because it was getting on to eight, so they stopped at a little restaurant by the roadside, a place that sold fried-clam sandwiches. They sat at the counter and ordered sandwiches and coffee, but Carol did not eat. Carol asked her questions about Richard, not in the concerned way she had Sunday afternoon, but rather as if she talked to keep Therese from asking more questions about her. They were personal questions, yet Therese answered them mechanically and impersonally. Carol's quiet voice went on and on, much quieter than the voice of the counter boy talking with someone three yards away. \"Do you sleep with him?\" Carol asked her. \"I did. Two or three times.\" Therese told her about those times, the first time and the three times afterward. She was not embarrassed, talking about it. It had never seemed so dull and unimportant before. She felt Carol could imagine every minute of those evenings. She felt Carol's objective, appraising glance over her, and she knew Carol was about to say she did not look particularly cold, or perhaps, emotionally starved. But Carol was silent, and Therese stared uncomfortably at the list of songs on the little music box in front of her. She remembered someone telling her once she had a passionate mouth, she couldn't remember who. \"Sometimes it takes time,\" Carol said. \"Don't you believe in giving people another chance?\" \"But why? It isn't pleasant. And I'm not in love with him.\" \"Don't you think you might be, if you got this worked out?\" \"Is that the way people fall in love?\" Carol looked up at the deer's head on the wall behind the counter. \"No,\" she said, smiling. \"What do you like about Richard?\" \"Well, he has--\" But she wasn't sure if it really was sincerity. He wasn't sincere, she felt, about his ambition to be a painter. \"I like his attitude--more than most men's. He does treat me like a person instead of just a girl he can go so far with or not. And I like his family--the fact that he has a family.\" \"Lots of people have families.\" Therese tried again. \"He's flexible. He changes. He's not like most men that you can label doctor or--or insurance salesman.\" \"I think you know him better than I knew Harge after months of marriage. At least you're not going to make the same mistake I did, to marry because it was the thing to do when you were about twenty, among the people I knew.\" \"You mean you weren't in love?\" \"Yes, I was, very much. And so was Harge."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "And he was the kind of man who could wrap your life up in a week and put it in his pocket. Were you ever in love, Therese?\" She waited, until the word from nowhere, false, guilty, moved her lips, \"No.\" \"But you'd like to be.\" Carol was smiling. \"Is Harge still in love with you?\" Carol looked down at her lap, impatiently, and perhaps she was shocked at her bluntness, Therese thought, but when Carol spoke, her voice was the same as before, \"Even I don't know. In a way, he's the same emotionally as he's always been. It's just that now I can see how he really is. He said I was the first woman he'd ever been in love with. I think it's true, but I don't think he was in love with me--in the usual sense of the word--for more than a few months. He's never been interested in anyone else, it's true. Maybe he'd be more human if he were. That I could understand and forgive.\" \"Does he like Rindy?\" \"Dotes on her.\" Carol glanced at her smiling. \"If he's in love with anyone, it's Rindy.\" \"What kind of a name is that?\" \"Nerinda. Harge named her. He wanted a son, but I think he's even more pleased with a daughter. I wanted a girl. I wanted two or three children.\" \"And--Harge didn't?\" \"I didn't.\" She looked at Therese again. \"Is this the right conversation for Christmas Eve?\" Carol reached for a cigarette, and, accepted the one Therese offered her, a Philip Morris. \"I like to know all about you,\" Therese said. \"I didn't want any more children, because I was afraid our marriage was going on the rocks anyway, even with Rindy. So you want to fall in love? You probably will soon, and if you do, enjoy it, it's harder later on.\" \"To love someone?\" \"To fall in love. Or even to have the desire to make love. I think sex flows more sluggishly in all of us than we care to believe, especially men care to believe. The first adventures are usually nothing but a satisfying of curiosity, and after that one keeps repeating the same actions, trying to find--what?\" \"What?\" Therese asked. \"Is there a word? A friend, a companion, or maybe just a sharer. What good are words? I mean, I think people often try to find through sex, things that are much easier to find in other ways.\" What Carol said about curiosity, she knew was true. \"What other ways?\" she asked. Carol gave her a glance. \"I think that's for each person to find out. I wonder if I can get a drink here.\" But the restaurant served only beer and wine, so they left. Carol did not stop anywhere for her drink as they drove back toward New York. Carol asked her if she wanted to go home or come out to her house for a while, and Therese said to Carol's house."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "She remembered the Kellys had asked her to drop in on the wine and fruitcake party they were having tonight, and she had promised to, but they wouldn't miss her, she thought. \"What a rotten time I give you,\" Carol said suddenly. \"Sunday and now this. I'm not the best company this evening. What would you like to do? Would you like to go to a restaurant in Newark where they have lights and Christmas music tonight? It's not a night club. We could have a decent dinner there, too.\" \"I really don't care about going anywhere--for myself.\" \"You've been in that rotten store all day, and we haven't done a thing to celebrate your liberation.\" \"I just like to be here with you,\" Therese said, and hearing the explanatory tone in her voice, she smiled. Carol shook her head, not looking at her. \"Child, child, where do you wander--all by yourself?\" Then a moment later on the New Jersey highway, Carol said, \"I know what.\" And she turned the car into a graveled section off the road and stopped. \"Come out with me.\" They were in front of a lighted stand piled high with Christmas trees. Carol told her to pick a tree, one not too big and not too small. They put the tree in the back of the car, and Therese sat in front beside Carol with her arms full of holly and fir branches. Therese pressed her face into them and inhaled the dark-green sharpness of their smell, their clean spice that was like a wild forest and like all the artifices of Christmas--tree baubles, gifts, snow, Christmas music, holidays. It was being through with the store and being beside Carol now. It was the purr of the car's engine, and the needles of the fir branches that she could touch with her fingers. I am happy, I am happy, Therese thought. \"Let's do the tree now,\" Carol said as soon as they entered the house. Carol turned the radio on in the living room, and fixed a drink for both of them. There were Christmas songs on the radio, bells breaking resonantly, as if they were inside a great church. Carol brought a blanket of white cotton for the snow around the tree, and Therese sprinkled it with sugar so it would glisten. Then she cut an elongated angel out of some gold ribbon and fixed it to the top of the tree, and folded tissue paper and cut a string of angels to thread along the branches. \"You're very good at that,\" Carol said, surveying the tree from the hearth. \"It's superb. Everything but presents.\" Carol's present was on the sofa beside Therese's coat. The card she had made for it was at home, however, and she didn't want to give it without the card. Therese looked at the tree. \"What else do we need?\" \"Nothing. Do you know what time it is?\" The radio had signed off. Therese saw the mantel clock."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "It was after one. \"It's Christmas,\" she said. \"You'd better stay the night.\" \"All right.\" \"What do you have to do tomorrow?\" \"Nothing.\" Carol got her drink from the radio top. \"Don't you have to see Richard?\" She did have to see Richard, at twelve noon. She was to spend the day at his house. But she could make some kind of excuse. \"No. I said I might see him. It's not important.\" \"I can drive you in early.\" \"Are you busy tomorrow?\" Carol finished the last inch of her drink. \"Yes,\" she said. Therese began to clean up the mess she had made, the scraps of tissue and snippets of ribbon. She hated cleaning up after making something. \"Your friend Richard sounds like the kind of man who needs a woman around him to work for. Whether he marries her or not,\" Carol said. \"Isn't he like that?\" Why talk of Richard now, Therese thought irritably. She felt that Carol liked Richard--which could only be her own fault--and a distant jealousy prickled her, sharp as a pin. \"Actually, I admire that more than the men who live alone or think they live alone, and end by making the stupidest blunders with women.\" Therese stared at Carol's pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. She had absolutely nothing to say on the subject. She could find Carol's perfume like a fine thread in the stronger smell of evergreen, and she wanted to follow it, to put her arms around Carol. \"It has nothing to do with whether people marry, has it?\" \"What?\" Therese looked at her and saw her smiling a little. \"Harge is the kind of man who doesn't let a woman enter his life. And on the other hand, your friend Richard might never marry. But the pleasure Richard will get out of thinking he wants to marry.\" Carol looked at Therese from head to foot. \"The wrong girls,\" she added. \"Do you dance, Therese? Do you like to dance?\" Carol seemed suddenly cool and bitter, and Therese could have wept. \"No,\" she said. She should never have told her anything about Richard, Therese thought, but now it was done. \"You're tired. Come on to bed.\" Carol took her to the room that Harge had gone into Sunday, and turned down the covers of one of the twin beds. It might have been Harge's room, Therese thought. There was certainly nothing about it that suggested a child's room. She thought of Rindy's possessions that Harge had taken from this room, and imagined Harge moving first from the bedroom he shared with Carol, then letting Rindy bring her things into this room, keeping them here, closing himself and Rindy away from Carol. Carol laid some pajamas on the foot of the bed. \"Good night, then,\" she said at the door. \"Merry Christmas. What do you want for Christmas?\" Therese smiled suddenly. \"Nothing.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "That night she dreamed of birds, long, bright red birds like flamingos, zipping through a black forest and making scallopy patterns, arcs of red that curved like their cries. Then her eyes opened and she heard it really, a soft whistle curving, rising and coming down again with an extra note at the end, and behind it the real, feebler twitter of birds. The window was a bright gray. The whistling began again, just below the window, and Therese got out of bed. There was a long open-topped car, in the driveway, and a woman standing in it, whistling. It was like a dream she looked out on, a scene without color, misty at the edges. Then she heard Carol's whisper, as clearly as if all three of them were in the same room together, \"Are you going to bed or getting up?\" The woman in the car with her foot on the seat said just as softly, \"Both,\" and Therese heard the tremor of repressed laughter in the word and liked her instantly. \"Go for a ride?\" the woman asked. She was looking up at Carol's window with a big smile that Therese had just begun to see. \"You nitwit,\" Carol whispered. \"You alone?\" \"No.\" \"Oh-oh.\" \"It's all right. Do you want to come in?\" The woman got out of the car. Therese went to the door of her room and opened it. Carol was just coming into the hall, tying the belt of her robe. \"Sorry I wakened you,\" Carol said. \"Go back to bed.\" \"I don't mind. Can I come down?\" \"Well, of course!\" Carol smiled suddenly. \"Get a robe out of the closet.\" Therese got a robe, probably a robe of Harge's, she thought, and went downstairs. \"Who made the Christmas tree?\" the woman was asking. They were in the living room. \"She did.\" Carol turned to Therese. \"This is Abby. Abby Gerhard, Therese Belivet.\" \"Hello,\" Abby said. \"How do you do.\" Therese had hoped it was Abby. Abby looked at her now with the same bright, rather popeyed expression of amusement that Therese had seen when she stood in the car. \"You make a fine tree,\" Abby told her. \"Will everybody stop whispering?\" Carol asked. Abby chafed her hands together and followed Carol into the kitchen. \"Got any coffee, Carol?\" Therese stood by the kitchen table, watching them, feeling at ease because Abby paid no further attention to her, only took off her coat and started helping Carol with the coffee. Her waist and hips looked perfectly cylindrical, without any front or back, under her purple knitted suit. Her hands were a little clumsy, Therese noticed, and her feet had none of the grace of Carol's. She looked older than Carol, and there were two wrinkles across her forehead that cut deep when she laughed and her strong arched eyebrows rose higher."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "And she and Carol kept laughing now, while they fixed coffee and squeezed orange juice, talking in short phrases about nothing, or nothing that was important enough to be followed. Except Abby's sudden, \"Well\"--fishing a seed out of the last glass of orange juice and wiping her finger carelessly on her own dress--\"how's old Harge?\" \"The same,\" Carol said. Carol was looking for something in the refrigerator, and watching her, Therese failed to hear all of what Abby said next, or maybe it was another of the fragmentary sentences that Carol alone understood, but it made Carol straighten up and laugh, suddenly and hard, made her whole face change, and Therese thought with sudden envy, she could not make Carol laugh like that, but Abby could. \"I'm going to tell him that,\" Carol said. \"I can't resist.\" It was something about a Boy Scout pocket gadget for Harge. \"And tell him where it came from,\" Abby said, looking at Therese and smiling broadly, as if she should share in the joke, too. \"Where're you from?\" she asked Therese as they sat down in the table alcove at one side of the kitchen. \"She's from New York,\" Carol answered for her, and Therese thought Abby was going to say, why how unusual, or something silly, but Abby said nothing at all, only looked at Therese with the same expectant smile, as if she awaited the next cue from her. For all their fussing about breakfast, there was only orange juice and coffee and some unbuttered toast that nobody wanted. Abby lighted a cigarette before she touched anything. \"Are you old enough to smoke?\" she asked Therese, offering her a red box that said Craven A's. Carol put her spoon down. \"Abby, what is this?\" she asked with an air of embarrassment that Therese had never seen before. \"Thanks, I'd like one,\" Therese said, taking a cigarette. Abby settled her elbows on the table. \"Well, what's what?\" she asked Carol. \"I suspect you're a little tight,\" Carol said. \"Driving for hours in the open air? I left New Rochelle at two, got home and found your message, and here I am.\" She probably had all the time in the world, Therese thought, probably did nothing all day except what she felt like doing. \"Well?\" Abby said. \"Well--I didn't win the first round,\" Carol said. Abby drew on her cigarette, showing no surprise at all. \"For how long?\" \"For three months.\" \"Starting when?\" \"Starting now. Starting last night, in fact.\" Carol glanced at Therese, then looked down at her coffee cup, and Therese knew Carol would not say any more with her sitting there. \"That's not set already, is it?\" Abby asked. \"I'm afraid it is,\" Carol answered casually, with a shrug in her tone. \"Just verbally, but it'll hold. What're you doing tonight? Late.\" \"I'm not doing anything early. Dinner's at two today.\" \"Call me sometime.\" \"Sure.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "Carol kept her eyes down, looking down at the orange juice glass in her hand, and Therese saw a downward slant of sadness in her mouth now, a sadness not of wisdom but of defeat. \"I'd take a trip,\" Abby said. \"Take a little trip away somewhere.\" Then Abby looked at Therese, another of the bright, irrelevant, friendly glances, as if to include her in something it was impossible she could be included in, and anyway, Therese had gone stiff with the thought that Carol might take a trip away from her. \"I'm not much in the mood,\" Carol said, but Therese heard the play of possibility in it nevertheless. Abby squirmed a little and looked around her. \"This place is gloomy as a coalpit in the mornings, isn't it?\" Therese smiled a little. A coalpit, with the sun beginning to yellow the window sill, and the evergreen tree beyond it? Carol was looking at Abby fondly, lighting one of Abby's cigarettes. How well they must know each other, Therese thought, so well that nothing either of them said or did to the other could ever surprise, ever be misunderstood. \"Was it a good party?\" Carol asked. \"Mm,\" Abby said indifferently. \"Do you know someone called Bob Haversham?\" \"No.\" \"He was there tonight. I met him somewhere before in New York. Funnily enough, he said he was going to work for Rattner and Aird in the brokerage department.\" \"Really.\" \"I didn't tell him I knew one of the bosses.\" \"What time is it?\" Carol asked after a moment. Abby looked at her wrist watch, a small watch set in a pyramid of gold panels. \"Seven thirty. About. Do you care?\" \"Want to sleep some more, Therese?\" \"No. I'm fine.\" \"I'll drive you in whenever you have to go,\" Carol said. But it was Abby who drove her finally, around ten o'clock, because she had nothing else to do, she said, and she would enjoy it. Abby was another one who liked cold air, Therese thought as they picked up speed on the highway. Who rode in an open-topped car in December? \"Where'd you meet Carol?\" Abby yelled at her. Therese felt she might almost, but not quite, have told Abby the truth. \"In a store,\" Therese yelled back. \"Oh?\" Abby drove erratically, whipping the big car around curves, putting on speed where one didn't expect it. \"Do you like her?\" \"Of course!\" What a question! Like asking her if she believed in God. Therese pointed out her house to Abby when they turned into the street. \"Do you mind doing something for me?\" Therese asked. \"Could you wait here a minute? I want to give you something to give to Carol.\" \"Sure,\" Abby said. Therese ran upstairs and got the card she had made, and stuck it under the ribbon of Carol's present. She took it back down to Abby. \"You're going to see her tonight, aren't you?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "index_split_005.txt", "text": "Abby nodded, slowly, and Therese sensed the ghost of a challenge in Abby's curious black eyes, because she was going to see Carol and Therese wasn't, and what could Therese do about it? \"And thanks for the ride in.\" Abby smiled. \"Sure you don't want me to take you anywhere else?\" \"No, thanks,\" Therese said, smiling, too, because Abby would certainly have been glad to take her even to Brooklyn Heights. She climbed her front steps and opened her mailbox. There were two or three letters in it, Christmas cards, one from Frankenberg's. When she looked into the street again, the big cream-colored car was gone, like a thing she had imagined, like one of the birds in the dream."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 8 \"AND NOW YOU make a wish,\" Richard said. Therese wished it. She wished for Carol. Richard had his hands on her arms. They were standing under a thing that looked like a beaded crescent, or a section of a starfish, that hung from the hall ceiling. It was ugly, but the Semco family attributed almost magical powers to it, and hung it up on special occasions. Richard's grandfather had brought it from Russia. \"What did you wish?\" He smiled down at her possessively. This was his house, and he had just kissed her, though the door into the living room was open and filled with people. \"You're not supposed to tell,\" Therese said. \"You can tell in Russia.\" \"Well, I'm not in Russia.\" The radio roared louder suddenly, voices singing a carol. Therese drank the rest of the pink eggnog in her glass. \"I want to go up to your room,\" she said. Richard took her hand, and they started up the stairs. \"Ri--chard?\" The aunt with the cigarette holder was calling him from the living-room door. Richard said a word Therese didn't understand, and waved a hand at her. Even on the second floor, the house trembled with the crazy dancing below, the dancing that had nothing to do with the music. Therese heard another glass fall, and pictured the pink foamy eggnog rolling across the floor. This was tame compared to the real Russian Christmases they had used to celebrate in the first week in January, Richard said. Richard smiled at her as he closed the door of his room. \"I like my sweater,\" he said. \"I'm glad.\" Therese swept her full skirt in an arc and sat on the edge of Richard's bed. The heavy Norwegian sweater she had given Richard was on the bed behind her, lying across its tissued box. Richard had given her a skirt from an East India shop, a long skirt with green and gold bands and embroidery. It was lovely, but Therese did not know where she could ever wear it. \"How about a real shot? That stuff downstairs is sickening.\" Richard got his bottle of whisky from his closet floor. Therese shook her head. \"No, thanks.\" \"This'd be good for you.\" She shook her head again. She looked around her at the high-ceilinged, almost square room, at the wallpaper with the barely discernible pattern of pink roses, at the two peaceful windows curtained in slightly yellowed white muslin. From the door, there were two pale trails in the green carpet, one to the bureau and one to the desk in the corner. The pot of brushes and the portfolio on the floor by the desk were the only signs of Richard's painting. Just as painting took up only a corner of his brain, she felt, and she wondered how much longer he would go on with it before he dropped it for something else."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "And she wondered, as she had often wondered before, if Richard liked her only because she was more sympathetic with his ambitions than anyone else he happened to know now, and because he felt her criticism was a help to him. Therese got up restlessly and went to the window. She loved the room-- because it stayed the same and stayed in the same place--yet today she felt an impulse to burst from it. She was a different person from the one who had stood here three weeks ago. This morning she had awakened in Carol's house. Carol was like a secret spreading through her, spreading through this house, too, like a light invisible to everyone but her. \"You're different today,\" Richard said so abruptly that a thrill of peril passed down her body. \"Maybe it's the dress,\" she said. She was wearing a blue taffeta dress that was God knows how old, that she hadn't put on since her first months in New York. She sat down on the bed again, and looked at Richard who stood in the middle of the floor with the little glass of straight whisky in his hand, his clear blue eyes moving from her face to her feet in the new high-heeled black shoes, back to her face again. \"Terry.\" Richard took her hands, pinned her hands to the bed on either side of her. The smooth, thin lips descended on hers, firmly, with the flick of his tongue between her lips and the aromatic smell of fresh whisky. \"Terry, you're an angel,\" Richard's deep voice said, and she thought of Carol saying the same thing. She watched him pick up his little glass from the floor and set it with the bottle into the closet. She felt immensely superior to him suddenly, to all the people below stairs. She was happier than any of them. Happiness was a little like flying, she thought, like being a kite. It depended on how much one let the string out-- \"Pretty?\" Richard said. Therese sat up. \"It's a beauty!\" \"I finished it last night. I thought if it was a good day, we'd go to the park and fly it.\" Richard grinned like a boy, proud of his handiwork. \"Look at the back.\" It was a Russian kite, rectangular and bowed like a shield, its slim frame notched and tied at the corners. On the front, Richard had painted a cathedral with whirling domes and a red sky behind it. \"Let's go fly it now,\" Therese said. They carried the kite downstairs. Then everybody saw them and came into the hall, uncles,. aunts, and cousins, until the hall was a din and Richard had to hold the kite in the air to protect it. The noise irritated Therese, but Richard loved it. \"Stay for the champagne, Richard!\" one of the aunts shouted, one of the aunts with a fat midriff straining like a second bosom under a satin dress."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "\"Can't,\" Richard said, and added something in Russian, and Therese had a feeling she often had, seeing Richard with his family, that there must have been a mistake, that Richard might be an orphan himself, a changeling, left on the doorstep and brought up a son of this family. But there was his brother Stephen standing in the doorway, with Richard's blue eyes, though Stephen was even taller and thinner. \"What roof?\" Richard's mother asked shrilly. \"This roof?\" Someone had asked if they were going to fly the kite on the roof, and since the house hadn't a roof one could stand on, Richard's mother had gone off into peals of laughter. Then the dog began to bark. \"I'm going to make you that dress!\" Richard's mother called to Therese, wagging her finger admonishingly. \"I know your measurements!\" They had measured her with a tape in the living room, in the midst of all the singing and present opening, and a couple of the men had tried to help, too. Mrs. Semco put her arm around Therese's waist, and suddenly Therese embraced her and kissed her firmly on the cheek, her lips sinking into the soft powdered cheek, in that one second pouring out in the kiss, and in the convulsive clasp of her arm, the affection Therese really had for her, that Therese knew would hide itself again as if it did not exist, in the instant she released her. Then she and Richard were free and alone, walking down the front sidewalk. It wouldn't be any different, if they were married, Therese thought, visiting the family on Christmas Day. Richard would fly his kites even when he was an old man, like his grandfather who had flown kites in Prospect Park until the year he died, Richard had told her. They took the subway to the park, and walked to the treeless hill where they had come a dozen times before. Therese looked around her. There were some boys playing with a football down on the flat field at the edge of the trees, but otherwise the park looked quiet and still. There was not much wind, not really enough, Richard said, and the sky was densely white as if it carried snow. Richard groaned, failing again. He was trying to get the kite up by running with it. Therese, sitting on the ground with her arms around her knees, watched him put his head up and turn in all directions, as if he had lost something in the air. \"Here it is!\" She got up, pointing. \"Yes, but it's not steady.\" Richard ran the kite into it anyway, and the kite sagged on its long string, then jerked up as if something had sprung it. It made a big arc, then began to climb in another direction. \"It's found its own wind!\" Therese said. \"Yes, but it's slow.\" \"What a gloomy Gus! Can I hold it?\" \"Wait'll I get it higher.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Richard pumped at it with long swings of his arms, but the kite stayed at the same place in the cold sluggish air. The golden domes of the cathedral wagged from side to side, as if the whole kite were shaking its head saying no, and the long limp tail followed foolishly, repeating the negation. \"Best we can do,\" Richard said. \"It can't carry any more string.\" Therese did not take her eyes from it. Then the kite steadied and stopped, like a picture of a cathedral pasted on the thick white sky. Carol wouldn't like kites probably, Therese thought. Kites wouldn't amuse her. She would glance at one, and say it was silly. \"Want to take it?\" Richard poked the string stick into her hands, and she got to her feet. She thought, Richard had worked on the kite last night when she was with Carol, which was why he hadn't called her, and didn't know she had not been home. If he had called, he would have mentioned it. Soon there would come the first lie. Suddenly the kite broke its mooring in the sky and tugged sharply to get away. Therese let the stick turn fast in her hands, as long as she dared to under Richard's eyes, because the kite was still low. And now it rested again, stubbornly still. \"Jerk it!\" Richard said. \"Keep working it up.\" She did. It was like playing with a long elastic band. But the string was so long and slack now, it was all she could do to stir the kite. She pulled and pulled and pulled. Then Richard came and took it, and Therese let her arms hang. Her breath came harder, and little muscles in her arms were quivering. She sat down on the ground. She hadn't won against the kite. It hadn't done what she wanted it to do. \"Maybe the string's too heavy,\" she said. It was a new string, soft and white and fat as a worm. \"String's very light. Look now. Now it's going!\" Now it was climbing in short, upward darts, as if it had found its own mind suddenly, and a will to escape. \"Let out more string!\" she shouted. Therese stood up. A bird flew under the kite. She stared at the rectangle that was growing smaller and smaller, jerking back and back like a snip's billowed sail going backward. She felt the kite meant something, this particular kite, at this minute. \"Richard?\" \"What?\" She could see him in the corner of her eye, crouched with his hands out in front of him, as if he rode a surfboard. \"How many times were you in love?\" she asked. Richard laughed, a short, hoarse laugh. \"Never till you.\" \"Yes, you were. You told me about two times.\" \"If I count those, I might count twelve others, too,\" Richard said quickly, with the bluntness of preoccupation. The kite was starting to take arcing step's downward."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Therese kept her voice on the same level. \"Were you ever in love with a boy?\" \"A boy?\" Richard repeated, surprised. \"Yes.\" Perhaps five seconds passed before he said, \"No,\" in a positive and final tone. At least he troubled to answer, Therese thought. What would you do if you were, she had an impulse to ask, but the question would hardly serve a purpose. She kept her eyes on the kite. They were both looking at the same kite, but with what different thoughts in their minds. \"Did you ever hear of it?\" she asked. \"Hear of it? You mean people like that? Of course.\" Richard was standing straight now, winding the string in with figure-eight movements of the stick. Therese said carefully, because he was listening, \"I don't mean people like that. I mean two people who fall in love suddenly with each other, out of the blue. Say two men or two girls.\" Richard's face looked the same as it might have if they had been talking about politics. \"Did I ever know any? No.\" Therese waited until he was working with the kite again, trying to pump it higher. Then she remarked, \"I suppose it could happen, though, to almost anyone, couldn't it?\" He went on, winding the kite. \"But those things don't just happen. There's always some reason for it in the background.\" \"Yes,\" she said agreeably. Therese had thought back into the background. The nearest she could remember to being \"in love\" was the way she had felt about a boy she had seen a few times in the town of Montclair, when she rode in the school bus. He had curly black hair and a handsome, serious face, and he had been perhaps twelve years old, older than she then. She remembered a short time when she had thought of him every day. But that was nothing, nothing like what she felt for Carol. Was it love or wasn't it that she felt for Carol? And how absurd it was that she didn't even know. She had heard about girls falling in love, and she knew what kind of people they were and what they looked like. Neither she nor Carol looked like that. Yet the way she felt about Carol passed all the tests for love and fitted all the descriptions. \"Do you think I could?\" Therese asked simply, before she could debate whether she dared to ask. \"What!\" Richard smiled. \"Fall in love with a girl? Of course not! My God, you haven't, have you?\" \"No,\" Therese said, in an odd, inconclusive tone, but Richard did not seem to notice the tone. \"It's going again. Look, Terry!\" The kite was wobbling straight up, faster and faster, and the stick was whirling in Richard's hands. At any rate, Therese thought, she was happier than she had ever been before. And why worry about defining everything. \"Hey!\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_006.txt", "text": "Richard sprinted after the stick that was leaping crazily around the ground, as if it were trying to leave the earth, too. \"Want to hold it?\" he asked, capturing it. \"Practically takes you up!\" Therese took the stick. There was not much string left, and the kite was all but invisible now. When she let her arms go all the way up, she could feel it lifting her a little, delicious and buoyant, as if the kite might really take her up if it got all its strength together. \"Let it out!\" Richard shouted, waving his arms. His mouth was open, and two spots of red had come in his cheeks. \"Let it out!\" \"There's no more string!\" \"I'm going to cut it!\" Therese couldn't believe she had heard it, but glancing over at him, she saw him reaching under his overcoat for his knife. \"Don't,\" she said. Richard came running over, laughing. \"Don't!\" she said angrily. \"Are you crazy?\" Her hands were tired, but she clung all the harder to the stick. \"Let's cut it! It's more fun!\" And Richard bumped into her rudely, because he was looking up. Therese jerked the stick sideways, out of his reach, speechless with anger and amazement. There was an instant of fear, when she felt Richard might really have lost his mind, and then she staggered backward, the pull gone, the empty stick in her hand. \"You're mad!\" she yelled at him. \"You're insane!\" \"It's only a kite!\" Richard laughed, craning up at the nothingness. Therese looked in vain, even for the dangling string. \"Why did you do it?\" Her voice was shrill with tears. \"It was such a beautiful kite!\" \"It's only a kite!\" Richard repeated. \"I can make another kite!\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_007.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 9 THERESE STARTED to get dressed, then changed her mind. She was still in her robe, reading the script of Small Rain that Phil had brought over earlier, and that was now spread all over the couch. Carol had said she was at Forty-eighth and Madison. She could be here in ten minutes. Therese glanced around her room, and at her face in the mirror, and decided to let it all go. She took some ash trays to the sink and washed them, and stacked the play script neatly on her worktable. She wondered if Carol would have her new handbag with her. Carol had called her last night from some place in New Jersey where she was with Abby, had told her she thought the bag was beautiful but much too grand a present. Therese smiled, remembering Carol's suggesting that she take it back. At least, Carol liked it. The doorbell sounded in three quick rings. Therese looked down the stairwell, and saw Carol was carrying something. She ran down. \"It's empty. It's for you,\" Carol said, smiling. It was a suitcase, wrapped. Carol slipped her fingers from under the handle and let Therese carry it. Therese put it on the couch in her room, and cut the brown paper off carefully. The suitcase was of thick light-brown leather, perfectly plain. \"It's terribly good looking!\" Therese said. \"Do you like it? I don't even know if you need a suitcase.\" \"Of course, I like it.\" This was the kind of suitcase for her, \"this exactly and no other. Her initials were on it in small gold letters--T. M. B. She remembered Carol asking her her middle name on Christmas Eve. \"Work the combination and see if you like the inside.\" Therese did. \"I like the smell, too,\" she said. \"Are you busy? If you are, I'll leave.\" \"No. Sit down. I'm not doing anything--except reading a play.\" \"What play?\" \"A play I have to do sets for.\" She realized suddenly she had never mentioned stage designing to Carol. \"Sets for?\" \"Yes--I'm a stage designer.\" She took Carol's coat. Carol smiled astonishedly. \"Why the hell didn't you tell me?\" she asked quietly. \"How many other rabbits are you going to pull out of your hat?\" \"It's the first real job. And it's not a Broadway play. It's going to be done in the Village. A comedy. I haven't got a union membership yet. I'll have to wait for a Broadway job for that.\" Carol asked her all about the union, the junior and senior memberships that cost fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars respectively. Carol asked her if she had all that money saved up. \"No--just a few hundred. But if I get a job, they'll let me pay it off in installments.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_007.txt", "text": "Carol was sitting on the straight chair, the chair Richard often sat in, watching her, and Therese could read in Carol's expression that she had risen suddenly in Carol's estimation, and she couldn't imagine why she hadn't mentioned before that she was a stage designer, and in fact already had a job. \"Well,\" Carol said, \"if a Broadway job comes out of this, would you consider borrowing the rest of the money from me? Just as a business loan?\" \"Thanks. I--\" \"I'd like to do it for you. You shouldn't be bothered paying off two thousand dollars at your age.\" \"Thanks. But I won't be ready for one for another couple of years.\" Carol lifted her head and blew her smoke out in a thin stream. \"Oh, they don't really keep track of apprenticeships, do they?\" Therese smiled. \"No. Of course not. Would you like a drink? I've got a bottle of rye.\" \"How nice. I'd love one, Therese.\" Carol got up and peered at her kitchenette shelves as Therese fixed the two drinks. \"Are you a good cook?\" \"Yes. I'm better when I have someone to cook for. I can make good omelettes. Do you like them?\" \"No,\" Carol said flatly, and Therese laughed. \"Why don't you show me some of your work?\" Therese got a portfolio down from the closet. Carol sat on the couch and looked at everything carefully, but from her comments and questions, Therese felt she considered them too bizarre to be usable, and perhaps not very good either. Carol said she liked best the Petrushka set on the wall. \"But it's the same thing,\" Therese said. \"The same thing as the drawings, only in model form.\" \"Well, maybe it's your drawings. They're very positive, anyway. I like that about them.\" Carol picked up her drink from the floor and leaned back on the couch. \"You see, I didn't make a mistake, did I?\" \"About what?\" \"About you.\" Therese did not know exactly what she meant. Carol was smiling at her through her cigarette smoke, and it rattled her. \"Did you think you had?\" \"No,\" Carol said. \"What do you have to pay for an apartment like this?\" \"Fifty a month.\" Carol clicked her tongue. \"Doesn't leave you much out of your salary, does it?\" Therese bent over her portfolio, tying it up. \"No. But I'll be making more soon. I won't be living here forever either.\" \"Of course you won't. You'll travel, too, the way you do in imagination. You'll see a house in Italy you'll fall in love with. Or maybe you'll like France. Or California, or Arizona.\" The girl smiled. She probably wouldn't have the money for it, when that happened. \"Do people always fall in love with things they can't have?\" \"Always,\" Carol said, smiling, too. She pushed her fingers through her hair. \"I think I shall take a trip after all.\" \"For how long?\" \"Just a month or so.\" Therese set the portfolio in the closet."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_007.txt", "text": "\"How soon will you be going?\" \"Right away. I suppose as soon as I can arrange everything. And there isn't much to arrange.\" Therese turned around. Carol was rolling the end of her cigarette in the ash tray. It meant nothing to her, Therese thought, that they wouldn't see each other for a month. \"Why don't you go somewhere with Abby?\" Carol looked up at her, and then at the ceiling. \"I don't think she's free in the first place.\" Therese stared at her. She had touched something, mentioning Abby. But Carol's face was unreadable now. \"You're very nice to let me see you so often,\" Carol said. \"You know I don't feel like seeing the people I generally see just now. One can't really. Everything's supposed to be done in pairs.\" How frail she is, Therese felt suddenly, how different from the day of the first lunch. Then Carol got up, as if she knew her thoughts, and Therese sensed a flaunt of assurance in her lifted head, in her smile as she passed her so close their arms brushed, and went on. \"Why don't we do something tonight?\" Therese asked. \"You can stay here if you want to, and I'll finish reading the play. We can spend the evening together.\" Carol didn't answer. She was looking at the flower box in the bookshelf. \"What kind of plants are these?\" \"I don't know.\" \"You don't know?\" They were all different, a cactus with fat leaves that hadn't grown a bit since she bought it a year ago, another plant like a miniature palm tree, and a droopy red-green thing that had to be supported by a stick. \"Just plants.\" Carol turned around, smiling. \"Just plants,\" she repeated. \"What about tonight?\" \"All right. But I won't stay. It's only three. I'll give you a ring around six.\" Carol dropped her lighter in her handbag. It was not the handbag Therese had given her. \"I feel like looking at furniture this afternoon.\" \"Furniture? In stores?\" \"In stores or at the Parke-Bernet. Furniture does me good.\" Carol reached for her coat on the armchair, and again Therese noticed the long line from her shoulder to the wide leather belt, continued in her leg. It was beautiful, like a chord of music or a whole ballet. She was beautiful, and why should her days be so empty now, Therese wondered, when she was made to live with people who loved her, to walk in beautiful houses in beautiful cities, along blue seacoasts with a long horizon and a blue sky to background her. \"Bye-bye,\" Carol said, and in the same movement with which she put on her coat, she put her arm around Therese's waist. It was only an instant, too disconcerting with Carol's arm suddenly about her, to be relief or end or beginning, before the doorbell rang in their ears like the tearing of a brass wall. Carol smiled. \"Who is it?\" she asked."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_007.txt", "text": "Therese felt the sting of Carol's thumbnail in her wrist as she released her. \"Richard probably.\" It could only be Richard, because she knew his long ring. \"Good. I'd like to meet him.\" Therese pressed the bell, then heard Richard's firm, hopping steps on the stairs. She opened the door. \"Hello,\" Richard said. \"I decided--\" \"Richard, this is Mrs. Aird,\" Therese said. \"Richard Semco.\" \"How do you do?\" Carol said. Richard nodded, with almost a bow. \"How do you do,\" he said, his blue eyes stretched wide. They stared at each other, Richard with a square box in his hands as if he were about to present it to her, and Carol standing with a new cigarette in her hand, neither staying nor leaving. Richard put the box on an end table. \"I was so near, I thought I'd come up,\" he said, and under its note of explanation, Therese heard the unconscious assertion of a right, just as she had seen behind his inquisitive stare a spontaneous mistrust of Carol. \"I had to take a present to a friend of Mamma's. This is lebkuchen.\" He nodded at the box and smiled, disarmingly. \"Anybody want some now?\" Carol and Therese declined. Carol was watching Richard as he opened the box with his pocketknife. She liked his smile, Therese thought. She likes him, the gangling young man with unruly blond hair, the broad lean shoulders, and the big funny feet in moccasins. \"Please sit down,\" Therese said to Carol. \"No, I'm going,\" she answered. \"I'll give you half, Terry, then I'll be going too,\" he said. Therese looked at Carol, and Carol smiled at her nervousness and sat down on a corner of the couch. \"Anyway, don't let me rush you off,\" Richard said, lifting the paper with the cake in it to a kitchen shelf. \"You're not. You're a painter, aren't you, Richard?\" \"Yes.\" He popped some loose icing into his mouth, and looked at Carol, poised because he was incapable of being un-poised, Therese thought, his eyes frank because he had nothing to hide. \"Are you a painter, too?\" \"No,\" Carol said with another smile. \"I'm nothing.\" \"The hardest thing to be.\" \"Is it? Are you a good painter?\" \"I will be. I can be,\" said Richard, unperturbed. \"Have you got any beer, Terry? I've got an awful thirst.\" Therese went to the refrigerator and got out the two bottles that were there. Richard asked Carol if she would like some, but Carol refused. Then Richard strolled past the couch, looking at the suitcase and the wrappings, and Therese thought he was going to say something about it, but he didn't. \"I thought we might go to a movie tonight, Terry. I'd like to see that thing at the Victoria. Do you want to?\" \"I can't tonight. I've got a date with Mrs. Aird.\" \"Oh.\" Richard looked at Carol. Carol put out her cigarette and stood up. \"I must be going.\" She smiled at Therese."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_007.txt", "text": "\"Call you back around six. If you change your mind, it's not important. Good-by, Richard.\" \"Good-by,\" Richard said. Carol gave her a wink as she went down the stairs. \"Be a good girl,\" Carol said. \"Where'd the suitcase come from?\" Richard asked when she came back in the room. \"It's a present.\" \"What's the matter, Terry?\" \"Nothing's the matter.\" \"Did I interrupt anything important? Who is she?\" Therese picked up Carol's empty glass. There was a little lipstick at the rim. \"She's a woman I met at the store.\" \"Did she give you that suitcase?\" \"Yes.\" \"It's quite a present. Is she that rich?\" Therese glanced at him. Richard's aversion to the wealthy, to the bourgeois, was automatic. \"Rich? You mean the mink coat? I don't know. I did her a favor. I found something she lost in the store.\" \"Oh?\" he said. \"What? You didn't say anything about it.\" She washed and dried Carol's glass and set it back on the shelf. \"She left her billfold oh the counter and I took it to her, that's all.\" \"Oh. Damned nice reward.\" He frowned. \"Terry, what is it? You're not still sore about that silly kite, are you?\" \"No, of course not,\" she said impatiently. She wished he would go. She put her hands in her robe pockets and walked across the room, stood where Carol had stood, looking at the box of plants. \"Phil brought the play over this morning. I started reading it.\" \"Is that what you're worried about?\" \"What makes you think I'm worried?\" She turned around. \"You're in another of those miles-away moods again.\" \"I'm not worried and I'm not miles away.\" She took a deep breath. \"It's funny--you're so conscious of some moods and so unconscious of others.\" Richard looked at her. \"All right, Terry,\" he said with a shrug, as if he conceded it. He sat down in the straight chair and poured the rest of the beer into his glass. \"What's this date you have with that woman tonight?\" Therese's lips widened in a smile as she ran the end of her lipstick over them. For a moment, she stared at the eyebrow tweezers that lay on the little shelf fixed to the inside of the closet door. Then she put the lipstick down on the shelf. \"It's sort of a cocktail party, I think. Sort of a Christmas benefit thing. In some restaurant, she said.\" \"Hmm. Do you want to go?\" \"I said I would.\" Richard drank his beer, frowning a little over his glass. \"What about afterward? Maybe I could hang around here and read the play while you're gone, and then we could grab a bite and go to the movie.\" \"Afterward, I thought I'd better finish the play. I'm supposed to start on Saturday, and I ought to have some ideas in my head.\" Richard stood up. \"Yep,\" he said casually, with a sigh."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_007.txt", "text": "Therese watched him idle over to the couch and stand there, looking down at the manuscript. Then he bent over, studying the title page, and the cast pages. He looked at his wrist watch, and then at her. \"'Why don't I read it now?\" he asked. \"Go ahead,\" she answered with a brusqueness that Richard either didn't hear or ignored, because he simply lay back on the couch with the manuscript in his hands and began to read. She picked up a book of matches from the shelf. No, he only recognized the \"miles away\" moods, she thought, when he felt himself deprived of her by distance. And she thought suddenly of the times she had gone to bed with him, of her distance then compared to the closeness that was supposed to be, that everyone talked about. It hadn't mattered to Richard then, she supposed, because of the physical fact they were in bed together. And it crossed her mind now, seeing Richard's complete absorption in his reading, seeing the plump, stiff fingers catch a front lock of his hair between them and pull it straight down toward his nose, as she had seen him do a thousand times before, it occurred to her Richard's attitude was that his place in her life was unassailable, her tie with him permanent and beyond question, because he was the first man she had ever slept with. Therese threw the match cover at the shelf, and a bottle of something fell over. Richard sat up, smiling a little, surprisedly. \"'S matter, Terry?\" \"Richard, I feel like being alone--the rest of the afternoon. Would you mind?\" He got up. The surprise did not leave his face. \"No. Of course not.\" He dropped the manuscript on the couch again. \"All right, Terry. It's probably better. Maybe you ought to read this now--read it alone,\" he said argumentatively, as if he persuaded himself. He looked at his watch again. \"Maybe I'll go down and try to see Sam and Joan for a while.\" She stood there not moving, not even thinking of anything except of the few seconds of time to pass until he would be gone, while he brushed his hand once, a little clingy with its moisture, over her hair, and bent to kiss her. Then quite suddenly she remembered the Degas book she had bought days ago, the book of reproductions that Richard wanted and hadn't been able to find anywhere. She got it from the bottom drawer of the bureau. \"I found this. The Degas book.\" \"Oh, swell. Thanks.\" He took it in both hands. It was still wrapped. \"Where'd you find it?\" \"Frankenberg's. Of all places.\" \"Frankenberg's.\" Richard smiled. \"It's six bucks, isn't it?\" \"Oh, that's all right.\" Richard had his wallet out. \"But I asked you to get it for me.\" \"Never mind, really.\" Richard protested, but she didn't take the money. And a minute later, he was gone, with a promise to call her tomorrow at five."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_007.txt", "text": "They might do something tomorrow night, he said. Carol called at ten past six. Did she feel like going to Chinatown, Carol asked. Therese said, of course. \"I'm having cocktails with someone in the St. Regis,\" Carol said. \"Why don't you pick me up here? It's the little room, not the big one. And listen, we're going on to some theater thing you've asked me to. Get it?\" \"Some sort of Christmas benefit cocktail party?\" Carol laughed. \"Hurry up.\" Therese flew. Carol's friend was a man called Stanley McVeigh, a tall and very attractive man of about forty with a mustache and a boxer dog on a leash. Carol was ready to go when she arrived. Stanley walked out with them, put them into a taxi and gave the driver some money through the window. \"Who's he?\" Therese asked. \"An old friend. Seeing more of me now that Harge and I are separating.\" Therese looked at her. Carol had a wonderful little smile in her eyes tonight. \"Do you like him?\" \"So so,\" Carol said. \"Driver, will you make that Chinatown instead of the other?\" It began to rain while they were having dinner. Carol said it always rained in Chinatown, every time she had been here. But it didn't matter much, because they ducked from one shop to another, looking at things and buying things. Therese saw some sandals with platform heels that she thought were beautiful, rather more Persian looking than Chinese, and she wanted to buy them for Carol, but Carol said Rindy wouldn't approve. Rindy was a conservative, and didn't like her even to go without stockings in summer, and Carol conformed to her. The same store had Chinese suits of a black shiny material, with plain trousers and a high-collared jacket, and Carol bought one for Rindy. Therese bought the sandals for Carol anyway, while Carol was arranging for Rindy's suit to be sent. She knew the right size just by looking at the sandals, arid it pleased Carol after all that she bought them. Then they spent a weird hour in a Chinese theater where people in the audience were sleeping through all the clangor. And finally they went uptown for a late supper in a restaurant where a harp played. It was a glorious evening, a really magnificent evening."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_008.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 10 ON TUESDAY, the fifth day of work, Therese sat in a little bare room with no ceiling at the back of the Black Cat Theatre, waiting for Mr. Donohue, the new director, to come and look at her cardboard model. Yesterday morning, Donohue had replaced Cortes as director, had thrown out her first model, and also thrown out Phil McElroy as the second brother in the play. Phil had walked out yesterday in a huff. It was lucky she hadn't been thrown out along with her model, Therese thought, so she had followed Mr. Donohue's instructions to the letter. The new model hadn't the movable section she had put into the first, which would have permitted the living-room scene to be converted into the terrace scene for the last act. Mr. Donohue seemed to be adamant against anything unusual or even simple. By setting the whole play in the living room, a lot of the dialogue had to be changed in the last act, and some of the cleverest lines had been lost. Her new model indicated a fireplace, broad French windows giving onto a terrace, two doors, a sofa, and a couple of armchairs and a bookcase. It would look, when finished, like a room in a model house at Sloan's, lifelike down to the last ash tray. Therese stood up, stretched herself, and reached for the corduroy jacket that was hanging on a nail in the door. The place was cold as a barn. Mr. Donohue probably wouldn't come in until afternoon, or not even today if she didn't remind him again. There was no hurry about the scenery. It might have been the least important matter in the whole production, but she had sat up until late last night, enthusiastically working on the model. She went out to stand in the wings again. The cast was all on stage with scripts in hand. Mr. Donohue kept running the cast through the whole play, to get the flow of it, he said, but today it seemed to be only putting them to sleep. All the cast looked lazy except Tom Harding, a tall blond young man who had the male lead, and he was a little too energetic. Georgia Halloran was suffering from sinus headaches, and had to stop every hour to put drops in her nose and lie down for a few minutes. Geoffrey Andrews, a middle-aged man who played the heroine's father, grumbled constantly between his lines because he didn't like Donohue. \"No, no, no, no,\" said Mr. Donohue for the tenth time that morning, stopping everything and causing everybody to lower his script and turn to him with a puzzled, irritated docility. \"Let's start again from page twenty-eight.\" Therese watched him waving his arms to indicate the speakers, putting up a hand to silence them, following the script with his head down as if he led an orchestra. Tom Harding winked at her, and pulled his hand down his nose."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_008.txt", "text": "After a moment, Therese went back to the room behind the partition, where she worked, where she felt a little less useless. She knew the play almost by heart now. It had a rather Sheridanesque comedy of errors plot--two brothers who pretend to be valet and master in order to impress an heiress with whom one of the brothers is in love. The dialogue was gay and altogether not bad, but the dreary, matter-of-fact set that Donohue had ordered for it--Therese hoped something could be done with the color they would use. Mr. Donohue did come in just after twelve o'clock. He looked at her model, lifted it up and looked at it from below and from both sides, without any change in his nervous, harassed expression. \"Yes, this is fine. I like this very much. You see how much better this is than those empty walls you had before, don't you?\" Therese took a deep breath of relief. \"Yes,\" she said. \"A set grows out of the needs of the actors. This isn't a ballet set you're designing, Miss Belivet.\" She nodded, looking at the model, too, and trying to see how it possibly was better, possibly more functional. \"The carpenter's coming in this afternoon about four. We'll get together and have a talk about this.\" Mr. Donohue went out. Therese stared at the cardboard model. At least she would see it used. At least she and the carpenters would make it something real. She went to the window and looked out at the gray but luminous winter sky, at the backs of some five-story houses garlanded with fire escapes. In the foreground was a small vacant lot with a runted leafless tree in it, all twisted up like a signpost gone wild. She wished she could call Carol and invite her for lunch. But Carol was an hour and a half away by car. \"Is your name Beliver?\" Therese turned to the girl in the doorway. \"Belivet. Telephone?\" \"The phone by the lights.\" \"Thanks.\" Therese hurried, hoping it was Carol, knowing more likely it was Richard. Carol hadn't yet called her here. \"Hello, this is Abby.\" \"Abby?\" Therese smiled. \"How'd you know I was here?\" \"You told me, remember? I'd like to see you. I'm not far away. Have you had lunch yet?\" They agreed to meet at the Palermo, a restaurant a block or two from the Black Cat. Therese whistled a song as she walked there, happy as if she were meeting Carol. The restaurant had sawdust on the floor, and a couple of black kittens played around under the rail of the bar. Abby was sitting at a table in the back. \"Hi,\" Abby said as she came up. \"You're looking very chipper. I almost didn't recognize you. Would you like a drink?\" Therese shook her head. \"No, thanks.\" \"You mean, you're so happy without it?\" Abby asked, and she chuckled with that secret amusement that in Abby was somehow not offensive."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_008.txt", "text": "Therese took the cigarette that Abby offered her. Abby knew, she thought. And perhaps she was in love with Carol, too. It put Therese on guard with her. It created a tacit rivalry that gave her a curious exhilaration, a sense of certain superiority over Abby--emotions that Therese had never known before, never dared to dream of, emotions consequently revolutionary in themselves. So their lunching together in the restaurant became nearly as important as the meeting with Carol. \"How is Carol?\" Therese asked. She had not seen Carol in three days. \"She's very fine,\" Abby said, watching her. The waiter came, and Abby asked him if he could recommend the mussels and the scaloppine. \"Excellent, madame!\" He beamed at her as if she were a special customer. It was Abby's manner, the glow in her face as if today, or every day, were a special holiday for her. Therese liked that. She looked admiringly at Abby's suit of red and blue weave, her cuff links that were scrolly G's, like filigree buttons in silver. Abby asked her about her job at the Black Cat. It was tedious to Therese, but Abby seemed impressed. Abby was impressed, Therese thought, because she did nothing herself. \"I know some people in the producing end of the theater,\" Abby said. \"I'll be glad to put in a word for you any time.\" \"Thanks.\" Therese played with the lid of the grated cheese bowl in front of her. \"Do you know anyone called Andronich? I think he's from Philadelphia.\" \"No,\" Abby said. Mr. Donohue had told her to go and see Andronich next week in New York. He was producing a show that would open this spring in Philadelphia, and then on Broadway. \"Try the mussels,\" Abby was eating hers with gusto. \"Carol likes these, too.\" \"Have you known Carol a long time?\" \"Um-hm,\" Abby nodded, looking at her with the bright eyes that revealed nothing. \"And you know her husband, too, of course.\" Abby nodded again, silently. Therese smiled a little. Abby was out to question her, she felt, but not to disclose anything about herself or about Carol. \"How about some wine? Do you like Chianti?\" Abby summoned a waiter with a snap of her fingers. \"Bring us a bottle of Chianti. A good one. Builds up the blood,\" she added to Therese. Then the main course arrived, and two waiters fussed around the table, uncorking the Chianti, pouring more water and bringing fresh butter. The radio in the corner played a tango--a little cheesebox of a radio with a broken front, but the music might have come from a string orchestra behind them, at Abby's request. No wonder Carol likes her, Therese thought. She complemented Carol's solemnity, she could remind Carol to laugh. \"Did you always live by yourself?\" Abby asked. \"Yes. Since I got out of school.\" Therese sipped her wine. \"Do you? Or do you live with your family?\" \"With my family."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_008.txt", "text": "But I've got my own half of the house.\" \"And do you work?\" Therese ventured. \"I've had jobs. Two or three of them. Didn't Carol tell you we had a furniture shop once? We had a shop just outside of Elizabeth on the highway. We bought up antiques or plain second-hand stuff and fixed it up. I never worked so hard in my life.\" Abby smiled at her gaily, as if every word might be untrue. \"Then my other job. I'm an entomologist. Not a very good one, but good enough to pull bugs out of Italian lemon crates and things like that. Bahama lilies are full of bugs.\" \"So I've heard.\" Therese smiled. \"I don't think you believe me.\" \"Yes, I do. Do you still work at that?\" \"I'm on reserve. Just in time of emergency, I work. Like Easter.\" Therese watched Abby's fork cutting the scaloppine into small bites before she picked any up. \"Do you take trips a lot with Carol?\" \"A lot? No, why?\" Abby asked. \"I should think you'd be good for her. Because Carol's so serious.\" Therese wished she could lead the conversation to the heart of things, but just what the heart of things was, she didn't know. The wine ran slow and warm in her veins, down to her finger tips. \"Not all the time,\" Abby corrected, with the laughter under the surface of her voice, as it had been in the first word Therese had heard her say. The wine in her head promised music or poetry or truth, but she was stranded on the brink. Therese could not think of a single question that would be proper to ask, because all her questions were so enormous. \"How'd you meet Carol?\" Abby asked. \"Didn't Carol tell you?\" \"She just said she met you at Frankenberg's when you had a job there.\" \"Well, that's how,\" Therese said, feeling a resentment her against Abby building up, incontrollably. \"You just started talking?\" Abby asked with a smile, lighting a cigarette. \"I waited on her,\" Therese said, and stopped. And Abby waited, for a precise description of that meeting, Therese knew, but she wouldn't give it to Abby or to anyone else. It belonged to her. Surely Carol hadn't told Abby, she thought, told her the silly story of the Christmas card. It wouldn't be important enough to Carol for Carol to have told her. \"Do you mind telling me who started talking first?\" Therese laughed suddenly. She reached for a cigarette and lighted it, still smiling. No, Carol hadn't told her about the Christmas card, and Abby's question struck her as terribly funny. \"I did,\" Therese said. \"You like her a lot, don't you?\" Abby asked. Therese explored it for hostility. It was not hostile, but jealous. \"Yes.\" \"Why do you?\" \"Why do I? Why do you?\" Abby's eyes still laughed. \"I've known Carol since she was four years old.\" Therese said nothing. \"You're awfully young, aren't you? Are you twenty-one?\" \"No. Not quite.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_008.txt", "text": "\"You know Carol's got a lot of worries right now, don't you?\" \"Yes.\" \"And she's lonely now,\" Abby added, her eyes watching. \"Do you mean that's why she sees me?\" Therese asked calmly. \"Do you want to tell me I shouldn't see her?\" Abby's unblinking eyes blinked twice after all. \"No, not a bit. But I don't want you to get hurt. I don't want you to hurt Carol either.\" \"I'd never hurt Carol,\" Therese said. \"Do you think I would?\" Abby was still watching her alertly, had never taken her eyes from her. \"No, I don't think you would,\" Abby replied as if she had just decided it. And she smiled now as if she were especially pleased about something. But Therese did not like the smile or the question, and realizing her face showed her feelings, she looked down at the table. There was a glass of hot zabaglione standing on a plate in front of her. \"Would you like to come to a cocktail party this afternoon, Therese? It's uptown at about six o'clock. I don't know if there'll be any stage designers there, but one of the girls who's giving it is an actress.\" Therese put her cigarette out. \"Is Carol going to be there?\" \"No. She won't be. But they're all easy to get along with. It's a small party.\" \"Thanks. I don't think I should go. I may have to work late today, too.\" \"Oh. I was going to give you the address anyway, but if you won't come--\" \"No,\" Therese said. Abby wanted to walk around the block after they came out of the restaurant. Therese agreed, though she was tired of Abby now. Abby with her cocksureness, her blunt, careless questions made Therese feel she had gotten an advantage over her. And Abby had not let her pay the check. Abby said, \"Carol thinks a lot of you, you know. She says you have a lot of talent.\" \"Does she?\" Therese said, only half believing it. \"She never told me.\" She wanted to walk faster, but Abby held their pace back. \"You must know she thinks a lot of you, if she wants you to take a trip with her.\" Therese glanced and saw Abby smiling at her, guilelessly. \"She didn't say anything to me about that either,\" Therese said quietly, though her heart had begun pumping. \"I'm sure she will. You'll go with her, won't you?\" Why should Abby know about it before she did, Therese wondered. She felt a flush of anger in her face. What was it all about? Did Abby hate her? If she did, why wasn't she consistent about it? Then in the next instant, the rise of anger fell and left her weak, left her vulnerable and defenseless. She thought, if Abby pressed her against the wall at that moment and said: \"Out with it. What do you want from Carol? How much of her do you want to take from me?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_008.txt", "text": "she would have babbled it all. She would have said: \"I want to be with her. I love to be with her, and what has it got to do with you?\" \"Isn't that for Carol to talk about? Why do you ask me these things?\" Therese made an effort to sound indifferent. It was hopeless. Abby stopped walking. \"I'm sorry,\" she said, turning to her. \"I think I understand better now.\" \"Understand what?\" \"Just--that you win.\" \"Win what?\" \"What,\" Abby echoed with her head up, looking up at the corner of a building, at the sky, and Therese suddenly felt furiously impatient. She wanted Abby to go so she could telephone Carol. Nothing mattered but the sound of Carol's voice. Nothing mattered but Carol, and why did she let herself forget for a moment? \"No wonder Carol thinks such a lot of you,\" Abby said, but if it was a kind remark, Therese did not accept it as such. \"So long, Therese. I'll see you again no doubt.\" Abby held out her hand. Therese took it. \"So long,\" she said. She watched Abby walking toward Washington Square, her step quicker now, her curly head high. Therese went into the drugstore at the next corner and called Carol. She got the maid and then Carol. \"What's the matter?\" Carol asked. \"You sound low.\" \"Nothing. It's dull at work.\" \"Are you doing anything tonight? Would you like to come out?\" Therese came out of the drugstore smiling. Carol was going to pick her up at five thirty. Carol insisted on picking her up, because it was such a rotten trip by train. Across the street, walking away from her, she saw Dannie McElroy, striding along without a coat, carrying a naked bottle of milk in his hand. \"Dannie!\" she called. Dannie turned and walked toward her. \"Come by for a few minutes?\" he yelled. Therese started to say no, then as he came up to her, she took his arm. \"Just for a minute. I've had a long lunch hour already.\" Dannie smiled down at her. \"What time is it? I've been studying till I'm blind.\" \"After two.\" She felt Dannie's arm tensed hard against the cold. There were goose-pimples under the dark hair on his forearm. \"You're mad to go out without a coat,\" she said. \"It clears my head.\" He held the iron gate for her that led to his door. \"Phil's out somewhere.\" The room smelled of pipe smoke, rather like hot chocolate cooking. The apartment was a semi-basement, generally darkish, and the lamp made a warm pool of light on the desk that was always cluttered. Therese looked down at the opened books on his desk, the pages and pages covered with symbols that she could not understand, but that she liked to look at. Everything the symbols stood for was true and proven. The symbols were stronger and more definite than words."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_008.txt", "text": "She felt Dannie's mind swung on them, from one fact to another, as if he bore himself on strong chains, hand over hand through space. She watched him assembling a sandwich, standing at the kitchen table. His shoulders looked very broad and rounded with muscle under his white shirt, shifting a little with the motions of laying the salami and cheese slices onto the big piece of rye bread. \"I wish you'd come by more often, Therese. Wednesday's the only day I'm not home at noon. We wouldn't bother Phil, having lunch, even if he's sleeping.\" \"I will,\" Therese said. She sat down in his desk chair that was half turned around. She had come once for lunch, and once after work. She liked visiting Dannie. One did not have to make small talk with him. In the corner of the room, Phil's sofa bed was unmade, a tangle of blankets and sheets. The two times she had come in before, the bed had been unmade, or Phil had still been in it. The long bookcase pulled out at right angles to the sofa made a unit of Phil's corner of the room, and it was always in disorder, in a frustrated and nervous disorder not at all like the working disorder of Dannie's desk. Dannie's beer can hissed as he opened it. He leaned against the wall with the beer and the sandwich, smiling, delighted to have her here. \"Remember what you said about physics not applying to people?\" \"Umm. Vaguely.\" \"Well, I'm not sure you're right,\" he said as he took a bite. \"Take friendships, for instance. I can think of a lot of cases where the two people have nothing in common. I think there's a definite reason for every friendship just as there's a reason why certain atoms unite and others don't--certain missing factors in one, or certain present factors in the other--what do you think? I think friendships are the result of certain needs that can be completely hidden from both people, sometimes hidden forever.\" \"Maybe. I can think of a few cases, too.\" Richard and herself, for one. Richard got on with people, elbowed his way through the world in a way she, couldn't. She had always been attracted to people with Richard's kind of self-assurance. \"And what's weak about you, Dannie?\" \"Me?\" he said, smiling. \"Do you want to be my friend?\" \"Yes. But you're about the strongest person I know.\" \"Really? Shall I enumerate my shortcomings?\" She smiled, looking at him. A young man of twenty-five who had known where he was going since he was fourteen. He had driven all his energy into one channel--just the opposite of what Richard had done. \"I have a secret and very buried need for a cook,\" Dannie said, \"and a dancing teacher, and someone to remind me to do little things like take my laundry and get haircuts.\" \"I can't remember to take my laundry either.\" \"Oh,\" he said sadly. \"Then it's out."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_008.txt", "text": "And I'd had some hope. I'd had a little feeling of destiny. Because you see what I mean about affinities is true from friendships down to even the accidental glance at someone on the street, there's always a definite reason somewhere. I think even the poets would agree with me.\" She smiled. \"Even the poets?\" She thought of Carol, and then of Abby, of their conversation at lunch that had been so much more than a glance and so much less, and the sequence of emotions it had evoked in her. It depressed her. \"But you have to make allowances for people's perversities, things that don't make much sense.\" \"Perversities? That's only a subterfuge. A word used by the poets.\" \"I thought it was used by the psychologists, \"Therese said. \"I mean, to make allowances--that's a meaningless term. Life is an exact science on its own terms, it's just a matter of finding them and defining them. What doesn't make any sense to you?\" \"Nothing. I was thinking of something that doesn't matter anyway.\" She was suddenly angry again, as she had been on the sidewalk after the lunch. \"What?\" he persisted, frowning. \"Like the lunch I just had,\" she said. \"With whom?\" \"It doesn't matter. If it did, I'd go into it. It's just a waste, like losing something, I thought. But maybe something that didn't exist anyway.\" She had wanted to like Abby because Carol did. \"Except in your mind? That can still be a loss.\" \"Yes--but there are some people or some things people do that you can't salvage anything from finally, because nothing connects with you.\" It was of something else she wanted to talk about, though, not this at all. Not Abby or Carol, but before. Something that made perfect connection and perfect sense. She loved Carol. She leaned her forehead against her hand. Dannie looked at her for a moment, then pushed himself off from the wall. He turned to the stove, and got a match from his shirt pocket, and Therese sensed that the conversation dangled, would always dangle and never be finished, whatever they went on to say. But she felt if she told Dannie every word that she and Abby had exchanged, that he could clear away its subterfuges with a phrase, as if he sprinkled a chemical in the air that would dry up the mist instantly. Or was there always something that logic couldn't touch? Something illogical, behind the jealousy, the suspicion and the hostility in Abby's conversation, that was Abby all by herself? \"Everything's not as simple as a lot of combinations,\" Therese added. \"Some things don't react. But everything's alive.\" He turned around with a broad smile, as if quite another train of thought had entered his head. He was holding up the match that was still smoking. \"Like this match. And I'm not talking physics, about the indestructibility of smoke. In fact, I feel rather poetic today.\" \"About the match?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_008.txt", "text": "\"I feel as if it were growing, like a plant, not disappearing. I feel everything in the world must have the texture of a plant sometimes to a poet. Even this table, like my own flesh.\" He touched the table edge with his palm; \"It's like a feeling I had once riding up a hill on a horse. It was in Pennsylvania. I didn't know how to ride very well then, and I remember the horse turning his head and seeing the hill, and deciding by himself to run up it, his hind legs sank before we took off, and suddenly we were going like blazes and I felt completely in harmony with the horse and the land, as if we were a whole tree simply being stirred by the wind in its branches. I remember being sure that nothing would happen to me then, but some other time, yes, eventually. And it made me very happy. I thought of all the people who are afraid and hoard things, and themselves, and I thought, when everybody in the world comes to realize what I felt going up the hill, then there'll be a kind of right economy of living and of using and using up. Do you know what I mean?\" Dannie had clenched his fist, but his eyes were bright as if he still laughed at himself. \"Did you ever wear out a sweater you particularly liked, and throw it away finally?\" She thought of the green woolen gloves of Sister Alicia that she had neither worn nor thrown away. \"Yes,\" she said. \"Well, that's all I mean. And the lambs who didn't realize how much wool they were losing when somebody sheared them to make the sweater, because they could grow more wool. It's very simple.\" He turned to the coffeepot that he had reheated, that was already boiling. \"Yes.\" She knew. And like Richard and the kite, because he could make another kite. She thought of Abby with a sense of vacuity suddenly, as if the luncheon had been eradicated. For an instant, she felt as if her mind had overflowed a brim and was swimming emptily into space. She stood up. Dannie came toward her, put his hands on her shoulders, and though she felt it was only a gesture, a gesture instead of a word, the spell was broken. She was uneasy at his touch, and the uneasiness was a point of concreteness. \"I should go back,\" she said. \"I'm way late.\" His hands came down, pinning her elbows hard against her sides, and he kissed her suddenly, held his lips hard against hers for a moment, and she felt his warm breath on her upper lip before he released her. \"You are,\" he said, looking at her. \"Why did you--\" She stopped, because the kiss had so mingled tenderness and roughness, she didn't know how to take it. \"'Why,'Terry,\" he said, turning away from her, smiling. \"Did you mind?\" \"No,\" she said."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "index_split_008.txt", "text": "\"Would Richard mind?\" \"I suppose.\" She buttoned her coat. \"I must go,\" she said, moving toward the door. Dannie swung the door open for her, smiling his easy smile, as if nothing had happened. \"Come back tomorrow? Come for lunch.\" \"Tomorrow's Saturday. I don't work.\" \"And we couldn't possibly have lunch.\" She shook her head. \"I don't think so.\" \"All right, come Monday.\" \"All right.\" She smiled, too, and put her hand out automatically and Dannie shook it once, politely. She ran the two blocks to the Black Cat. A little like the horse, she thought. But not enough, not enough to be perfect, and what Dannie meant was perfect."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_009.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 11 \"THE PASTIMES OF idle people,\" Carol said, stretching her legs out before her on the glider. \"It's time Abby got herself a job again.\" Therese said nothing. She hadn't told Carol all the conversation at lunch, but she didn't want to talk about Abby any more. \"Don't you want to sit in a more comfortable chair?\" \"No,\" Therese said. She was sitting on a leather stool near the glider. They had finished dinner a few moments ago, and then come up to this room that Therese had not seen before, a glass enclosed porch off the plain green room. \"What else did Abby say that bothers you?\" Carol asked, still looking straight before her, down her long legs in the navy-blue slacks. Carol seemed tired. She was worried about other things, Therese thought, more important things than this. \"Nothing. Does it bother you, Carol?\" \"Bother me?\" \"You're different with me tonight.\" Carol glanced at her. \"You imagine,\" she said, and the pleasant vibration of her voice faded into silence again. The page she had written last night, Therese thought, had nothing to do with this Carol, was not addressed to her. I feel I am in love with you, she had written, and it should be spring. I want the sun throbbing on my head like chords of music. I think of a sun like Beethoven, a wind like Debussy, and birdcalls like Stravinsky. But the tempo is all mine. \"I don't think Abby likes me,\" Therese remarked. \"I don't think she wants me to see you.\" \"That's not true. You're imagining again.\" \"I don't mean she said it.\" Therese tried to sound as calm as Carol. \"She was very nice. She invited me to a cocktail party.\" \"Whose party?\" \"I don't know. She said uptown. She said you wouldn't be there, so I didn't particularly want to go.\" \"Where uptown?\" \"She didn't say. Just that one of the girls giving it was an actress.\" Carol set her lighter down with a click on the glass table, and Therese sensed her displeasure. \"She did,\" Carol murmured, half to herself. \"Sit over here, Therese.\" Therese got up, and sat down at the very foot of the glider. \"You mustn't think Abby feels that way about you. I know her well enough to know she wouldn't.\" \"All right,\" Therese said. \"But Abby's incredibly clumsy sometimes in the way she talks.\" Therese wanted to forget the whole thing. Carol was still so distant even when she spoke, even when she looked at her. A bar of light from the green room lay across the top of Carol's head, but she could not see Carol's face now. Carol poked her with the back of her toe. \"Hop up.\" But Therese was slow to move, and Carol swung her feet over Therese's head and sat up."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_009.txt", "text": "Then Therese heard the maid's step in the next room, and the plump, Irish-looking maid in the gray and white uniform came in bearing a coffee tray, shaking the porch floor with her quick, eager little steps that sounded so eager to please. \"The cream's in here, ma'am,\" she said, pointing to a pitcher that didn't match the demitasse set. Florence glanced at Therese with a friendly smile and round blank eyes. She was about fifty, with a bun at the back of her neck under the starched white band of her cap. Therese could not establish her somehow, could not determine her allegiance. Therese had heard her refer to Mr. Aird twice as if she were very devoted to him, and whether it was professional or genuine, Therese did not know. \"Will there be anything else, ma'am?\" Florence asked. \"Shall I put out the lights?\" \"No, I like the lights. We won't need anything else, thanks. Did Mrs. Riordan call?\" \"Not yet, ma'am.\" \"Will you tell her I'm out when she does?\" \"Yes, ma'am.\" Florence hesitated, \"I was wondering if you were finished with that new book, ma'am. The one about the Alps.\" \"Go in my room and get it, if you'd like it, Florence. I don't think I want to finish it.\" \"Thank you, ma'am. Good night, ma'am. Good night, miss.\" \"Good night,\" Carol said. While Carol was pouring the coffee, Therese asked, \"Have you decided how soon you're going away?\" \"Maybe in about a week.\" Carol handed her the demitasse with cream in it. \"Why?\" \"Just that I'll miss you. Of course.\" Carol was motionless for a moment, and then she reached for a cigarette, a last one, and crumpled the pack up. \"I was thinking, in fact, you might like to go with me. What do you think, for three weeks or so?\" There it was, Therese thought, as casual as if she suggested their taking a walk together. \"You mentioned it to Abby, didn't you?\" \"Yes,\" Carol said. \"Why?\" Why? Therese could not put into words why it hurt her that Carol had. \"It just seems strange you'd tell her before you said anything to me.\" \"I didn't tell her. I only said I might ask you.\" Carol came over to her and put her hands on Therese's shoulders. \"Look, there's no reason for you to feel like this about Abby--unless Abby said a lot else to you at lunch that you didn't tell me.\" \"No,\" Therese said. No, but it was the undercurrents, it was worse. She felt Carol's hands leave her shoulders. \"Abby's a very old friend of mine,\" Carol said. \"I talk over everything with her.\" \"Yes,\" Therese said. \"Well, do you think you'd like to go?\" Carol had turned away from her, and suddenly it meant nothing, because of the way Carol asked her, as if she didn't really care one way or the other if she went. \"Thanks--I don't think I can afford it just now.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_009.txt", "text": "\"You wouldn't need much money. We'd go in the car. But if you have a job offered you right away, that's different.\" As if she wouldn't turn down a job on a ballet set to go away with Carol-- to go with her through country she had never seen before, over rivers and mountains, not knowing where they would be when night came. Carol knew that, and knew she would have to refuse if Carol asked her in this way. Therese felt suddenly sure that Carol taunted her, and she resented it with the bitter resentment of a betrayal. And the resentment resolved itself into a decision never to see Carol again. She glanced at Carol, who was waiting for her answer, with that defiance only half masked by an air of indifference, an expression that Therese knew would not change at all if she should give a negative answer. Therese got up and went to the box on the end table for a cigarette. There was nothing in the box but some phonograph needles and a photograph. \"What is it?\" Carol asked, watching her. Therese felt Carol had been reading all her thoughts. \"It's a picture of Rindy,\" Therese said. \"Of Rindy? Let's see it.\" Therese watched Carol's face as she looked at the picture of the little girl with the white-blond hair and the serious face, with the taped white bandage on her knee. In the picture, Harge was standing in a rowboat, and Rindy was stepping from a dock into his arms. \"It's not a very good picture,\" Carol said, but her face had changed, grown softer. \"That's about three years old. Would you like a cigarette? There's some over here. Rindy's going to stay with Harge for the next three months.\" Therese had supposed that from the conversation in the kitchen that morning with Abby. \"Is that in New Jersey, too?\" \"Yes. Harge's family lives in New Jersey. They've a big house.\" Carol waited. \"The divorce will come through in a month, I think, and after March, I'll have Rindy the rest of the year.\" \"Oh. But you'll see her again before March, won't you?\" \"A few times. Probably not much.\" Therese looked at Carol's hand holding the photograph, beside her on the glider, carelessly. \"Won't she miss you?\" \"Yes, but she's very fond of her father, too.\" \"Fonder than she is of you?\" \"No. Not really. But he's bought her a goat to play with now. He takes her to school on his way to work, and he picks her up at four. Neglects his business for her--and what more can you ask of a man?\" \"You didn't see her Christmas, did you?\" Therese said. \"No. Because of something that happened in the lawyer's office. That was the afternoon Harge's lawyer wanted to see us both, and Harge had brought Rindy, too. Rindy said she wanted to go to Harge's house for Christmas. Rindy didn't know I wasn't going to be there this year."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_009.txt", "text": "They have a big tree that grows on the lawn and they always decorate it, so Rindy was set on it. Anyway, it made quite an impression on the lawyer, you know, the child asking to go home for Christmas with her father. And naturally I didn't want to tell Rindy then I wasn't going, or she'd have been disappointed. I couldn't have said it anyway, in front of the lawyer. Harge's machinations are enough.\" Therese stood there, crushing the unlighted cigarette in her fingers. Carol's voice was calm, as it might have been if she talked to Abby, Therese thought. Carol had never said so much to her before. \"But the lawyer understood?\" Carol shrugged. \"It's Harge's lawyer, not mine. So I agreed to the three- month arrangement now, because I don't want her to be tossed back and forth. If I'm to have her nine months and Harge three--it might as well start now.\" \"You won't even visit her?\" Carol waited so long to answer, Therese thought she was not going to. \"Not very often. The family isn't too cordial. I talk to Rindy every day on the telephone. Sometimes she calls me.\" \"Why isn't the family cordial?\" \"They never cared for me. They've been complaining ever since Harge met me at some deb party. They're very good at criticizing. I sometimes wonder just who would pass with them.\" \"What do they criticize you for?\" \"For having a furniture shop, for instance. But that didn't last a year. Then for not playing bridge, or not liking to. They pick out the funny things, the most superficial things.\" \"They sound horrid.\" \"They're not horrid. One's just supposed to conform. I know what they'd like, they'd like a blank they could fill in. A person already filled in disturbs them terribly. Shall we play some music? Don't you ever like the radio?\" \"Sometimes.\" Carol leaned against the window sill. \"And now Rindy's got television every day. Hopalong Cassidy. How she'd love to go out West. That's the last doll I'll ever buy for her, Therese. I only got it because she said she wanted one, but she's outgrown them.\" Behind Carol, an airport searchlight made a pale sweep in the night, and disappeared. Carol's voice seemed to linger in the darkness. In its richer, happier tone, Therese could hear the depths within her where she loved Rindy, deeper than she would probably ever love anyone else. \"Harge doesn't make it easy for you to see her, does he?\" \"You know that,\" Carol said. \"I don't see how he could be so much in love with you.\" \"It's not love. It's a compulsion. I think he wants to control me. I suppose if I were a lot wilder but never had an opinion on anything except his opinion-- Can you follow all this?\" \"Yes.\" \"I've never done anything to embarrass him socially, and that's all he cares about really. There's a certain woman at the club I wish he'd married."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_009.txt", "text": "Her life is entirely filled with giving exquisite little dinner parties and being carried out of the best bars feet first--She's made her husband's advertising business a great success, so he smiles on her little faults. Harge wouldn't smile, but he'd have some definite reason for complaint. I think he picked me out like a rug for his living room, and he made a bad mistake. I doubt if he's capable of loving anyone, really. What he has is a kind of acquisitiveness, which isn't much separate from his ambition. It's getting to be a disease, isn't it, not being able to love?\" She looked at Therese. \"Maybe it's the times. If one wanted to, one could make out a case for racial suicide. Man trying to catch up with his own destructive machines.\" Therese said nothing. It reminded her of a thousand conversations with Richard, Richard mingling war and big business and Congressional witch-hunts and finally certain people he knew into one grand enemy, whose only collective label was hate. Now Carol, too. It shook Therese in the profoundest part of her where no words were, no easy words like death or dying or killing. Those words were somehow future, and this was present. An inarticulate anxiety, a desire to know, know anything, for certain, had jammed itself in her throat so for a moment she felt she could hardly breathe. Do you think, do you think, it began. Do you think both of us will die violently someday, be suddenly shut off? But even that question wasn't definite enough. Perhaps it was a statement after all: I don't want to die yet without knowing you. Do you feel the same way, Carol? She could have uttered the last question, but she could not have said all that went before it. \"You're the young generation,\" Carol said. \"And what have you got to say?\" She sat down on the glider. \"I suppose the first thing is not to be afraid.\" Therese turned and saw Carol's smile. \"You're smiling because you think I am afraid, I suppose.\" \"You're about as weak as this match.\" Carol held it burning for a moment after she lighted her cigarette. \"But given the right conditions, you could burn a house down, couldn't you?\" \"Or a city.\" \"But you're even afraid to take a little trip with me. You're afraid because you think you haven't got enough money.\" \"That's not it.\" \"You've got some very strange values, Therese. I asked you to go with me, because it would give me pleasure to have you. I should think it'd be good for you, too, and good for your work. But you've got to spoil it by a silly pride about money. Like that handbag you gave me. Out of all proportion. Why don't you take it back, if you need the money? I don't need the handbag. It gave you pleasure to give it to me, I suppose. It's the same thing, you see."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_009.txt", "text": "Only I make sense and you don't.\" Carol walked by her and turned to her again, poised with one foot forward and her head up, the short blond hair as unobtrusive as a statue's hair. \"Well, do you think it's funny?\" Therese was smiling. \"I don't care about the money,\" she said quietly. \"What do you mean?\" \"Just that,\" Therese said. \"I've got the money to go. I'll go.\" Carol stared at her. Therese saw the sullenness leave her face, and then Carol began to smile, too, with surprise, a little incredulously. \"Well, all right,\" Carol said. \"I'm delighted.\" \"I'm delighted.\" \"What brought this happy change about?\" Doesn't she really know, Therese thought. \"You do seem to care whether I go or not,\" Therese said simply. \"Of course I care. I asked you, didn't I?\" Carol said, still smiling, but with a twist of her toe, she turned her back on Therese and walked toward the green room. Therese watched her go, her hands in her pockets and her moccasins making light slow clicks on the floor. Therese looked at the empty doorway. Carol would have walked out exactly the same way, she thought, if she had said no, she wouldn't go. She picked up her half-finished demitasse, then set it down again. She went out and across the hall, to the door of Carol's room. \"What are you doing?\" Carol was bending over her dressing table, writing. \"What am I doing?\" She stood up and slipped a piece of paper into her pocket. She was smiling now, really smiling in her eyes, like the moment in the kitchen with Abby. \"Something,\" Carol said. \"Let's have some music.\" \"Fine.\" A smile spread over her face. \"Why don't you get ready for bed first? It's late, do you know that?\" \"It always gets late with you.\" \"Is that a compliment?\" \"I don't feel like going to bed tonight.\" Carol crossed the hall to the green room. \"You get ready. You've got circles under your eyes.\" Therese undressed quickly in the room with the twin beds. The phonograph in the other room played \"Embraceable You.\" Then the telephone rang. Therese opened the top drawer of the bureau. It was empty except for a couple of men's handkerchiefs, an old clothesbrush, and a key. And a few papers in the corner. Therese picked up a card covered in isinglass. It was an old driver's license that belonged to Harge. Hargess Foster Aird. Age: 37. Height: 5'8\". Weight: 168. Hair: blond. Eyes: blue. She knew all that. A 1950 Oldsmobile. Color: dark blue. Therese put it back and closed the drawer. She went to the door and listened. \"I am sorry, Tessie, but I did get stuck after all,\" Carol was saying regretfully, but her voice was happy. \"Is it a good party?... Well, I'm not dressed and I'm tired.\" Therese went to the bed table and got a cigarette from the box there. A Philip Morris."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_009.txt", "text": "Carol had put them there, not the maid, Therese knew, because Carol remembered that she liked them. Naked now, Therese stood listening to the music It was a song she didn't know. Was Carol on the telephone again? \"Well, I don't like it,\" she heard Carol say, half angry, half joking, \"one damn bit.\" . it's easy to live... when you're in love... \"How do I know what kind of people they are?... Oh-ho! Is that so?\" Abby, Therese knew. She blew her smoke out and snuffed at the slightly sweet smelling wisps of it, remembering the first cigarette she had ever smoked, a Philip Morris, on the roof of a dormitory at the Home, four of them passing it around. \"Yes, we're going,\" Carol said emphatically. \"Well, I am. Don't I sound it?\" ... For you... maybe I'm a fool but it's fun... People say you rule me with one... wave of your hand... darling, it's grand o o o they just don't understand... It was a good song. Therese closed her eyes and leaned on the half-open door, listening. Behind the voice was a slow piano that rippled all over, the keyboard. And a lazy trumpet. Carol said, \"That's nobody's business but mine, is it?... Nonsense!\" and Therese smiled at her vehemence. Therese closed the door. The phonograph had dropped another record. \"Why don't you come say hello to Abby?\" Carol said. Therese had ducked behind the bathroom door because she was naked. \"Why?\" \"Come along,\" Carol said, and Therese put on a robe and went. \"Hello,\" Abby said. \"I hear you're going.\" \"Is that news to you?\" Abby sounded silly, as if she wanted to talk all night. She wished Therese a pleasant trip, and told her about the roads in the corn belt, how bad they could be in winter. \"Will you forgive me if I was rude today?\" Abby said for the second time. \"I like you O. K., Therese.\" \"Cut it, cut it!\" Carol called down. \"She wants to talk to you again,\" Therese said. \"Tell Abigail I'm in the tub.\" Therese told her, and got away. Carol had brought a bottle and two little glasses into the room. \"What's the matter with Abby?\" Therese asked. \"What do you mean, what's the matter with her?\" Carol poured a brown colored liquor into the two glasses. \"I think she's had a couple tonight.\" \"I know. But why did she want to have lunch with me?\" \"Well--I guess a lot of reasons. Try some of this stuff.\" \"It just seems vague,\" Therese said. \"What does?\" \"The whole lunch.\" Carol gave her a glass. \"Some things are always vague, darling.\" It was the first time Carol had called her darling. \"What things?\" Therese asked. She wanted an answer, a definite answer. Carol sighed. \"A lot of things. The most important things. Taste your drink.\" Therese sipped it, sweet and dark brown, like coffee, with the sting of alcohol. \"Tastes good.\" \"You would think so.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_009.txt", "text": "\"Why do you drink it if you don't like it?\" \"Because it's different. This is to our trip, so it's got to be something different.\" Carol grimaced and drank the rest of her glass. In the light of the lamp, Therese could see all the freckles on half of Carol's face. Carol's white looking eyebrow bent like a wing around the curve of her forehead. Therese felt ecstatically happy all at once. \"What's that song that was playing before, the one with just the voice and the piano?\" \"Hum it.\" She whistled part of it, and Carol smiled. \"'Easy Living,'\" Carol said. \"That's an old one.\" \"I'd like to hear it again.\" \"I'd like you to get to bed. I'll play it again.\" Carol went into the green room, and stayed there while it played. Therese stood by the door of her room, listening, smiling. ... I'll never regret... the years I'm giving... They're easy to give, when you're in love... I'm happy to do whatever I do for you... That was her song. That was everything she felt about Carol. She went in the bathroom before it was over, and turned the water on in the tub, got in and let the greenish looking water tumble about her feet. \"Hey!\" Carol called. \"Have you ever been to Wyoming?\" \"No.\" \"It's time you saw America.\" Therese lifted the dripping rag and pressed it against her knee. The water was so high now, her breasts looked like flat things floating on the surface. She studied them, trying to decide what they looked like besides what they were. \"Don't go to sleep in there,\" Carol called in a preoccupied voice, and Therese knew she was sitting on the bed, looking at a map. \"I won't.\" \"Well, some people do.\" \"Tell me more about Harge,\" she said as she dried herself. \"What does he do?\" \"A lot of things.\" \"I mean, what's his business?\" \"Real estate investment.\" \"What's he like? Does he like to go to the theater? Does he like people?\" \"He likes a little group of people who play golf,\" Carol said with finality. Then in a louder voice, \"And what else? He's very, very meticulous about everything. But he forgot his best razor. It's in the medicine cabinet and you can see it if you want to and you probably do. I've got to mail it to him, I suppose.\" Therese opened the medicine cabinet. She saw the razor. The medicine cabinet was still full of men's things, after-shaving lotions and lather brushes. \"Was this his room?\" she asked as she came out of the bathroom. \"Which bed did he sleep in?\" Carol smiled. \"Not yours.\" \"Can I have some more of this?\" Therese asked, looking at the liqueur bottle. \"Of course.\" \"Can I kiss you good night?\" Carol was folding the road map, pursing her lips as if she would whistle, waiting. \"No,\" she said. \"Why not?\" Anything seemed possible tonight. \"I'll give you this instead.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_009.txt", "text": "Carol pulled her hand out of her pocket. It was a check. Therese read the sum, two hundred dollars, made out to her. \"What's this for?\" \"For the trip. I don't want you to spend the money you'll need for that union membership thing.\" Carol took a cigarette. \"You won't need all of that, I just want you to have it.\" \"But I don't need it,\" Therese said. \"Thanks. I don't care if I spend the union money.\" \"No back talk,\" Carol interrupted her. \"It gives me pleasure, remember?\" \"But I won't take it.\" She sounded curt, so she smiled a little as she put the check down on the table top by the liqueur bottle. But she had thumped the check down, too. She wished she could explain it to Carol. It didn't matter at all, the money, but since it did give Carol pleasure, she hated not to take it. \"I don't like the idea,\" Therese said. \"Think of something else.\" She looked at Carol. Carol was watching her, was not going to argue with her, Therese was glad to see. \"To give me pleasure?\" Carol asked. Therese's smile broadened. \"Yes,\" she said, and picked up the little glass. \"All right,\" Carol said. \"I'll think. Good night.\" Carol had stopped by the door. It was a funny way of saying good night, Therese thought, on such an important night. \"Good night,\" Therese answered. She turned to the table and saw the check again. But it was for Carol to tear up. She slid it under the edge of the dark-blue linen table runner, out of sight."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_010.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 12 JANUARY. IT WAS all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year. January rained the moments down, and froze them in her memory: the woman she saw peering anxiously by the light of a match at the names in a dark doorway, the man who scribbled a message and handed it to his friend before they parted on the sidewalk, the man who ran a block for a bus and caught it. Every human action seemed to yield a magic. January was a two- faced month, jangling like jester's bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define. A young man named Red Malone and a baldheaded carpenter worked with her on the Small Rain set. Mr. Donohue was very pleased with it. He said he had asked a Mr. Baltin to come in and see her work. Mr. Baltin was a graduate of a Russian academy, and had designed a few sets for theaters in New York. Therese had never heard of him. She tried to get Mr. Donohue to arrange an appointment for her to see Myron Blanchard or Ivor Harkevy, but Mr. Donohue never promised anything. He couldn't, Therese supposed. Mr. Baltin came in one afternoon, a tall, bent man in a black hat and a seedy overcoat, and looked intently at the work she showed him. She had brought only three or four models down to the theatre, her very best ones. Mr. Baltin told her of a play that was to start in production in about six weeks. He would be glad to recommend her as an assistant, and Therese said that would work out very well, because she would be out of town until then, anyway. Everything was working out very well in these last days. Mr. Andronich had promised her a two-week job in Philadelphia in the middle of February, which would be just about the time she would be back from the trip with Carol. Therese wrote down the name and address of the man Mr. Baltin knew. \"He's looking for someone now, so call him the first of the week,\" Mr. Baltin said. \"It'll just be a helper's job, but his helper, a pupil of mine, is working with Harkevy now.\" \"Oh. Do you suppose you--or he could arrange for me to see Harkevy?\" \"Nothing easier. All you have to do is call Harkevy's studio and ask to speak to Charles. Charles Winant. Tell him that you've spoken with me. Let's see--call him Friday. Friday afternoon around three.\" \"All right. Thank you.\" Friday was a whole week off. Harkevy was not unapproachable, Therese had heard, but he had the reputation of never making appointments, much less keeping them if he did make them, because he was very busy."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_010.txt", "text": "But maybe Mr. Baltin knew. \"And don't forget to call Kettering,\" Mr. Baltin said as he left. Therese looked again at the name he had given her: Adolph Kettering, Theatrical Investments, Inc., at a private address. \"I'll call him Monday morning. Thanks a lot.\" That was the day, a Saturday, when she was to meet Richard in the Palermo after work. It was the seventh of January, eleven days before she and Carol planned to leave. She saw Phil standing with Richard at the bar. \"Well, how's the old Cat?\" Phil asked her, dragging up a stool for her. \"Working Saturdays, too?\" \"The cast didn't work. Just my department,\" she said. \"When's the opening?\" \"The twenty-first.\" \"Look,\" Richard said. He pointed to a spot of dark-green paint on her skirt. \"I know. I did that days ago.\" \"What would you like to drink?\" Phil asked her. \"I don't know. Maybe I'll have a beer, thanks.\" Richard had turned his back on Phil, who stood on the other side of him, and she sensed an ill-feeling between them. \"Did you do any painting today?\" she asked Richard. Richard's mouth was down at both corners. \"Had to pinch hit for some driver who was sick. Ran out of gas in the middle of Long Island.\" \"Oh. That's rotten. Maybe you'd rather paint than go anywhere tomorrow.\" They had talked of going over to Hoboken tomorrow, just to walk around and eat at the Clam House. But Carol would be in town tomorrow, and had promised to call her. \"I'll paint if you'll sit for me,\" Richard said. Therese hesitated uncomfortably. \"I just don't feel in the mood for sitting these days. \"All right. It's not important.\" He smiled. \"But how can I ever paint you if you'll never sit?\" \"Why don't you do it out of the air?\" Phil slid his hand out and held the bottom of her glass. \"Don't drink that. Have something better. I'll drink this.\" \"All right. I'll try a rye and water.\" Phil was standing on the other side of her now. He looked cheerful, but a little dark around the eyes. For the past week, in a sullen mood, he had been writing a play. He had read a few scenes of it aloud at his New Year's party. Phil called it an extension of Kafka's Metamorphosis. She had drawn a rough sketch for a set New Year's morning, and showed it to Phil when she came down to see him. And suddenly it occurred to her, that was what was the matter with Richard. \"Terry, I wish you'd make a model we can photograph from that sketch you showed me. I'd like to have a set to go with the script.\" Phil pushed the rye and water toward her, and leaned on the bar close beside her. \"I might,\" Therese said. \"Are you really going to try to get it produced?\" \"Why not?\" Phil's dark eyes challenged her above his smile."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_010.txt", "text": "He snapped his fingers at the barman. \"Check?\" \"I'll pay,\" Richard said. \"No, you won't. This is mine.\" Phil had his old black wallet in his hand. His play would never be produced, Therese thought, might not even be finished, because Phil's moods were capricious. \"I'll be moving along,\" Phil said. \"Drop by soon, Terry. Cheerio, Rich.\" She watched him go off and up the little front stairs, shabbier than she had ever seen him in his sandals and threadbare polo coat, yet with an attractive nonchalance about his shabbiness. Like a man walking through his house in his favorite old bathrobe, Therese thought. She waved back at him through the front window. \"I hear you took Phil sandwiches and beer New Year's Day,\" Richard said. \"Yes. He called up and said he had a hangover.\" \"Why didn't you mention it?\" \"I forgot, I suppose. It wasn't important.\" \"Not important. If you--\" Richard's stiff hand gestured slowly, hopelessly. \"If you spend half the day in a guy's apartment, bringing him sandwiches and beer? Didn't it occur to you I might have wanted some sandwiches, too?\" \"If you did, you had plenty of people to get them for you. We'd eaten and drunk everything in Phil's house. Remember?\" Richard nodded his long head, still smiling the downward, disgruntled smile. \"And you were alone with him, just the two of you.\" \"Oh, Richard--\" She remembered, and it was so unimportant. Dannie hadn't been back from Connecticut that day. He had spent New Year's at the house of one of his professors. She had hoped Dannie would come in that afternoon at Phil's, but Richard would probably never think that, never guess she liked Dannie a lot better than Phil. \"If any other girl did that, I'd suspect something was brewing and I'd be right,\" Richard went on. \"I think you're being silly.\" \"I think you're being naive.\" Richard was looking at her stonily, resentfully, and Therese thought, it surely couldn't be only this he was so resentful about. He resented the fact that she wasn't and never could be what he wished her to be, a girl who loved him passionately and would love to go to Europe with him. A girl like herself, with her face, her ambitions, but a girl who adored him. \"You're not Phil's type, you know,\" he said. \"Whoever said I was? Phil?\" \"That twerp, that half-baked dilettante,\" Richard murmured. \"And he has the nerve to sound off tonight and say you don't give a damn for me.\" \"He hasn't any right to say that. I don't discuss you with him.\" \"Oh, that's a fine answer. Meaning if you had, he'd know you didn't give a damn, eh?\" Richard said it quietly, but his voice shook with anger. \"What's Phil suddenly got against you?\" she asked. \"That's not the point!\" \"What is the point?\" she said impatiently. \"Oh, Terry, let's stop it.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_010.txt", "text": "\"You can't find any point,\" she said, but seeing Richard turn away from her and shift his elbows on the bar, almost as if he writhed physically under her words, she felt a sudden compassion for him. It was not now, not last week that galled him, but the whole past and future futility of his own feelings about her. Richard plunged his cigarette into the ash tray on the bar. \"What do you want to do tonight?\" he asked. Tell him about the trip with Carol, she thought. Twice before she had meant to tell him, and put it off. \"Do you want to do anything?\" She emphasized the last word. \"Of course,\" he said depressedly. \"What do you say we have dinner, then call up Sam and Joan? Maybe we can walk up and see them tonight.\" \"All right.\" She hated it. Two of the most boring people she had ever met, a shoe clerk and a secretary, happily married on West Twentieth Street, and she knew Richard meant to show her an ideal life in theirs, to remind her that they might live together the same way one day. She hated it, and any other night she might have protested, but the compassion for Richard was still in her, dragging after it an amorphous wake of guilt and a necessity to atone. Suddenly, she remembered a picnic they had had last summer, off the road near Tarrytown, remembered precisely Richard's reclining on the grass, working ever so slowly with his pocketknife at the cork in the wine bottle, while they talked of--what? But she remembered that moment of contentment, that conviction that they shared something wonderfully real and rare together that day, and she wondered now where it had gone to, on what it had been based. For now even his long flat figure standing beside her seemed to oppress her with its weight. She forced down her resentment, but it only grew heavy inside her, like a thing of substance. She looked at the chunky figures of the two Italian workmen standing at the bar, and at the two girls at the end of the bar whom she had noticed before, and now that they were leaving, she saw that they were in slacks. One had hair cut like a boy's. Therese looked away, aware that she avoided them, avoided being seen looking at them. \"Want to eat here? Are you hungry yet?\" Richard asked. \"No. Let's go somewhere else.\" So they went out and walked north, in the general direction of where Sam and Joan lived. Therese rehearsed the first words until all their sense was rubbed out. \"Remember Mrs. Aird, the woman you met in my house that day?\" \"Sure.\" \"She's invited me to go on a trip with her, a trip West in a car for a couple of weeks or so. I'd like to go.\" \"West? California?\" Richard said surprisedly. \"Why?\" \"Why?\" \"Well---do you know her as well as that?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_010.txt", "text": "\"I've seen her a few times.\" \"Oh. Well, you didn't mention it.\" Richard walked along with his hands swinging at his sides, looking at her. \"Just the two of you?\" \"Yes.\" \"When would you be leaving?\" \"Around the eighteenth.\" \"Of this month?--Then you won't get to see your show.\" She shook her head. \"I don't think it's so much to miss.\" \"Then it's definite?\" \"Yes.\" He was silent a moment. \"What kind of a person is she? She doesn't drink or anything, does she?\" \"No.\" Therese smiled. \"Does she look like she drinks?\" \"No. I think she's very good looking, in fact. It's just damned surprising, that's all.\" \"Why?\" \"You so seldom make up your mind about anything. You'll probably change your mind again.\" \"I don't think so.\" \"Maybe I can see her again sometime with you. Why don't you arrange it?\" \"She said she'd be in the city tomorrow. I don't know how much time she's got--or really whether she'll call or not.\" Richard didn't continue and neither did Therese. They did not mention Carol again that evening. Richard spent Sunday morning painting, and came to Therese's apartment around two. He was there when Carol telephoned a little later. Therese told her that Richard was with her, and Carol said, \"Bring him along.\" Carol said she was near the Plaza, and they might meet there in the Palm Room. Half an hour later, Therese saw Carol look up at them from a table near the center of the room, and almost like the first time, like the echo of an impact that had been tremendous, Therese was jolted by the sight of her. Carol was wearing the same black suit with the green and gold scarf that she had worn the day of the luncheon. But now Carol paid more attention to Richard than to her. The three of them talked of nothing, and Therese, seeing the calm in Carol's gray eyes that only once turned to her, seeing a quite ordinary expression on Richard's face, felt a kind of disappointment. Richard had gone out of his way to meet her, but Therese thought it was even less from curiosity than because he had nothing else to do. She saw Richard looking at Carol's hands, the nails manicured in a bright red, saw him notice the ring with the clear green sapphire, and the wedding ring on the other hand. Richard could not say they were useless hands, idle hands, despite the longish nails. Carol's hands were strong, and they moved with an economy of motion. Her voice emerged from the flat murmur of other voices around them, talking of nothing at all with Richard, and once she laughed. Carol looked at her. \"Did you tell Richard we might go on a trip?\" she asked. \"Yes. Last night.\" \"West?\" Richard asked. \"I'd like to go up to the Northwest. It depends on the roads.\" And Therese was suddenly impatient. Why did they sit here having a conference about it?"}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_010.txt", "text": "Now they were talking about temperatures, and the state of Washington. \"Washington's my home state,\" Carol said. \"Practically.\" Then a few moments later, Carol asked if anyone wanted to take a walk in the park. Richard paid the check for their beer and coffee, pulling a bill from the tangle of bills and change that bulged a pocket of his trousers. How indifferent he was to Carol after all, Therese thought. She felt he didn't see her, as he sometimes hadn't seen figures in rock or cloud formations when she had tried to point them out to him. He was looking down at the table now, the thin careless line of his mouth half smiling as he straightened up and shoved his hand quickly through his hair. They walked from the entrance of the park at Fifty-ninth Street toward the zoo, and through the zoo at a strolling pace. They walked on under the first bridge over the path, where the path bent and the real park began. The air was cold and still, a little overcast, and Therese felt a motionlessness about everything, a lifeless stillness even in their slowly moving figures. \"Shall I hunt up some peanuts?\" Richard asked. Carol was stooped at the edge of the path, holding her fingers out to a squirrel. \"I have something,\" she said softly, and the squirrel started at her voice but advanced again, seized her fingers in a nervous grip and fixed its teeth on something, and dashed away. Carol stood up, smiling. \"Had something in my pocket from this morning.\" \"Do you feed squirrels out where you live?\" Richard asked. \"Squirrels and chipmunks,\" Carol replied. What dull things they talked of, Therese thought. Then they sat on a bench and smoked a cigarette, and Therese, watching a diminutive sun bring its orange fire down finally into the scraggly black twigs of a tree, wished the night were here already and that she were alone with Carol. They began to walk back. If Carol had to go home now, Therese thought, she would do something violent. Like jump off the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Or take the three benzedrine tablets Richard had given her last week. \"Would you people like to have some tea somewhere?\" Carol asked as they neared the zoo again. \"How about that Russian place over by Carnegie Hall?\" \"Rumpelmayer's is right here,\" Richard said. \"Do you like Rumpelmayer's?\" Therese sighed. And Carol seemed to hesitate. But they went there. Therese had been here once with Angelo, she remembered. She did not care for the place. Its bright lights gave her a feeling of nakedness, and it was annoying not to know if one were looking at a real person or at a reflection in a mirror. \"No, none of that, thanks,\" Carol said, shaking her head at the great tray of pastry the waitress was holding. But Richard chose something, chose two pastries, though Therese had declined. \"What's that for, in case I change my mind?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_010.txt", "text": "she asked him, and Richard winked at her. His nails were dirty again, she noticed. Richard asked Carol what kind of car she had, and they began discussing the merits of various car makes. Therese saw Carol glance about at the tables in front of her. She doesn't like it here either, Therese thought. Therese stared at a man in the mirror that was set obliquely behind Carol. His back was to Therese, and he leaned forward, talking animatedly to a woman, jerking his spread left hand for emphasis. She looked at the thin, middle-aged woman he spoke to, and back at him, wondering if the aura of familiarity about him were real or an illusion like the mirror, until a memory fragile as a bubble swam upward in her consciousness and burst at the surface. It was Harge. Therese glanced at Carol, but if Carol had noticed him, she thought, Carol would not know that he was in the mirror behind her. A moment later, Therese looked over her shoulder, and saw Harge in profile, much like one of the images she carried in her memory from the house--the short high nose, the full lower face, the receding twist of blond hair above the usual hairline. Carol must have seen him, only three tables away to her left. Carol looked from Richard to Therese. \"Yes,\" she said to her, smiling a little, and turned back to Richard and went on with her conversation. Her manner was just as before, Therese thought, not different at all. Therese looked at the woman with Harge. She was not young, not very attractive. She might have been one of his relatives. Then Therese saw Carol mash out a long cigarette. Richard had stopped talking. They were ready to leave. Therese was looking at Harge the moment he saw Carol. After his first glimpse of her, his eyes drew almost shut as if he had to squint to believe her, and then he said something to the woman he was with and stood up and went to her. \"Carol,\" Harge said. \"Hello, Harge.\" She turned to Therese and Richard. \"Would you excuse me a minute?\" Watching from the doorway where she stood with Richard, Therese tried to see it all, to see beyond the pride and aggressiveness in Harge's anxious, forward leaning figure that was not quite so tall as the crown of Carol's hat, to see beyond Carol's acquiescent nods as he spoke, to surmise not what they talked of now but what they had said to each other five years ago, three years ago, that day of the picture in the rowboat. Carol had loved him once, and that was hard to remember. \"Can we get free now, Terry?\" Richard asked her. Therese saw Carol nod good-by to the woman at Harge's table, then turn away from Harge. Harge looked past Carol, to her and Richard, and without apparently recognizing her, he went back to his table."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_010.txt", "text": "\"I'm sorry,\" Carol said as she rejoined them. On the sidewalk, Therese drew Richard aside and said, \"I'll say good night, Richard. Carol wants me to visit a friend of hers tonight with her.\" \"Oh.\" Richard frowned. \"I had those concert tickets for tonight, you know.\" Therese remembered suddenly. \"Alex's. I forgot. I'm sorry.\" He said gloomily, \"It's not important.\" It wasn't important. Richard's friend Alex was accompanying somebody in a violin concert, and had given Richard the tickets, she remembered, weeks ago. \"You'd rather see her than me, wouldn't you?\" he said. Therese saw that Carol was looking for a taxi. Carol would leave them both in a moment. \"You might have mentioned the concert this morning, Richard, reminded me, at least.\" \"Was that her husband?\" Richard's eyes narrowed under his frown. \"What is this, Terry?\" \"What's what?\" she said. \"I don't know her husband.\" Richard waited a moment, then the frown left his eyes. He smiled, as if he conceded he had been unreasonable. \"Sorry. I just took it for granted I'd see you tonight.\" He walked toward Carol. \"Good night,\" he said. He looked as if he were leaving by himself, and Carol said, \"Are you going downtown? Maybe I can drop you.\" \"I'm walking, thanks.\" \"I thought you two had a date,\" Carol said to Therese. Therese saw that Richard was lingering, and she walked toward Carol, out of his hearing. \"Not an important one. I'd rather stay with you.\" A taxi had slid up beside Carol. Carol put her hand on the door handle. \"Well, neither is our date so important, so why don't you go on with Richard tonight?\" Therese glanced at Richard, and saw that he had heard her. \"Bye-bye, Therese,\" Carol said. \"Good night,\" Richard called. \"Good night,\" Therese said, and watched Carol pull the taxi door shut after her. \"So,\" Richard said. Therese turned toward him. She wouldn't go to the concert, and neither would she do anything violent, she knew, nothing more violent than walk quickly home and get to work on the set she wanted to finish by Tuesday for Harkevy. She could see the whole evening ahead, with a half-dismal, half- defiant fatality, in the second it took for Richard to walk to her. \"I still don't want to go to the concert,\" she said. To her surprise, Richard stepped back and said angrily, \"All right, don't!\" and turned away. He walked west on Fifty-ninth Street in his loose, lopsided gait that jutted his right shoulder ahead of the other, hands swinging unrhythmically at his sides, and she might have known from the walk alone that he was angry. And he was out of sight in no time. The rejection from Kettering last Monday flashed across her mind. She stared at the darkness where Richard had disappeared. She did not feel guilty about tonight. It was something else. She envied him."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_010.txt", "text": "She envied him his faith there would always be a place, a home, a job, someone else for him. She envied him that attitude. She almost resented his having it."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_011.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 13 RICHARD BEGAN IT. \"Why do you like her so much?\" It was an evening on which she had broken a date with Richard on the slim chance Carol would come by. Carol hadn't, and Richard had come by instead. Now at five past eleven in the huge pink-walled cafeteria on Lexington Avenue, she had been about to begin, but Richard was ahead of her. \"I like being with her, I like talking with her. I'm fond of anybody I can talk to.\" The phrases of some letter she had written to Carol and never mailed drifted across her mind as if to answer Richard. I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me. \"You've got a hell of a crush on her,\" Richard announced, explanatorily and resentfully. Therese took a deep breath. Should she be simple and say yes, or should she try to explain it? What could he ever understand of it, even if she explained it in a million words? \"Does she know it? Of course she knows it.\" Richard frowned and drew on his cigarette. \"Don't you think it's pretty silly? It's like a crush that schoolgirls get.\" \"You don't understand,\" she said. She felt so very sure of herself. I will comb you like music caught in the heads of all the trees in the forest... \"What's there to understand? But she understands. She shouldn't indulge you. She shouldn't play with you like this. It's not fair to you.\" \"Not fair to me?\" \"What's she doing, amusing herself with you? And then one day she'll get tired of you and kick you out.\" Kick me out, she thought. What was in or out? How did one kick out an emotion? She was angry, but she did not want to argue. She said nothing. \"You're in a daze!\" \"I'm wide awake. I never felt more awake.\" She picked up the table knife and rubbed her thumb back and forth on the ridge at the base of the blade. \"Why don't you leave me alone?\" He frowned. \"Leave you alone?\" \"Yes.\" \"You mean, about Europe, too?\" \"Yes,\" she said. \"Listen, Terry--\" Richard wriggled in his chair and leaned forward, hesitated, then took another cigarette, lighting it distastefully, throwing the match on the floor. \"You're in some kind of trance! It's worse--\" \"Just because I don't want to argue with you?\" \"It's worse than being lovesick, because it's so completely unreasonable. Don't you understand that?\" No, she didn't understand a word. \"But you're going to get over it in about a week. I hope. My God!\" He squirmed again. \"To say--to say for a minute you practically want to say good- by to me because of some silly crush!\" \"I didn't say that. You said it.\" She looked back at him, at his rigid face that was beginning to redden in the center of the flat cheeks."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_011.txt", "text": "\"But why should I want to be with you if all you do is argue about this?\" He sat back. \"Wednesday, next Saturday, you won't feel like this at all. You haven't known her three weeks yet.\" She looked over toward the steam tables, where people edged slowly along, choosing this and that, drifting toward the curve in the counter where they dispersed. \"We may as well say good-by,\" she said, \"because neither of us will ever be any different from what we are this minute.\" \"Therese, you're like a person gone so crazy, you think you're saner than ever!\" \"Oh, let's stop it!\" Richard's hand with its row of knuckles embedded in the white, freckled flesh was clenched on the table motionless, like a picture of a hand that had hammered some ineffectual, inaudible point. \"I'll tell you one thing, I think your friend knows what she's doing. I think she's committing a crime against you. I've half a mind to report her to somebody, but the trouble is you're not a child. You're just acting like one.\" \"Why do you make so much out of it?\" she asked. \"You're practically in a frenzy.\" \"You make enough out of it to want to say good-by to me! What do you know about her?\" \"What do you know about her?\" \"Did she ever make any passes at you?\" \"God!\" Therese said. She felt like saying it a dozen times. It summed up everything, her imprisonment now, here, yet. \"You don't understand.\" But he did, and that was why he was angry. But did he understand that she would have felt the same way if Carol had never touched her? Yes, and if Carol had never even spoken to her after that brief conversation about a doll's valise in the store. If Carol, in fact, had never spoken to her at all, for it had all happened in that instant she had seen Carol standing in the middle of the floor, watching her. Then the realization that so much had happened after that meeting made her feel incredibly lucky suddenly. It was so easy for a man and woman to find each other, to find someone who would do, but for her to have found Carol--\"I think I understand you better than you understand me. You don't really want to see me again, either, because you said yourself I'm not the same person. If we keep on seeing each other, you'll only get more and more--like this.\" \"Terry, forget for a minute I ever said I wanted you to love me, or that I love you. It's you as a person, I mean. I like you. I'd like--\" \"I wonder sometimes why you think you like me, or did like me. Because you didn't even know me.\" \"You don't know yourself.\" \"But I do--and I know you. You'll drop painting someday and me with it. Just as you've dropped everything else you ever started, as far-as I can see."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_011.txt", "text": "The dry-cleaning thing, or the used-car lot--\" \"That's not true,\" Richard said sullenly. \"But why do you think you like me? Because I paint a little, too, and we can talk about that? I'm just as impractical as a girl friend for you as painting is as a business for you.\" She hesitated a minute, then said the rest of it, \"You know enough about art anyway to know you'll never make a good painter. You're like a little boy playing truant as long as you can, knowing all the time what you ought to be doing and what you'll finally be doing, working for your father.\" Richard's blue eyes had gone suddenly cold. The line of his mouth was straight and very short now, the thin upper lip faintly curling. \"All that isn't quite the point now, is it?\" \"Well--yes. It's part of your hanging on when you know it's hopeless, and when you know you'll finally let go.\" \"I will not!\" \"Richard, there's no point--!\" \"You're going to change your mind, you know.\" She understood that. It was like a song he kept singing to her. A week later, Richard stood in her room with the same expression of sullen anger on his face, talking in the same tone. He had called up at the unusual hour of three in the afternoon, and insisted on seeing her for a moment. She was packing a bag to take to Carol's for the week end. If she hadn't been packing for Carol's house, Richard might have been in quite another mood, she thought, because she had seen him three times the past week, and he had never been pleasanter, never been more considerate of her. \"You can't just give me marching orders out of your life,\" he said, flinging his long arms out, but there was a lonesome tone in it, as if he had already started on that road away from her. \"What really makes me sore is that you act like I'm not worth anything, that I'm completely ineffectual. It isn't fair to me, Terry. I can't compete!\" No, she thought, of course he couldn't. \"I don't have any quarrel with you,\" she said. \"It's you who choose to quarrel over Carol. She hasn't taken anything away from you, because you didn't have it in the first place. But if you can't go on seeing me--\" She stopped, knowing he could and probably would go on seeing her. \"What logic,\" he said, rubbing the heel of his hand into his eye. Therese watched him, caught by the idea that had just come to her, that she knew suddenly was a fact. Why hadn't it occurred to her the night of the theater, days ago? She might have known it from a hundred gestures, words, looks, this past week."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_011.txt", "text": "But she remembered the night of the theater especially-- he had surprised her with tickets to something she particularly wanted to see-- the way he had held her hand that night, and from his voice on the telephone, not just telling her to meet him here or there, but asking her very sweetly if she could. She hadn't liked it. It was not a manifestation of affection, but rather a means of ingratiating himself, of somehow paving the way for the sudden questions he had asked so casually that night, \"What do you mean you're fond of her? Do you want to go to bed with her?\" Therese had replied, \"Do you think I would tell you if I did?\" while a quick succession of emotions--humiliation, resentment, loathing of him--had made her speechless, had made it almost impossible for her to keep walking beside him. And glancing at him, she had seen him looking at her with that soft, inane smile that in memory now looked cruel, and unhealthy. And its unhealthiness might have escaped her, she thought, if it weren't that Richard was so frankly trying to convince her she was unhealthy. Therese turned and tossed into the overnight bag her toothbrush and her hairbrush, then remembered she had a toothbrush at Carol's. \"Just what do you want from her, Therese? Where's it going to go from here?\" \"Why are you so interested?\" He stared at her and for a moment beneath the anger she saw the fixed curiosity she had seen before, as if he were watching a spectacle through a keyhole'. But she knew he was not so detached as that. On the contrary, she sensed that he was never so bound to her as now, never so determined not to give her up. It frightened her. She could imagine the determination transformed to hatred and to violence. Richard sighed, and twisted the newspaper in his hands. \"I'm interested in you. You can't just say to me, 'Find someone else.' I've never treated you the way I treated the others, never thought of you that way.\" She didn't answer. \"Damn!\" Richard threw the newspaper at the bookshelf, and turned his back on her. The newspaper flicked the Madonna, and it tipped back against the wall as if astonished, fell over, and rolled off the edge. Richard made a lunge for it and caught it in both hands. He looked at Therese and smiled involuntarily. \"Thanks.\" Therese took it from him. She lifted it to set it back then brought her hands down quickly and smashed the figure to the floor. \"Terry!\" The Madonna lay in three or four pieces. \"Never mind it,\" she said. Her heart was beating as if she were angry, or fighting. \"But--\" \"To hell with it!\" she said, pushing the pieces aside with her shoe. Richard left a moment later, slamming the door. What was it, Therese wondered, the Andronich thing or Richard?"}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_011.txt", "text": "Mr. Andronich's secretary had called about an hour ago and told her that Mr. Andronich had decided to hire an assistant from Philadelphia instead of her. So that job would not be there to come back to, after the trip with Carol. Therese looked down at the broken Madonna. The wood was quite beautiful inside. It had cracked cleanly along the grain. Carol asked her in detail that evening about her talk with Richard. It irked Therese that Carol was so concerned as to whether Richard were hurt or not. \"You're not used to thinking of other people's feelings,\" Carol said bluntly to her. They were in the kitchen fixing a late dinner, because Carol had given the maid the evening off. \"What real reason have you to think he's not in love with you?\" Carol asked. \"Maybe I just don't understand how he works. But it doesn't seem like love to me.\" Then in the middle of dinner, in the middle of a conversation about the trip, Carol remarked suddenly, \"You shouldn't have talked to Richard at all.\" It was the first time Therese had told Carol any of it, any of the first conversation in the cafeteria with Richard. \"Why not? Should I have lied to him?\" Carol was not eating. Now she pushed back her chair and stood up. \"You're much too young to know your own mind. Or what you're talking about. Yes, in that case, lie.\" Therese laid her fork down. She watched Carol get a cigarette and light it. \"I had to say good-by to him and I did. I have. I won't see him again.\" Carol opened a panel in the bottom of the bookcase and took out a bottle. She poured some into an empty glass and slammed the panel shut. \"Why did you do if now? Why not two months ago or two months from now? And why did you mention me?\" \"I know--I think it fascinates him.\" \"It probably does.\" \"But if I simply don't see him again--\" She couldn't finish it, about his not being apt to follow her, spy on her. She didn't want to say such things to Carol. And besides, there was the memory of Richard's eyes. \"I think he'll give it up. He said he couldn't compete.\" Carol struck her forehead with her hand. \"Couldn't compete,\" she repeated. She came back to the table and poured some of the water from her glass into the whisky. \"How true. Finish your dinner. I may be making too much of it, I don't know.\" But Therese did not move. She had done the wrong thing. And at best, even doing the right thing, she could not make Carol happy as Carol made her happy, she thought as she had thought a hundred times before. Carol was happy only at moments here and there, moments that Therese caught and kept."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_011.txt", "text": "One had been in the evening they put away the Christmas decorations, and Carol had refolded the string of angels and put them between the pages of a book. \"I'm going to keep these,\" she had said. \"With twenty-two angels to defend me, I can't lose.\" Therese looked at Carol now, and though Carol was watching her, it was through that veil of preoccupation that Therese so often saw, that kept them a world apart. \"Lines,\" Carol said. \"I can't compete. People talk of classics. These lines are classic. A hundred different people will say the same words. There are lines for the mother, lines for the daughter, for the husband and the lover. I'd rather see you dead at my feet. It's the same play repeated with different casts. What do they say makes a play a classic, Therese?\" \"A classic--\" Her voice sounded tight and stifled. \"A classic is something with a basic human situation.\" When Therese awakened, the sun was in her room. She lay for a moment, watching the watery looking sunspots rippling on the pale green ceiling, listening for any sound of activity in the house. She looked at her blouse, hanging over the edge of the bureau. Why was she so untidy in Carol's house? Carol didn't like it. The dog that lived somewhere beyond the garages was barking intermittently, halfheartedly. There had been one pleasant interval last evening, the telephone call from Rindy. Rindy back from a birthday party at nine thirty. Could she give a birthday party on her birthday in April. Carol said of course. Carol had been different after that. She had talked about Europe, and summers in Rapallo. Therese got up and went to the window, raised it higher and leaned on the sill, tensing herself against the cold. There were no mornings anywhere like the mornings from this window. The round bed of grass beyond the driveway had darts of sunlight in it, like scattered gold needles. There were sparks of sun in the moist hedge leaves, and the sky was a fresh solid blue. She looked at the place in the driveway where Abby had been that morning, and at the bit of white fence beyond the hedges that marked the end of the lawn. The ground looked breathing and young, even though the winter had browned the grass. There had been trees and hedges around the school in Montclair, but the green had always ended in part of a red brick wall, or a gray stone building that was part of the school--an infirmary, a woodshed, a toolhouse--and the green each spring had seemed old already, used and handed down by one generation of children to the next, as much a part of school paraphernalia as textbooks and uniforms. She dressed in the plaid slacks she had brought from home, and one of the shirts she had left from another time, that had been laundered. It was twenty past eight."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_011.txt", "text": "Carol liked to get up about eight thirty, liked to be awakened by someone with a cup of coffee, though Therese had noticed she never had Florence do it. Florence was in the kitchen when she went down, but she had only just started the coffee. \"Good morning,\" Therese said. \"Do you mind if I fix the breakfast?\" Florence hadn't minded the two other times she had come in and found Therese fixing them. \"Go ahead, miss,\" Florence said. \"I'll just make my own fried eggs. You like doing things for Mrs. Aird yourself, don't you?\" she said like a statement. Therese was getting two eggs out of the refrigerator. \"Yes,\" she said, smiling. She dropped one of the eggs into the water that was just beginning to heat. Her answer sounded rather flat, but what other answer was there? When she turned around after setting the breakfast tray, she saw Florence had put the second egg in the water. Therese took it out with her fingers. \"She wants only one egg,\" Therese said. \"That's for my omelette.\" \"Does she? She always used to eat two.\" \"Well--she doesn't now,\" Therese said. \"Shouldn't you measure that egg anyway, miss?\" Florence gave her the pleasant professional smile. \"Here's the egg timer, top of the stove.\" Therese shook her head. \"It comes out better when I guess.\" She had never gone wrong yet on Carol's egg. Carol liked it a little better done than the egg timer made it. Therese looked at Florence, who was concentrating now on the two eggs she was frying in the skillet. The coffee was almost all filtered. In silence, Therese prepared the cup to take up to Carol. Later in the morning, Therese helped Carol take in the white iron chairs and the glider from the lawn in back of the house. It would be simpler with Florence there, Carol said, but Carol had sent her away marketing, then had a sudden whim to get the furniture in. It was Harge's idea to leave them out all winter, she said, but she thought they looked bleak. Finally only one chair remained by the round fountain, a prim little chair of white metal with a bulging bottom and four lacy feet. Therese looked at it and wondered who had sat there. \"I wish there were more plays that happened out of doors,\" Therese said. \"What do you think of first when you start to make a set?\" Carol asked. \"What do you start from?\" \"The mood of the play, I suppose. What do you mean?\" \"Do you think of the kind of play it is, or of something you want to see?\" One of Mr. Donohue's remarks brushed Therese's mind with a vague unpleasantness. Carol was in an argumentative mood this morning. \"I think you're determined to consider me an amateur,\" Therese said. \"I think you're rather subjective. That's amateurish, isn't it?\" \"Not always.\" But she knew what Carol meant."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_011.txt", "text": "\"You have to know a lot to be absolutely subjective, don't you? In those things you showed me, I think you're too subjective--without knowing enough.\" Therese made fists of her hands in her pockets. She had so hoped Carol would like her work, unqualifiedly. It had hurt her terribly that Carol hadn't liked in the least a certain few sets she had shown her. Carol knew nothing about it, technically, yet she could demolish a set with a phrase. \"I think a look at the West would do you good. When did you say you had to be back? The middle of February?\" \"Well, now I don't--I just heard yesterday.\" \"What do you mean? It fell through? The Philadelphia job?\" \"They called me up. They want somebody from Philadelphia.\" \"Oh, baby. I'm sorry.\" \"Oh, it's just this business,\" Therese said. Carol's hand was on the back of her neck, Carol's thumb rubbing behind her ear as Carol might have fondled a dog. \"You weren't going to tell me.\" \"Yes, I was.\" \"When?\" \"Sometime on the trip.\" \"Are you very disappointed?\" \"No,\" Therese said positively. They heated the last cup of coffee and took it out to the white chair on the lawn and shared it. \"Shall we have lunch out somewhere?\" Carol asked her. \"Let's go to the club. Then I ought to do some shopping in Newark. How about a jacket? Would you like a tweed jacket?\" Therese was sitting on the edge of the fountain, one hand pressed against her ear because it was aching from the cold. \"I don't particularly need one,\" she said. \"But I'd particularly like to see you in one.\" Therese was upstairs, changing her clothes, when she heard the telephone ring. She heard Florence say, \"Oh, good morning, Mr. Aird. Yes, I'll call her right now,\" and Therese crossed the room and closed the door. Restlessly, she began to put the room in order, hung her clothes in the closet, and smoothed the bed she had already made. Then Carol knocked on the door and put her head in. \"Harge is coming by in a few minutes. I don't think he'll be long.\" Therese did not want to see him. \"Would you like for me to take a walk?\" Carol smiled. \"No. Stay up here and read a book, if you want to.\" Therese got the book she had bought yesterday, the Oxford Book of English Verse, and tried to read it, but the words stayed separate and meaningless. She had a disquieting sense of hiding, so she went to the door and opened it. Carol was just coming from her room, and for an instant, Therese saw the same look of indecision cross her face that Therese remembered from the first moment she had entered the house. Then she said, \"Come down.\" Harge's car drove up as they walked into the living room."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_011.txt", "text": "Carol went to the door, and Therese heard their greeting, Carol's only cordial, but Harge's very cheerful, and Carol came in with a long flower box in her arms. \"Harge, this is Miss Belivet. I think you met her once,\" Carol said. Harge's eyes narrowed a little, then opened. \"Oh, yes. How do you do?\" \"How do you do?\" Florence came in, and Carol handed the flower box to her. \"Would you put these in something?\" Carol said. \"Ah, here's that pipe. I thought so.\" Harge reached behind the ivy on the mantel, and brought forth a pipe. \"Everything is fine at home?\" Carol asked as she sat down at the end of the sofa. \"Yes. Very.\" Harge's tense smile did not show his teeth, but his face and the quick turns of his head radiated geniality and self-satisfaction. He watched with proprietary pleasure as Florence brought in the flowers, red roses, in a vase, and set them on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Therese wished suddenly that she had brought Carol flowers, brought them on any of a half a dozen occasions past, and she remembered the flowers Dannie had brought to her one day when he simply dropped in at the theater. She looked at Harge, and his eyes glanced away from her, the peaked brow lifting still higher, the eyes darting everywhere, as if he looked for little changes in the room. But it might all be pretense, Therese thought, his air of good cheer. And if he cared enough to pretend he must also care in some way for Carol. \"May I take one for Rindy?\" Harge asked. \"Of course.\" Carol got up, and she would have broken a flower, but Harge stepped forward and put a little knife blade against the stem and the flower came off. \"They're very beautiful. Thank you, Harge.\" Harge lifted the flower to his nose. Half to Carol, half to Therese, he said, \"It's a beautiful day. Are you going to take a drive?\" \"Yes, we were,\" Carol said. \"By the way, I'd like to drive over one afternoon next week. Perhaps Tuesday.\" Harge thought a moment. \"All right. I'll tell her.\" \"I'll speak to her on the phone. I meant tell your family.\" Harge nodded once, in acquiescence, then looked at Therese. \"Yes, I remember you. Of course. You were here about three weeks ago. Before Christmas.\" \"Yes. One Sunday.\" Therese stood up. She wanted to leave them alone. \"I'll go upstairs,\" she said to Carol. \"Good-by, Mr. Aird.\" Harge made her a little bow. \"Good-by.\" As she went up the stairs, she heard Harge say, \"Well, many happy returns, Carol. I'd like to say it. Do you mind?\" Carol's birthday, Therese thought. Of course, Carol wouldn't have told her. She closed the door and looked around the room, realized she was looking for any sign that she had spent the night. There was none."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "index_split_011.txt", "text": "She stopped at the mirror and looked at herself for a moment, frowningly. She was not so pale as she had been three weeks ago when Harge saw her, she did not feel like the drooping, frightened thing Harge had met then. From the top drawer, she got her handbag and took her lipstick out of it. Then she heard Harge knock on the door, and she closed the drawer. \"Come in.\" \"Excuse me. I must get something.\" He crossed the room quickly, went into the bathroom, and he was smiling as he came back with the razor in his hand. \"You were in the restaurant with Carol last Sunday, weren't you?\" \"Yes,\" Therese said. \"Carol said you do stage designing.\" \"Yes.\" He glanced from her face to her hands, to the floor, and up again. \"I hope you see that Carol gets out enough,\" he said. \"You look young and spry. Make her take some walks.\" Then he went briskly out the door, leaving behind him a faint shaving- soap scent. Therese tossed her lipstick onto the bed, and wiped her palms down the side of her skirt. She wondered why Harge troubled to let her know he took it for granted she spent a great deal of time with Carol. \"Therese!\" Carol called suddenly. \"Come down!\" Carol was sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. Harge had gone. She looked at Therese with a little smile. Then Florence came in and Carol said, \"Florence, you can take these somewhere else. Put them in the dining room.\" \"Yes, ma'am.\" Carol winked at Therese. Nobody used the dining room, Therese knew. Carol preferred to eat anywhere else. \"Why didn't you tell me it was your birthday?\" Therese asked her. \"Oh!\" Carol laughed. \"It's not. It's my wedding anniversary. Get your coat and let's go.\" As they backed out of the driveway, Carol said, \"If there's anything I can't stand, it's a hypocrite.\" \"What did he say?\" \"Nothing of any importance.\" Carol was still smiling. \"But you said he was a hypocrite.\" \"Par excellence.\" \"Pretending all this good humor?\" \"Oh--just partially that.\" \"Did he say anything about me?\" \"He said you looked like a nice girl. Is that news?\" Carol shot the car down the narrow road to the village. \"He said the divorce will take about six weeks longer than we'd thought, due to some more red tape. That's news. He has an idea I still might change my mind in the meantime. That's hypocrisy. I think he likes to fool himself.\" Was life, were human relations like this always, Therese wondered. Never solid ground underfoot. Always like gravel, a little yielding, noisy so the whole world could hear, so one always listened, too, for the loud, harsh step of the intruder's foot. \"Carol I never took that check, you know,\" Therese remarked suddenly. \"I stuck it under the cloth on the table by the bed.\" \"What made you think of that?\" \"I don't know."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "index_split_011.txt", "text": "Do you want me to tear it up? I started to that night.\" \"If you insist,\" Carol said."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_012.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 14 THERESE LOOKED DOWN at the big cardboard box. \"I don't want to take it.\" Her hands were full. \"I can let Mrs. Osborne take the food out and the rest can stay here.\" \"Bring it,\" Carol said, going out the door. She carried down the last dribble of things, the books and the jackets Therese had decided at the last minute that she wanted. Therese came back upstairs for the box. It had come an hour ago by messenger--a lot of sandwiches in wax paper, a bottle of blackberry wine, a cake, and a box containing the white dress Mrs. Semco had promised her. Richard had had nothing to do with the box, she knew, or there would have been a book or an extra note in it. An unwanted dress still lay on the couch, a corner of the rug was turned back, but Therese was impatient to be off. She pulled the door shut, and hurried down the steps with the box, past the Kellys' who were both away at work, past Mrs. Osborne's door. She had said good-by to Mrs. Osborne an hour ago when she had paid the next month's rent. Therese was just closing the car door, when Mrs. Osborne called her from the front steps. \"Telephone call!\" Mrs. Osborne shouted, and reluctantly Therese got out, thinking it was Richard. It was Phil McElroy, calling her to ask about the interview with Harkevy yesterday. She had told Dannie about it last night when they had had dinner together. Harkevy hadn't promised her a job, but he had said to keep in touch, and Therese felt he meant it. He had let her come to see him backstage in the theater where he was supervising the set for Winter Town. He had chosen three of her cardboard models and looked very carefully at them, dismissed one as a little dull, pointed out some impracticality in the second, and liked best the hall-like set Therese had started the evening she had come back from the first visit to Carol's house. He was the first person who had ever given her less conventional sets a serious consideration. She had called Carol up immediately and told her about the meeting. She told Phil about the Harkevy interview, but she didn't mention that the Andronich job had fallen through. She knew it was because she didn't want Richard to hear about it. Therese asked Phil to let her know what play Harkevy was doing sets for next, because he said he hadn't decided himself between two plays. There was more of a chance he would take her on as apprentice, if he chose the English play he had talked about yesterday. \"I don't know any address to give you yet,\" Therese said. \"I know we'll get to Chicago.\" Phil said he might drop her a letter general delivery there. \"Was that Richard?\" Carol asked when she came back. \"No. Phil McElroy.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_012.txt", "text": "\"So you haven't heard from Richard?\" \"I haven't for the last few days. He sent me a telegram this morning.\" Therese hesitated, then took it from her pocket and read it. \"I have not changed, neither have you. WRITE TO ME. I LOVE YOU. RICHARD.\" \"I think you should call him,\" Carol said. \"Call him from my house.\" They were going to spend the night at Carol's house and leave early in the morning. \"Will you put on that dress tonight?\" Carol asked. \"I'll try it on. It looks like a wedding dress.\" Therese put on the dress just before dinner. It hung below her calf, and the waist tied in back with long white bands that in front were stitched down and embroidered. She went down to show it to Carol. Carol was in the living room writing a letter. \"Look,\" Therese said, smiling. Carol looked at her for a long moment, then came over and examined the embroidery at the waist. \"That's a museum piece. You look adorable. Wear it this evening, will you?\" \"It's so elaborate.\" She didn't want to wear it, because it made her think of Richard. \"What the hell kind of style is it, Russian?\" Therese gave a laugh. She liked the way Carol cursed, always casually, and when no one else could hear her. \"Is it?\" Carol repeated. Therese was going upstairs. \"Is it what?\" \"Where did you get this habit of not answering people?\" Carol demanded, her voice suddenly harsh with anger. Carol's eyes had the angry white light she had seen in them the time she refused to play the piano. And what angered her now was just as trifling. \"I'm sorry, Carol. I guess I didn't hear you.\" \"Go ahead,\" Carol said, turning away. \"Go on up and take it off.\" It was Harge still, Therese thought. Therese hesitated a minute, then went upstairs. She untied the waist and the sleeves, glanced at herself in the mirror, then tied them all back again. If Carol wanted her to keep it on, she would. They fixed dinner themselves, because Florence had already started her three weeks' leave. They opened some special jars of things that Carol said she had been saving, and they made stingers in the cocktail shaker just before dinner. Therese thought Carol's mood had passed, but when she started to pour a second stinger for herself, Carol said shortly, \"I don't think you should have any more of that.\" And Therese deferred, with a smile. And the mood went on. Nothing Therese said or did could change it, and Therese blamed the inhibiting dress for not being able to think of the right things to say. They took brandied chestnuts and coffee up to the porch after dinner, but they said even less to each other in the semidarkness, and Therese only felt sleepy and rather depressed. The next morning, Therese found a paper bag on the back doorstep."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_012.txt", "text": "Inside it was a toy monkey with gray and white fur. Therese showed it to Carol. \"My God,\" Carol said softly, and smiled. \"Jacopo.\" She took the monkey and rubbed her forefinger against its slightly dirty white cheek. \"Abby and I used to have him hanging in the back of the car,\" Carol said. \"Abby brought it? Last night?\" \"I suppose.\" Carol went on to the car with the monkey and a suitcase. Therese remembered wakening from a doze on the glider last night, awakening to an absolute silence, and Carol sitting there in the dark, looking straight before her. Carol must have heard Abby's car last night. Therese helped Carol arrange the suitcases and the lap rug in the back of the car. \"Why didn't she come in?\" Therese asked. \"Oh that's Abby,\" Carol said with a smile, with the fleeting shyness that always surprised Therese. \"Why don't you go call Richard?\" Therese sighed. \"I can't now, anyway. He's left the house by this time.\" It was eight forty, and his school began at nine. \"Call his family then. Aren't you going to thank them for the box they sent you?\" \"I was going to write them a letter.\" \"Call them now, and you won't have to write them a letter. It's much nicer to call anyway.\" Mrs. Semco answered the telephone. Therese praised the dress and Mrs. Semco's needlework, and thanked her for all the food and the wine. \"Richard just left the house,\" Mrs. Semco said. \"He's going to be awfully lonely. He mopes around already.\" But she laughed, her vigorous, high-pitched laugh that filled the kitchen where Therese knew she stood, a laugh that would ring through the house, even to Richard's empty room upstairs. \"Is everything all right with you and Richard?\" Mrs. Semco asked with the faintest suspicion, though Therese could tell she still smiled. Therese said yes. And she promised she would write. Afterward, she felt better because she had called. Carol asked her if she had closed her window upstairs, and Therese went up again, because she couldn't remember. She hadn't closed the window, and she hadn't made her bed either, but there wasn't time now. Florence could take care of the bed when she came in on Monday to lock the house up. Carol was on the telephone when Therese came downstairs. She looked up at Therese with a smile and held the telephone toward her. Therese knew from the first tone that it was Rindy. \"... at--uh--Mr. Byron's. It's a farm. Have you ever been there, Mother?\" \"Where is it, sweetheart?\" Carol said: \"At Mr. Byron's. He has horses. But not the kind you would like.\" \"Oh. Why not?\" \"Well, these are heavy.\" Therese tried to hear anything in the shrill, rather matter-of-fact voice that resembled Carol's voice, but she couldn't. \"Hello,\" Rindy said. \"Mother?\" \"I'm still here.\" \"I've got to say good-by now. Daddy's ready to leave.\" And she coughed. \"Have you got a cough?\" Carol asked. \"No.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_012.txt", "text": "\"Then don't cough into the phone.\" \"I wish you would take me on the trip.\" \"Well, I can't because you're in school. But we'll have trips this summer.\" \"Can you still call me?\" \"On the trip? Of course I will. Every day.\" Carol took the telephone and sat back with it, but she still watched Therese the minute or so more that she talked. \"She sounds so serious,\" Therese said. \"She was telling me all about the big day yesterday. Harge let her play hooky.\" Carol had seen Rindy day before yesterday, Therese remembered. It had evidently been a pleasant visit, from what Carol had told Therese over the telephone, but she hadn't mentioned any details about it, and Therese had not asked her anything. Just as they were about to leave, Carol decided to make a last call to Abby. Therese wandered back into the kitchen, because the car was too cold to sit in. \"I don't know any small towns in Illinois,\" Carol was saying. \"Why Illinois?... All right, Rockford... I'll remember, I'll think of roquefort... Of course I'll take good care of him. I wish you'd come in, nitwit... Well, you're mistaken, very mistaken.\" Therese took a sip from Carol's half-finished coffee on the kitchen table, drank from the place where the lipstick was. \"Not a word,\" Carol said, drawling the phrase. \"No one, so far as I know, not even Florence... Well, you do that, darling. Cheerio now.\" Five minutes later, they were leaving Carol's town on the highway marked on the strip map in red, the highway they would use until Chicago. The sky was overcast. Therese looked around her at the country that had grown familiar now, the clump of woods off to the left that the road to New York passed, the tall flagstaff in the distance that marked the club Carol belonged to. Therese let a crack of air in at her window. It was quite cold and the heater felt good on her ankles. The clock on the dashboard said quarter to ten, and she thought suddenly of the people working in Frankenberg's, penned in there at a quarter of ten in the morning, this morning and tomorrow morning and the next, the hands of clocks controlling every move they made. But the hands of the clock on the dashboard meant nothing now to her and Carol. They would sleep or not sleep, drive or not drive, whenever it pleased them. She thought of Mrs. Robichek, selling sweaters this minute on the third floor, commencing another year there, her fifth year. \"Why so silent?\" Carol asked. \"What's the matter?\" \"Nothing.\" She did not want to talk. Yet she felt there were thousands of words choking her throat, and perhaps only distance, thousands of miles, could straighten them out. Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her. Somewhere in Pennsylvania they went through a section of pale sunshine, like a leak in the sky, but around noon, it began to rain."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_012.txt", "text": "Carol cursed, but the sound of the rain was pleasant, drumming irregularly on the windshield and the roof. \"You know what I forgot?\" Carol said. \"A raincoat. I'll have to pick one up somewhere.\" And suddenly, Therese remembered she had forgotten the book she was reading. And there was a letter to Carol in it, one sheet that stuck out both ends of the book. Damn. It had been separate from her other books, and that was why she had left it behind, on the table by the bed. She hoped Florence wouldn't decide to look at it. She tried to remember if she had written Carol's name in the letter, and she couldn't. And the check. She had forgotten to tear that up, too. \"Carol, did you get that check?\" \"That check I gave you?--You said you were going to tear it up.\" \"I didn't. It's still under the cloth.\" \"Well, it's not important,\" Carol said. When they stopped for gas, Therese tried to buy some stout, which Carol liked sometimes, at a grocery store next to the gas station, but they had only beer. She bought one can, because Carol didn't care for beer. Then they drove into a little road off the highway and stopped, and opened the box of sandwiches Richard's mother had put up. There was also a dill pickle, a mozzarella cheese, and a couple of hard-boiled eggs. Therese had forgotten to ask for an opener, so she couldn't open the beer, but there was coffee in the thermos. She put the beer can on the floor in the back of the car. \"Caviar. How very, very nice of them,\" Carol said, looking inside a sandwich. \"Do you like caviar?\" \"No. I wish I did.\" \"Why?\" Therese watched Carol take a small bite of the sandwich from which she had removed the top slice of bread, a bite where the most caviar was. \"Because people always like caviar so much when they do like it,\" Therese said. Carol smiled, and went on nibbling, slowly. \"It's an acquired taste. Acquired tastes are always more pleasant--and hard to get rid of.\" Therese poured more coffee into the cup they were sharing. She was acquiring a taste for black coffee. \"How nervous I was the first time I held this cup. You brought me coffee that day. Remember?\" \"I remember.\" \"How'd you happen to put cream in it that day?\" \"I thought you'd like it. Why were you so nervous?\" Therese glanced at her. \"I was so excited about you,\" she said, lifting the cup. Then she looked at Carol again and saw a sudden stillness, like a shock, in Carol's face. Therese had seen it two or three times before when she had said something like that to Carol about the way she felt, or paid Carol an extravagant compliment. Therese could not tell if she were pleased or displeased. She watched Carol fold the wax paper around the other half of her sandwich."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_012.txt", "text": "There was cake, but Carol didn't want any. It was the brown-colored spicecake that Therese had often had at Richard's house. They put everything back, into the valise that held the cartons of cigarettes and the bottle of whisky, with a painstaking neatness that would have annoyed Therese in anyone but Carol. \"Did you say Washington was your home state?\" Therese asked her. \"I was born there, and my father's there now. I wrote him I might visit him, if we get out that far.\" \"Does he look like you?\" \"Do I look like him, yes--more than like my mother.\" \"It's strange to think of you with a family,\" Therese said. \"Why?\" \"Because I just think of you as you. Sui generis.\" Carol smiled, her head lifted as she drove. \"All right, go ahead.\" \"Brothers and sisters?\" Therese asked. \"One sister. I suppose you want to know all about her, too? Her name is Elaine, she has three children and she lives in Virginia. She's older than I am, and I don't know if you'd like her. You'd think she was dull.\" Yes. Therese could imagine her, like a shadow of Carol, with all Carol's features weakened and diluted. Late in the afternoon, they stopped at a roadside restaurant that had a miniature Dutch village in the front window. Therese leaned on the rail beside it and looked at it. There was a little river that came out of a faucet at one end, that flowed in an oval stream and turned a windmill. Little figures in Dutch costume stood about the village, stood on patches of live grass. She thought of the electric train in Frankenberg's toy department, and the fury that drove it on the oval course that was about the same size as the stream. \"I never told you about the train in Frankenberg's,\" Therese remarked to Carol. \"Did you notice it when you--\" \"An electric train?\" Carol interrupted her. Therese had been smiling, but something constricted her heart suddenly. It was too complicated to go into, and the conversation stopped there. Carol ordered some soup for both of them. They were stiff and cold from the car. \"I wonder if you'll really enjoy this trip,\" Carol said. \"You so prefer things reflected in a glass, don't you? You have your private conception of everything. Like that windmill. It's practically as good as being in Holland to you. I wonder if you'll even like seeing real mountains and real people.\" Therese felt as crushed as if Carol had accused her of lying. She felt Carol meant, too, that she had a private conception of her, and that Carol resented it. Real people? She thought suddenly of Mrs. Robichek. And she had fled her because she was hideous. \"How do you ever expect to create anything if you get all your experiences second hand?\" Carol asked, her voice soft and even, and yet merciless."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_012.txt", "text": "Carol made her feel she had done nothing, was nothing at all, like a wisp of smoke. Carol had lived like a human being, had married, and had a child. The old man from behind the counter was coming toward them. He had a limp. He stood by the table next to them and folded his arms. \"Ever been to Holland?\" he asked pleasantly. Carol answered. \"No, I haven't. I suppose you've been. Did you make the village in the window?\" He nodded. \"Took me five years to make.\" Therese looked at the man's bony fingers, the lean arms with the purple veins twisting just under the thin skin. She knew better than Carol the work that had gone into the little village, but she could not get a word out. The man said to Carol, \"Got some fine sausages and hams next door, if you like real Pennsylvania made. We raise our own hogs and they're killed and cured right here.\" They went into the whitewashed box of a store beside the restaurant. There was a delicious smell of smoked ham inside it, mingled with the smell of wood smoke and spice. \"Let's pick something we don't have to cook,\" Carol said, looking into the refrigerated counter. \"Let's have some of this,\" she said to the young man in the earlapped cap. Therese remembered standing in the delicatessen with Mrs. Robichek, her buying the thin slices of salami and liverwurst. A sign on the wall said they shipped anywhere, and she thought of sending Mrs. Robichek one of the big cloth-wrapped sausages, imagined the delight on Mrs. Robichek's face when she opened the package with her trembling hands and found a sausage. But should she after all, Therese wondered, make a gesture that was probably motivated by pity, or by guilt, or by some perversity in her? Therese frowned, floundering in a sea without direction or gravity, in which she knew only that she could mistrust her own impulses. \"Therese--\" Therese turned around, and Carol's beauty struck her like a glimpse of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Carol asked her if she thought they should buy a whole ham. The young man slid all the bundles across the counter, and took Carol's twenty-dollar bill. And Therese thought of Mrs. Robichek tremulously pushing her single dollar bill and a quarter across the counter that evening. \"See anything else?\" Carol asked. \"I thought I might send something to somebody. A woman who works in the store. She's poor and she once asked me to dinner.\" Carol picked up her change. \"What woman?\" \"I don't really want to send her anything.\" Therese wanted suddenly to leave. Carol frowned at her through her cigarette smoke. \"Do it.\" \"I don't want to. Let's go, Carol.\" It was like the nightmare again, when she couldn't get away from her. \"Send it,\" Carol said. \"Close the door and send her something.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_012.txt", "text": "Therese closed the door and chose one of the six-dollar sausages, and wrote on a gift card: \"This comes from Pennsylvania. I hope it'll last a few Sunday mornings. With love from Therese Belivet.\" Later, in the car, Carol asked her about Mrs. Robichek, and Therese answered as she always did, succinctly, and with the involuntary and absolute honesty that always depressed her afterward. Mrs. Robichek and the world she lived in was so different from that of Carol, she might have been describing another species of animal life, some ugly beast that lived on another planet. Carol made no comment on the story, only questioned and questioned her as she drove. She made no comment when there was nothing more to ask, but the taut, thoughtful expression with which she had listened stayed on her face even when they began to talk of other things. Therese gripped her thumbs inside her hands. Why did she let Mrs. Robichek haunt her? And now she had spread it into Carol and could never take it back. \"Please don't mention her again, will you, Carol? Promise me.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_013.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 15 CAROL WALKED barefoot with little short steps to the shower room in the corner, groaning at the cold. She had red polish on her toenails, and her blue pajamas were too big for her. \"It's your fault for opening the window so high,\" Therese said. Carol pulled the curtain across, and Therese heard the shower come on with a rush. \"Ah, divinely hot!\" Carol said. \"Better than last night.\" It was a luxurious tourist cabin, with a thick carpet and wood-paneled walls and everything from cellophane-sealed shoe rags to television. Therese sat on her bed in her robe, looking at a road map, spanning it with her hand. A span and a half was about a day's driving, theoretically, though they probably would not do it. \"We might get all the way across Ohio today,\" Therese said. \"Ohio. Noted for rivers, rubber, and certain railroads. On our left the famous Chillicothe drawbridge, where twenty-eight Hurons once massacred a hundred--morons.\" Therese laughed. \"And where Lewis and Clark once camped,\" Carol added. \"I think I'll wear my slacks today. Want to see if they're in that suitcase? If not, I'll have to get into the car. Not the light ones, the navy-blue gabardines.\" Therese went to Carol's big suitcase at the foot of the bed. It was full of sweaters and underwear and shoes, but no slacks. She saw a nickel plated tube sticking out of a folded sweater. She lifted the sweater out. It was heavy. She unwrapped it, and started so she almost dropped it. It was a gun with a white handle. \"No?\" Carol asked. \"No.\" Therese wrapped the gun up again and put it back as she had found it. \"Darling, I forgot my towel. I-think it's on a chair.\" Therese got it and took it to her, and in her nervousness as she put the towel into Carol's outstretched hand her eyes dropped from Carol's face to her bare breasts and down, and she saw the quick surprise in Carol's glance as she turned around. Therese closed her eyes tight and walked slowly toward the bed, seeing before her closed lids the image of Carol's naked body. Therese took a shower, and when she came out, Carol was standing at the mirror, almost dressed. \"What's the matter?\" Carol asked. \"Nothing.\" Carol turned to her, combing her hair that was darkened a little by the wet of the shower. Her lips were bright with fresh lipstick, a cigarette between them. \"Do you realize how many times a day you make me ask you that?\" she said. \"Don't you think it's a little inconsiderate?\" During breakfast, Therese said, \"Why did you bring that gun along, Carol?\" \"Oh. So that's what's bothering you. It's Harge's gun, something else he forgot.\" Carol's voice was casual. \"I thought it'd be better to take it than to leave it.\" \"Is it loaded?\" \"Yes, it's loaded. Harge got a permit, because we had a burglar at the house once.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_013.txt", "text": "\"Can you use it?\" Carol smiled at her. \"I'm no Annie Oakley. I can use it. I think it worries you, doesn't it? I don't expect to use it.\" Therese said nothing more about it. But it disturbed her whenever she thought of it. She thought of it the next night, when a bellhop set the suitcase down heavily on the sidewalk. She wondered if a gun could ever go off from a jolt like that. They had taken some snapshots in Ohio, and because they could get them developed early the next morning, they spent a long evening and the night in a town called Defiance. All evening they walked around the streets, looking in store windows, walking through silent residential streets where lights showed in front parlors, and homes looked as comfortable and safe as birds' nests. Therese had been afraid Carol would be bored by aimless walks, but Carol was the one who suggested going one block farther, walking all the way up the hill to see what was on the other side. Carol talked about herself and Harge. Therese tried to sum up in one word what had separated Carol and Harge, but she rejected the words almost at once--boredom, resentment, indifference. Carol told her of one time that Harge had taken Rindy away on a fishing trip and not communicated for days. That was a retaliation for Carol's refusing to spend Harge's vacation with him at his family's summer house in Massachusetts. It was a mutual thing. And the incidents were not the start. Carol put two of the snapshots in her billfold, one of Rindy in jodhpurs and a derby that had been on the first part of the roll, and one of Therese, with a cigarette in her mouth and her hair blowing back in the wind. There was one unflattering picture of Carol standing huddled in her coat that Carol said she was going to send to Abby because it was so bad. They got to Chicago late one afternoon, crept into its gray, sprawling disorder behind a great truck of a meat-distributing company. Therese sat up close to the windshield. She couldn't remember anything about the city from the trip with her father: Carol seemed to know Chicago as well as she knew Manhattan. Carol showed her the famous Loop, and they stopped for a while to watch the trains and the homeward rush of five thirty in the afternoon. It couldn't compare to the madhouse of New York at five thirty. At the main post office, Therese found a post card from Dannie, nothing from Phil, and a letter from Richard. Therese glanced at the letter and saw it began and ended affectionately. She had expected just that, Richard's getting the general delivery address from Phil and writing her an affectionate letter. She put the letter in her pocket before she went back to Carol. \"Anything?\" Carol said. \"Just a post card. From Dannie. He's finished his exams.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_013.txt", "text": "Carol drove to the Drake Hotel. It had a black and white checked floor, a fountain in the lobby, and Therese thought it magnificent. In their room, Carol took off her coat and flung herself down on one of the twin beds. \"I know a few people here,\" she said sleepily. \"Shall we look somebody up?\" But Carol fell asleep before they quite decided. Therese looked out the window at the light-bordered lake and at the irregular, unfamiliar line of tall buildings against the still grayish sky. It looked fuzzy and monotonous, like a Pissarro painting. A comparison Carol wouldn't appreciate, she thought. She leaned on the sill, staring at the city, watching a distant car's lights chopped into dots and dashes as it passed behind trees. She was happy. \"Why don't you ring for some cocktails?\" Carol's voice said behind her. \"What kind would you like?\" \"What kind would you?\" \"Martinis.\" Carol whistled. \"Double Gibsons,\" Carol interrupted her as she was telephoning. \"And a plate of canapes. Might as well get four Martinis.\" Therese read Richard's letter while Carol was in the shower. The whole letter was affectionate. You are not like any of the other girls, he wrote. He had waited and he would keep on waiting, because he was absolutely confident that they could be happy together. He wanted her to write to him every day, send at least a post card. He told her how he had sat one evening rereading the three letters she had sent him when he had been in Kingston, New York, last summer. There was a sentimentality in the letter that was not like Richard at all, and Therese's first thought was that he was pretending. Perhaps in order to strike at her later. Her second reaction was aversion. She came back to the old decision, that not to write him, not to say anything more was the shortest way to end it. The cocktails arrived, and Therese paid for them instead of signing. She could never pay a bill except behind Carol's back. \"Will you wear your black suit?\" Therese asked when Carol came in. Carol gave her a look. \"Go all the way to the bottom of that suitcase?\" she said, going to the suitcase. \"Drag it out, brush it off, steam the wrinkles out of it for half an hour?\" \"We'll be a half hour drinking these.\" \"Your powers of persuasion are irresistible.\" Carol took the suit into the bathroom and turned the water on in the tub. It was the suit she had worn the day they had had the first lunch together. \"Do you realize this is the only drink I've had since we left New York?\" Carol said. \"Of course you don't. Do you know why? I'm happy.\" \"You're beautiful,\" Therese said. And Carol gave her the derogatory smile that Therese loved, and walked to the dressing table."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_013.txt", "text": "She flung a yellow-silk scarf around her neck and tied it loosely and began to comb her hair. The lamp's light framed her figure like a picture, and Therese had a feeling all this had happened before. She remembered suddenly: the woman in the window brushing up her long hair, remembered the very bricks in the wall, the texture of the misty rain that morning. \"How about some perfume?\" Carol asked, moving toward her with the bottle. She touched Therese's forehead with her fingers, at the hairline where she had kissed her that day. \"You remind me of the woman I once saw,\" Therese said, \"somewhere off Lexington. Not you but the light. She was combing her hair up.\" Therese stopped, but Carol waited for her to go on. Carol always waited, and she could never say exactly what she wanted to say. \"Early one morning when I was on the way to work, and I remember it was starting to rain,\" she floundered on. \"I saw her in a window.\" She really could not go on, about standing there for perhaps three or four minutes, wishing with an intensity that drained her strength that she knew the woman, that she might be welcome if she went to the house and knocked on the door, wishing she could do that instead of going on to her job at the Pelican Press. \"My little orphan,\" Carol said. Therese smiled. There was nothing dismal, no sting in the word when Carol said it. \"What does your mother look like?\" \"She had black hair,\" Therese said quickly. \"She didn't look anything like me.\" Therese always found herself talking about her mother in the past tense, though she was alive this minute, somewhere in Connecticut. \"You really don't think she'll ever want to see you again?\" Carol was standing at the mirror. \"I don't think so.\" \"What about your father's family. Didn't you say he had a brother?\" \"I never met him. He was a kind of geologist, working for an oil company. I don't know where he is.\" It was easier talking about the uncle she had never met. \"What's your mother's name now?\" \"Esther--Mrs. Nicolas Strully.\" The name meant as little to her as one she might see in a telephone book. She looked at Carol, suddenly sorry she had said the name. Carol might some day--A shock of loss, of helplessness came over her. She knew so little about Carol after all. Carol glanced at her. \"I'll never mention it,\" she said, \"never mention it again. If that second drink's going to make you blue, don't drink it. I don't want you to be blue tonight.\" The restaurant where they dined overlooked the lake, too. They had a banquet of a dinner with champagne and brandy afterward. It was the first time in her life that Therese had been a little drunk, in fact much drunker than she wanted Carol to see."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_013.txt", "text": "Her impression of Lakeshore Drive was always to be of a broad avenue studded with mansions all resembling the White House in Washington. In the memory there would be Carol's voice, telling her about a house here and there where she had been before, and the disquieting awareness that for a while this had been Carol's world, as Rapallo, Paris, and other places Therese did not know had for a while been the frame of everything Carol did. That night, Carol sat on the edge of her bed, smoking a cigarette before they turned the light out. Therese lay in her own bed, sleepily watching her, trying to read the meaning of the restless, puzzled look in Carol's eyes that would stare at something in the room for a moment and then move on. Was it of her she thought, or of Harge, or of Rindy? Carol had asked to be called at seven tomorrow, in order to telephone Rindy before she went to school. Therese remembered their telephone conversation in Defiance. Rindy had had a fight with some other little girl, and Carol had spent fifteen minutes going over it, and trying to persuade Rindy she should take the first step and apologize. Therese still felt the effects of what she had drunk, the tingling of the champagne that drew her painfully close to Carol. If she simply asked, she thought, Carol would let her sleep tonight in the same bed with her. She wanted more than that, to kiss her, to feel their bodies next to each other's. Therese thought of the two girls she had seen in the Palermo bar. They did that, she knew, and more. And would Carol suddenly thrust her away in disgust, if she merely wanted to hold her in her arms? And would whatever affection Carol now had for her vanish in that instant? A vision of Carol's cold rebuff swept her courage clean away. It crept back humbly in the question, couldn't she ask simply to sleep in the same bed with her? \"Carol, would you mind--\" \"Tomorrow we'll go to the stockyards,\" Carol said at the same time, and Therese burst out laughing. \"What's so damned funny about that?\" Carol asked, putting out her cigarette, but she was smiling, too. \"It just is. It's terribly funny,\" Therese said, still laughing, laughing away all the longing and the intention of the night. \"You're giggly on champagne,\" Carol said as she put the light out. Late the next afternoon they left Chicago and drove in the direction of Rockford. Carol said she might have a letter from Abby there, but probably not, because Abby was a bad correspondent. Therese went to a shoe repair shop to get a moccasin stitched, and when she came back, Carol was reading the letter in the car. \"What road do we take out?\" Carol's face looked happier. \"Twenty, going west.\" Carol turned on the radio and worked the dial until she found some music."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_013.txt", "text": "\"What's a good town for tonight on the way to Minneapolis?\" \"Dubuque,\" Therese said, looking at the map. \"Or Waterloo looks fairly big, but it's about two hundred miles away.\" \"We might make it.\" They took Highway 20 toward Freeport and Galena, which was starred on the map as the home of Ulysses S. Grant. \"What did Abby say?\" \"Nothing much. Just a very nice letter.\" Carol said little to her in the car, or even in the cafe where they stopped later for coffee. Carol went over and stood in front of a juke box, dropping nickels slowly. \"You wish Abby'd come along, don't you?\" Therese said. \"No,\" Carol said. \"You're so different since you got the letter from her.\" Carol looked at her across the table. \"Darling, it's just a silly letter. You can even read it if you want to.\" Carol reached for her handbag, but she did not get the letter out. Sometime that evening, Therese fell asleep in the car and woke up with the lights of a city on her face. Carol was resting both arms tiredly on the top of the wheel. They had stopped for a red light. \"Here's where we stay the night,\" Carol said. Therese's sleep still clung to her as she walked across the hotel lobby. She rode up in an elevator and she was acutely conscious of Carol beside her, as if she dreamed a dream in which Carol was the subject and the only figure. In the room, she lifted her suitcase from the floor to a chair, unlatched it and left it, and stood by the writing table, watching Carol. As if her emotions had been in abeyance all the past hours, or days, they flooded her now as she watched Carol opening her suitcase, taking out, as she always did first, the leather kit that contained her toilet articles, dropping it onto the bed. She looked at Carol's hands, at the lock of hair that fell over the scarf tied around her head, at the scratch she had gotten days ago across the toe of her moccasin. \"What're you standing there for?\" Carol asked. \"Get to bed, sleepyhead.\" \"Carol, I love you.\" Carol straightened up. Therese stared at her with intense, sleepy eyes. Then Carol finished taking her pajamas from the suitcase and pulled the lid down. She came to Therese and put her hands on her shoulders. She squeezed her shoulders hard, as if she were exacting a promise from her, or perhaps searching her to see if what she had said were real. Then she kissed Therese on the lips, as if they had kissed a thousand times before. \"Don't you know I love you?\" Carol said. Carol took her pajamas into the bedroom, and stood for a moment, looking down at the basin. \"I'm going out,\" Carol said. \"But I'll be back right away.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_013.txt", "text": "Therese waited by the table while Carol was gone, while time passed indefinitely or maybe not at all, until the door opened and Carol came in again. She set a paper bag on the table, and Therese knew she had only gone to get a container of milk, as Carol or she herself did very often at night. \"Can I sleep with you?\" Therese asked. \"Did you see the bed?\" It was a double bed. They sat up in their pajamas, drinking milk and sharing an orange that Carol was too sleepy to finish. Then Therese set the container of milk on the floor and looked at Carol who was sleeping already, on her stomach, with one arm flung up as she always went to sleep. Therese pulled out the light. Then Carol slipped her arm under her neck, and all the length of their bodies touched, fitting as if something had prearranged it. Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision of a pale-white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered. \"Go to sleep,\" Carol said. Therese hoped she would not. But when she felt Carol's hand move on her shoulder, she knew she had been asleep. It was dawn now. Carol's fingers tightened in her hair, Carol kissed her on the lips, and pleasure leaped in Therese again as if it were only a continuation of the moment when Carol had slipped her arm under her neck last night. I love you, Therese wanted to say again, and then the words were erased by the tingling and terrifying pleasure that spread in waves from Carol's lips over her neck, her shoulders, that rushed suddenly, the length of her body. Her arms were tight around Carol, and she was conscious of Carol and nothing else, of Carol's hand that slid along her ribs, Carol's hair that brushed her bare breasts, and then her body too seemed to vanish in widening circles that leaped further and further, beyond where thought could follow. While a thousand memories and moments, words, the first darling, the second time Carol had met her at the store, a thousand memories of Carol's face, her voice, moments of anger and laughter flashed like the tail of a comet across her brain. And now it was pale-blue distance and space, an expanding space in which she took flight suddenly like a long arrow. The arrow seemed to cross an impossibly wide abyss with ease, seemed to arc on and on in space, and not quite to stop. Then she realized that she still clung to Carol, that she trembled violently, and the arrow was herself. She saw Carol's pale hair across her eyes, and now Carol's head was close against hers."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_013.txt", "text": "And she did not have to ask if this were right, no one had to tell her, because this could not have been more right or perfect. She held Carol tighter against her, and felt Carol's mouth on her own smiling mouth. Therese lay still, looking at her at Carol's face only inches away from her, the gray eyes calm as she had never seen them, as if they retained some of the space she had just emerged from. And it seemed strange that it was still Carol's face, with the freckles, the bending blond eyebrow that she knew, the mouth now as calm as her eyes, as Therese had seen it many times before. \"My angel,\" Carol said. \"Flung out of space.\" Therese looked up at the corners of the room that were much brighter now, at the bureau with the bulging front and the shield-shaped drawer pulls, at the frameless mirror with the beveled edge, at the green patterned curtains that hung straight at the windows, and the two gray tips of buildings that showed just above the sill. She would remember every detail of this room forever. \"What town is this?\" she asked. Carol laughed. \"This? This is Waterloo.\" She reached for a cigarette. \"Isn't that awful.\" Smiling, Therese raised up on her elbow. Carol put a cigarette between her lips. \"There's a couple of Waterloos in every state,\" Therese said."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_014.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 16 THERESE WENT OUT to get some newspapers while Carol was dressing. She stepped into the elevator and turned around in the exact center of it. She felt a little odd, as if everything had shifted and distances were not quite the same. She walked across the lobby to the newspaper stand in the corner. \"The Courier and the Tribune,\" she said to the man, taking them, and even to utter words was as strange as the names of the newspapers she bought. \"Eight cents,\" the man said, and Therese looked down at the change he had given her and saw there was still the same difference between eight cents and a quarter. She wandered across the lobby, looked through the glass into the barber shop where a couple of men were getting shaves. A Negro boy was shining shoes. A tall man with a cigar and a broad-brimmed hat, with Western shoes, walked by her. She would remember this lobby, too, forever, the people, the old-fashioned looking woodwork at the base of the registration desk, and the man in the dark overcoat who looked at her over the top of his newspaper, and slumped in his chair and went on reading beside the black and cream-colored marble column. When Therese opened the room door, the sight of Carol went through her like a spear. She stood a moment with her hand on the knob. Carol looked at her from the bathroom, holding the comb suspended over her head. Carol looked at her from head to foot. \"Don't do that in public,\" Carol said. Therese threw the newspapers on the bed and came to her. Carol seized her suddenly in her arms. They stood holding each other as if they would never separate. Therese shuddered, and there were tears in her eyes. It was hard to find words, locked in Carol's arms, closer than kissing. \"Why did you wait so long?\" Therese asked. \"Because--I thought there wouldn't be a second time, that I wouldn't want it. But that's not true.\" Therese thought of Abby, and it was like a slim shaft of bitterness dropping between them. Carol released her. \"And there was something else--to have you around reminding me, knowing you and knowing it would be so easy. I'm sorry. It wasn't fair to you.\" Therese set her teeth hard. She watched Carol walk slowly away across the room, watched the space widen, and remembered the first time she had seen her walk so slowly away in the department store, Therese had thought forever. Carol had loved Abby, too, and she reproached herself for it. As Carol would one day for loving her, Therese wondered? Therese understood now why the December and January weeks had been made up of anger and indecision, reprimands alternating with indulgences. But she understood now that whatever Carol said in words, there were no barriers and no indecisions now."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_014.txt", "text": "There was no Abby, either, after this morning, whatever had happened between Carol and Abby before. \"Was it?\" Carol asked. \"You've made me so happy ever since I've known you,\" Therese said. \"I don't think you can judge.\" \"I can judge this morning.\" Carol did not answer. Only the rasp of the door lock answered her. Carol had locked the door and they were alone. Therese came toward her, straight into her arms. \"I love you,\" Therese said, just to hear the words. \"I love you, I love you.\" But Carol seemed deliberately to pay almost no attention to her that day. There was more arrogance in the tilt of her cigarette, in the way she backed the car away from a curb, cursing, not quite joking. \"Damned if I'll put a dime in a parking meter with a prairie right in sight,\" Carol said. But when Therese did catch her looking at her, Carol's eyes were laughing. Carol teased her, leaning on her shoulder as they stood in front of a cigarette machine, touching her foot under tables. It made Therese limp and tense at the same time. She thought of people she had seen holding hands in movies, and why shouldn't she and Carol? Yet when she simply took Carol's arm as they stood choosing a box of candy in a shop, Carol murmured, \"Don't.\" Therese sent a box of candy to Mrs. Robichek from the candy shop in Minneapolis, and a box also to the Kellys. She sent an extravagantly big box to Richard's mother, a double-deck box with wooden compartments that she knew Mrs. Semco would use later for sewing articles. \"Did you ever do that with Abby?\" Therese asked abruptly that evening in the car. Carol's eyes understood suddenly and she blinked. \"What questions you ask,\" she said. \"Of course.\" Of course. She had known it. \"And now--?\" \"Therese--\" She asked stiffly, \"Was it very much the same as with me?\" Carol smiled. \"No, darling.\" \"Don't you think it's more pleasant than sleeping with men?\" Her smile was amused. \"Not necessarily. That depends. Who have you ever known except Richard?\" \"No one.\" \"Well, don't you think you'd better try some others?\" Therese was speechless for a moment, but she tried to be casual, drumming her fingers on the book in her lap. \"I mean sometime, darling. You've got a lot of years ahead.\" Therese said nothing. She could not imagine ever leaving Carol either. That was another terrible question that had sprung into her mind at the start, that hammered at her brain now with a painful insistence to be answered. Would Carol ever want to leave her? \"I mean, whom you sleep with depends so much on habit,\" Carol went on. \"And you're too young to make enormous decisions. Or habits.\" \"Are you just a habit?\" she asked, smiling, but she heard the resentment in her voice. \"You mean it's nothing but that?\" \"Therese--of all times to get so melancholic.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_014.txt", "text": "\"I'm not melancholic,\" she protested, but the thin ice was under her feet again, the uncertainties. Or was it that she always wanted a little more than she had, no matter how much she had? She said impulsively, \"Abby loves you, too, doesn't she?\" Carol started a little, and put her foot down. \"Abby has loved me practically all her life--even as you.\" Therese stared at her. \"I'll tell you about it one day. Whatever happened is past. Months and months ago,\" she said, so softly Therese could hardly hear. \"Only months?\" \"Yes.\" \"Tell me now.\" \"This isn't the time or the place.\" \"There's never a time,\" Therese said. \"Didn't you say there never was a right time?\" \"Did I say that? About what?\" But neither of them said anything for a moment, because a fresh barrage of wind hurled the rain like a million bullets against the hood and windshield, and for a moment they could have heard nothing else. There was no thunder, as if the thunder, somewhere up above, modestly refrained from competing with this other god of rain. They waited in the inadequate shelter of a hill at the side of the road. \"I might tell you the middle,\" Carol said, \"because it's funny--and ironic. It was last winter when we had the furniture shop together. But I can't begin without telling you the first part---and that was when we were children. Our families lived near each other in New Jersey, so we saw each other during vacations. Abby always had a mild crush on me, I thought, even when we were about six and eight. Then she wrote me a couple of letters when she was about fourteen and away at school. And by that time I'd heard of girls who preferred girls. But the books also tell you it goes away after that age.\" There were pauses between her sentences, as if she left out sentences in between. \"Were you in school with her?\" Therese asked. \"I never was. My father sent me to a different school, out of town. Then Abby went to Europe when she was sixteen, and I wasn't at home when she came back. I saw her once at some party around the time I got married. Abby looked quite different then, not like a tomboy any more. Then Harge and I lived in another town, and I didn't see her again--really for years, till long after Rindy was born. She came once in a while to the riding stable where Harge and I used to ride. A few times we all rode together. Then Abby and I started playing tennis on Saturday afternoons when Harge usually played golf. Abby and I always had fun together. Abby's former crush on me never crossed my mind--we were both so much older and so much had happened. I had an idea about starting a shop, because I wanted to see less of Harge."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_014.txt", "text": "I thought we were getting bored with each other and it would help. So I asked Abby if she wanted to be partners in it, and we started the furniture shop. After a few weeks to my surprise, I felt I was attracted to her,\" Carol said in the same quiet voice. \"I couldn't understand it, and I was a little afraid of it--remembering Abby from before, and realizing she might feel the same way, or that both of us could. So I tried not to let Abby see it, and I think I succeeded. But finally--here's the funny part finally--there was the night in Abby's house one night last winter. The roads were snowed in that night, and Abby's mother insisted that we stay together in Abby's room, simply because the room I'd stayed in before hadn't any sheets on the bed then, and it was very late. Abby said she'd fix the sheets, we both protested, but Abby's mother insisted.\" Carol smiled a little, and glanced at her, but Therese felt Carol didn't even see her. \"So I stayed with Abby. Nothing would have happened, if not for that night, I'm sure of it. If not for Abby's mother, that's the ironic thing, because she doesn't know anything about it. But it did happen, and I felt very much as you, I suppose, as happy as you.\" Carol blurted out the end, though her voice was still level and somehow without emotion of any kind. Therese stared at her, not knowing if it was jealousy or shock or anger that was suddenly jumbling everything. \"And after that?\" she asked. \"After that, I knew I was in love with Abby. I don't know why not call it love, it had all the earmarks. But it lasted only two months, like a disease that came and went.\" Carol said in a different tone, \"Darling, it's got nothing to do with you, and it's finished now. I knew you wanted to know, but I didn't see any reason for telling you before. It's that unimportant.\" \"But if you felt the same way about her--\" \"For two months?\" Carol said. \"When you have a husband and child, you know, it's a little different.\" Different from her, Carol meant, because she hadn't any responsibilities. \"Is it? You can just start and stop?\" \"When you haven't got a chance,\" Carol answered. The rain was abating, but only by so much that she could see it as rain now and not solid silver sheets. \"I don't believe it.\" \"You're hardly in a state to talk.\" \"Why are you so cynical?\" \"Cynical? Am I?\" Therese was not sure enough to answer. What was it to love someone, what was love exactly, and why did it end or not end? Those were the real questions, and who could answer them. \"It's letting up,\" Carol said. \"How about going on and finding a good brandy somewhere? Or is this a dry state?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_014.txt", "text": "They drove on to the next town and found a deserted bar in the biggest hotel. The brandy was delicious, and they ordered two more. \"It's French brandy,\" Carol said. \"Someday we'll go to France.\" Therese turned the little bowl of a glass between her fingers. A clock ticked at the end of the bar. A train whistle blew in the distance. And Carol cleared her throat. Ordinary sounds, yet the moment was not an ordinary one. No moment had been an ordinary one since the morning in Waterloo. Therese stared at the bright brown light in the brandy glass, and suddenly she had no doubt that she and Carol would one day go to France. Then out of the shimmering brown sun in the glass, Harge's face emerged, mouth and nose and eyes. \"Harge knows about Abby, doesn't he?\" Therese said. \"Yes. He asked me something about her a few months ago--and I told him the whole thing from start to finish.\" \"You did--\" She thought of Richard, imagined how Richard would react. \"Is that why you're getting the divorce?\" \"No. It's got nothing to do with the divorce. That's another ironic thing-- that I told Harge after it was all over. A mistaken effort at honesty, when Harge and I had nothing left to salvage. We'd already talked about a divorce. Please don't remind me of mistakes!\" Carol frowned. \"You mean--he certainly must have been jealous.\" \"Yes. Because however I chose to tell it, I suppose it came out that I'd cared more about Abby at one period than I'd ever cared for him. At one point, even with Rindy I'd have left everything behind to go with her. I don't know how it was that I didn't.\" \"And taken Rindy with you?\" \"I don't know. I know the fact that Rindy existed stopped me from leaving Harge then.\" \"Do you regret it?\" Carol shook her head slowly. \"No. It wouldn't have lasted. It didn't last, and maybe I knew it wouldn't. With my marriage failing, I was too afraid and too weak--\" She stopped. \"Are you afraid now?\" Carol was silent. \"Carol--\" \"I am not afraid,\" she said stubbornly, lifting her head, drawing on her cigarette. Therese looked at her face in profile in the dim light. What about Rindy now, she wanted to ask, what will happen? But she knew Carol was on the brink of growing suddenly impatient, giving her a careless answer, or no answer at all. Another time, Therese thought, not this moment. It might destroy everything, even the solidity of Carol's body beside her, and the bend of Carol's body in the black sweater seemed the only solid thing in the world. Therese ran her thumb down Carol's side, from under the arm to the waist. \"I remember Harge was particularly annoyed about a trip I took with Abby to Connecticut. Abby and I went up to buy some things for the shop."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_014.txt", "text": "It was only a two-day trip, but he said, 'Behind my back. You had to run away.'\" Carol said it bitterly. There was more self-reproach in her voice than imitation of Harge. \"Does he still talk about it?\" \"No. Is it anything to talk about? Is it anything to be proud of?\" \"Is it anything to be ashamed of?\" \"Yes. You know that, don't you?\" Carol asked in her even, distinct voice. \"In the eyes of the world it's an abomination.\" The way she said it, Therese could not quite smile. \"You don't believe that.\" \"People like Harge's family.\" \"They're not the whole world.\" \"They are enough. And you have to live in the world. You, I mean--and I don't mean anything just now about whom you decide to love.\" She looked at Therese, and at last Therese saw a smile rising slowly in her eyes, bringing Carol with it. \"I mean responsibilities in the world that other people live in and that might not be yours. Just now it isn't, and that's why in New York I was exactly the wrong person for you to know--because I indulge you and keep you from growing up.\" \"Why don't you stop?\" \"I'll try. The trouble is, I like to indulge you.\" \"You're exactly the right person for me to know,\" Therese said. \"Am I?\" On the street, Therese said, \"I don't suppose Harge would like it if he knew we were away on a trip, either, would he?\" \"He's not going to know about it.\" \"Do you still want to go to Washington?\" \"Absolutely, if you've got the time. Can you stay away all of February?\" Therese nodded. \"Unless I hear something in Salt Lake City. I told Phil to write there. It's a pretty slim chance.\" Probably Phil wouldn't even write, she thought. But if there was the least chance of a job in New York, she should go back. \"Would you go on to Washington without me?\" Carol glanced at her. \"As a matter of fact, I wouldn't,\" she said with a little smile. Their hotel room was so overheated when they came back that evening, they had to throw open the windows for a while. Carol leaned on the window sill, cursing the heat for Therese's amusement, calling her a salamander because she could bear it. Then Carol asked abruptly, \"What did Richard have to say yesterday?\" Therese had not even known that Carol knew about the last letter. The one he had promised, in the Chicago letter, to send to Minneapolis and to Seattle. \"Nothing much,\" Therese said. \"Just a one-page letter. He still wants me to write to him. And I don't intend to.\" She had thrown the letter away, but she remembered it, \"I haven't heard from you, and it's beginning to dawn on me what an incredible conglomeration of contradictions you are. You are sensitive and yet so insensitive, imaginative and yet so unimaginative...."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_014.txt", "text": "If you get stranded by your whimsical friend, let me know and I'll come after you. This won't last, Terry. I know a little about such things. I saw Dannie and he wanted to know what I'd heard from you, what you were doing. How would you like it if I had told him? I didn't say anything, for your sake, because I think one day you'll blush. I still love you, I admit it. I'll come out to you--and show you what America's really like--if you care enough about me to write and say so....\" It was insulting to Carol, and Therese had torn it up. Therese sat on the bed with her arms around her knees, gripping her wrists inside the sleeves of her robe. Carol had overdone the ventilation, and the room was cold. The Minnesota winds had taken possession of the room, were seizing Carol's cigarette smoke and tearing it to nothing. Therese watched Carol calmly brushing her teeth at the basin. \"Do you mean that about not writing to him? That's your decision?\" Carol asked. \"Yes.\" Therese watched Carol knock the water out of her toothbrush, and turn from the basin, blotting her face with a towel. Nothing about Richard mattered so much to her as the way Carol blotted her face with a towel. \"Let's say no more,\" Carol said. She knew Carol would say no more. She knew Carol had been pushing her toward him, until this moment. Now it seemed it might all have been for this moment as Carol turned and walked toward her and her heart took a giant's step forward. They went on westward, through Sleepy Eye, Tracy, and Pipestone, sometimes taking an indirect highway on a whim. The West unfolded like a magic carpet, dotted with the neat, tight units of farmhouse, barn, and silo that they could see for half an hour before they came abreast of them. They stopped once at a farmhouse to ask if they could buy enough gas to get to the next station. The house smelled like fresh cold cheese. Their steps sounded hollow and lonely on the solid brown planks of the floor, and Therese thought in a fervid burst of patriotism--America. There was a picture of a rooster on the wall, made of colored patches of cloth sewn on a black ground, beautiful enough to hang in a museum. The farmer warned them about ice on the road directly west, so they took another highway going south. They discovered a one-ring circus that night beside a railroad track in a town called Sioux Falls. The performers were not very expert. Their seats were a couple of orange crates in the first row. One of the acrobats invited them into the performers' tent after the show, and insisted on giving Carol a dozen of the circus posters, because she had admired them."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_014.txt", "text": "Carol sent some of them to Abby and some to Rindy, and sent Rindy as well a green chameleon in a pasteboard box. It was an evening Therese would never forget, and unlike most such evenings, this one registered as unforgettable while it still lived. It was a matter of the bag of popcorn they shared, the circus, and the kiss Carol gave her back of some booth in the performers' tent. It was a matter of that particular enchantment that came from Carol--though Carol took their good times so for granted--seemed to work on all the world around them, a matter of everything going perfectly, without disappointments or hitches, going just as they wished it to. Therese walked from the circus with her head down, lost in thought. \"I wonder if I'll ever want to create anything again,\" she said. \"What brought this on?\" \"I mean--what was I ever trying to do but this? I'm happy.\" Carol took her arm and squeezed it, dug her thumb in so hard that Therese yelled. Carol looked up at a street marker and said, \"Fifth and Nebraska. I think we go this way.\" \"What's going to happen when we get back to New York? It can't be the same, can it?\" \"Yes,\" Carol said. \"Till you get tired of me.\" Therese laughed. She heard the soft snap of Carol's scarf end in the wind. \"We might not be living together, but it'll be the same.\" They couldn't live together with Rindy, Therese knew. It was useless to dream of it. But it was more than enough that Carol promised in words it would be the same. Near the border of Nebraska and Wyoming, they stopped for dinner at a large restaurant built like a lodge in an evergreen forest. They were almost the only people in the big dining room, and they chose a table near the fireplace. They spread out the road map and decided to head straight for Salt Lake City. They might stay there for a few days, Carol said, because it was an interesting place, and she was tired of driving. \"Lusk,\" Therese said, looking at the map. \"What a sexy sounding name.\" Carol put her head back and laughed. \"Where is it?\" \"On the road.\" Carol picked up her wine glass and said, \"Chateau Neuf-du-Pape in Nebraska. What'll we drink to?\" \"Us.\" It was something like the morning in Waterloo, Therese thought, a time too absolute and flawless to seem real, though it was real, not merely props in a play--their brandy glasses on the mantel, the row of deers' horns above, Carol's cigarette lighter, the fire itself. But at moments she felt like an actor, remembered only now and then her identity with a sense of surprise, as if she had been playing in these last days the part of someone else, someone fabulously and excessively lucky."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_014.txt", "text": "She looked up at the fir branches fixed in the rafters, at the man and woman talking inaudibly together at a table against the wall, at the man alone at his table, smoking his cigarette slowly. She thought of the man sitting with the newspaper in the hotel in Waterloo. Didn't he have the same colorless eyes and the long creases on either side of his mouth? Or was it only that this moment of consciousness was so much the same as that other moment? They spent the night in Lusk, ninety miles away."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_015.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 17 \"MRS. H. F. AIRD?\" The desk clerk looked at Carol after she had signed the register. \"Are you Mrs. Carol Aird?\" \"Yes.\" \"Message for you.\" He turned around and got it from a pigeonhole. \"A telegram.\" \"Thank you.\" Carol glanced at Therese with a little lift of her brows before she opened it. She read it, frowning, then turned to the clerk. \"Where's the Belvedere Hotel?\" The clerk directed her. \"I've got to pick up another telegram,\" Carol said to Therese. \"Want to wait here while I get it?\" \"Who from?\" \"Abby.\" \"All right. Is it bad news?\" The frown was still in her eyes. \"Don't know until I see it. Abby just says there's a telegram for me at the Belvedere.\" \"Shall I have the bags taken up?\" \"Well--just wait. The car is parked.\" \"Why can't I come with you?\" \"Of course, if you want to. Let's walk. It's only a couple of blocks away.\" Carol walked quickly. The cold was sharp. Therese glanced around her at the flat, orderly looking town, and remembered Carol's saying that Salt Lake City was the cleanest town in the United States. When the Belvedere was in sight, Carol suddenly looked at her and said, \"Abby's probably had a brainstorm and decided to fly out and join us.\" In the Belvedere, Therese bought a newspaper while Carol went to the desk. When Therese turned to her, Carol was just lowering the telegram after reading it. There was a stunned expression on her face. She came slowly toward Therese, and it flashed through Therese's mind that Abby was dead, that this second message was from Abby's parents. \"What's the matter?\" Therese asked. \"Nothing. I don't know yet.\" Carol glanced around and slapped the telegram against her fingers. \"I've got to make a phone call. It might take a few minutes.\" She looked at her watch. It was a quarter to two. The hotel clerk said she could probably get New Jersey in about twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Carol wanted a drink. They found a bar in the hotel. \"What is it? Is Abby sick?\" Carol smiled. \"No. I'll tell you later.\" \"Is it Rindy?\" \"No!\" Carol finished her brandy. Therese walked up and down, in the lobby while Carol was in the telephone booth. She saw Carol nod slowly several times, saw her fumble to get a cigarette lighted, but by the time Therese got there to light it for her, Carol had it and motioned her away. Carol talked for three or four minutes, then came out and paid her bill. \"What is it, Carol?\" Carol stood looking out the doorway of the hotel for a moment. \"Now we go to the Temple Square Hotel,\" she said. There they picked up another telegram. Carol opened it and glanced at it, and tore it up as they walked to the door. \"I don't think we'll stay here tonight,\" Carol said. \"Let's go back to the car.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_015.txt", "text": "They went back to the hotel where Carol had gotten the first telegram. Therese said nothing to her, but she felt something had happened that meant Carol had to get back East immediately. Carol told the clerk to cancel their room reservation. \"I'd like to leave a forwarding address in case of any other messages,\" she said. \"That's the Brown Palace, Denver.\" \"Right you are.\" \"Thank you very much. That's good for the next week at least.\" In the car, Carol said, \"What's the next town west?\" \"West?\" Therese looked at the map. \"Wendover. This is that stretch. A hundred and twenty-seven miles.\" \"Christ!\" Carol said suddenly. She stopped the car completely and took the map and looked at it. \"What about Denver?\" Therese asked. \"I don't want to go to Denver.\" Carol folded the map and started the car. \"Well, we'll do it anyway. Light me a cigarette, will you, darling? And watch out for the next place to get something to eat.\" They hadn't had lunch yet, and it was after three. They had talked about this stretch last night, the straight road west from Salt Lake City across the Great Salt Lake Desert. They had plenty of gas, Therese noticed, and probably the country wasn't entirely deserted, but Carol was tired. They had been driving since six that morning. Carol drove fast. Now and then she pressed the pedal down to the floor and held it there a long while before letting up. Therese glanced at her apprehensively. She felt they were running away from something. \"Anything behind us?\" Carol asked. \"No.\" On the seat between them, Therese could see a piece of the telegram sticking out of Carol's handbag. GET THIS. JACOPO. was all she could read. She remembered Jacopo was the name of the little monkey in the back of the car. They came to a gas-station cafe standing all by itself like a wart on the flat landscape. They might have been the first people who had stopped there in days. Carol looked at her across the white oilcloth table, and sank back in the straight chair. Before she could speak, an old man in an apron came from the kitchen in back, and told them there was nothing but ham and eggs, so they ordered ham and eggs and coffee. Then Carol lighted a cigarette and leaned forward, looking down at the table. \"Do you know what's up?\" she said. \"Harge has had a detective following us since Chicago.\" \"A detective? What for?\" \"Can't you guess?\" Carol said in almost a whisper. Therese bit her tongue. Yes, she could guess. Harge had found out they were traveling together. \"Abby told you?\" \"Abby found out.\" Carol's fingers slid down her cigarette and the fire burned her. When she got the cigarette out of her mouth, her lip began to bleed. Therese looked around her. The place was empty. \"Following us?\" she asked. \"With us?\" \"He may be in Salt Lake City now."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_015.txt", "text": "Checking on all the hotels. It's a very dirty business, darling. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry.\" Carol sat back restlessly in her chair. \"Maybe I'd better put you on a train and send you home.\" \"All right--if you think that's the best idea.\" \"You don't have to be mixed up in this. Let them follow me to Alaska, if they want to. I don't know what they've got so far. I don't think much.\" Therese sat rigidly on the edge of her chair. \"What's he doing--making notes about us?\" The old man was coming back, bringing them glasses of water. Carol nodded. \"Then there's the dictaphone trick,\" she said as the man went away. \"I'm not sure if they'll go that far. I'm not sure if Harge would do that.\" The corner of her mouth trembled. She stared down at one spot on the worn white oilcloth. \"I wonder if they had time for a dictaphone in Chicago. It's the only place we stayed more than ten hours. I rather hope they did. It's so ironic. Remember Chicago?\" \"Of course.\" She tried to keep her voice steady, but it was pretense, like pretending self-control when something you loved was dead in front of your eyes. They would have to separate here. \"What about Waterloo?\" She thought suddenly of the man in the lobby. \"We got there late. It wouldn't have been easy.\" \"Carol, I saw someone--I'm not sure, but I think I saw him twice.\" \"Where?\" \"In the lobby in Waterloo the first time. In the morning. Then I thought I saw the same man in that restaurant with the fireplace.\" It was only last night, the restaurant with the fireplace. Carol made her tell completely about both times and describe the man completely. He was hard to describe. But now she racked her brain to extract the last detail she could, even to the color of his shoes. And it was odd and rather terrifying, dragging up what was probably a figment of her imagination and tying it to a situation that was real. She felt she might even be lying to Carol as she watched Carol's eyes grow more and more intense. \"What do you think?\" Therese asked. Carol sighed. \"What can anyone think? Just watch out for him the third time.\" Therese looked down at her plate. It was impossible to eat. \"It's about Rindy, isn't it?\" \"Yes.\" She put down her fork without taking the first bite, and reached for a cigarette. \"Harge wants her--in toto. Maybe with this, he thinks he can do it.\" \"Just because we're traveling together?\" \"Yes.\" \"I should leave you.\" \"Damn him,\" Carol said quietly, looking off at a corner of the room. Therese waited. But what was there to wait for? \"I can get a bus somewhere from here, and then get a train.\" \"Do you want to go?\" Carol asked. \"Of course, I don't. I just think it's best.\" \"Are you afraid?\" \"Afraid? No.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_015.txt", "text": "She felt Carol's eyes appraise her as severely as at that moment in Waterloo, when she had told Carol she loved her. \"Then I'm damned if you'll go. I want you with me.\" \"Do you mean that?\" \"Yes. Eat your eggs. Stop being silly.\" And Carol even smiled a little. \"Shall we go to Reno as we'd planned?\" \"Any place.\" \"And let's take our time.\" A few moments later, when they were on the road, Therese said again, \"I'm still not sure it was the same man the second time, you know.\" \"I think you're sure,\" Carol said. Then suddenly on the long straight road, she stopped the car. She sat for a moment in silence, looking down the road. Then she glanced at Therese. \"I can't go to Reno. That's a little too funny. I know a wonderful place just south of Denver.\" \"Denver?\" \"Denver,\" Carol said firmly, and backed the car around."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_016.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 18 IN THE MORNING, they lay in each other's arms long after the sun had come into the room. The sun warmed them through the window of the hotel in the tiny town whose name they hadn't noticed. There was snow on the ground outside. \"There'll be snow in Estes Park,\" Carol said to her. \"What's Estes Park?\" \"You'll like it. Not like Yellowstone. It's open all year.\" \"Carol, you're not worried, are you?\" Carol pulled her close. \"Do I act like I'm worried?\" Therese was not worried. That first panic had vanished. She was watching, but not as she had watched yesterday afternoon just after Salt Lake City. Carol wanted her with her, and whatever happened they would meet it without running. How was it possible to be afraid and in love, Therese thought. The two things did not go together. How was it possible to be afraid, when the two of them grew stronger together every day? And every night. Every night was different, and every morning. Together they possessed a miracle. The road into Estes Park slanted downward. The snowdrifts piled higher and higher on either side, and then the lights began, strung along the fir trees, arching over the road. It was a village of brown logged houses and shops and hotels. There was music, and people walked in the bright street with their heads lifted up, as if they were enchanted. \"I do like it,\" Therese said. \"It doesn't mean you don't have to watch out for our little man.\" They brought the portable phonograph up to their room, and played some records they had just bought and some old ones from New Jersey. Therese played \"Easy Living\" a couple of times, and Carol sat across the room watching her, sitting on the arm of a chair with her arms folded. \"What a rotten time I give you, don't I?\" \"Oh, Carol--\" Therese tried to smile. It was only a mood of Carol's, only a moment. But it made Therese feel helpless. Carol looked around at the window. \"And why didn't we go to Europe in the first place? Switzerland. Or fly out here at least.\" \"I wouldn't have liked that at all.\" Therese looked at the yellow suede shirt that Carol had bought for her, that hung over the back of a chair. Carol had sent Rindy a green one. She had bought some silver earrings, a couple of books, and a bottle of Triple Sec. Half an hour ago, they had been happy, walking through the streets together. \"It's that last rye you got downstairs,\" Therese said. \"Rye depresses you.\" \"Does it?\" \"Worse than brandy.\" \"I'm going to take you to the nicest place I know this side of Sun Valley,\" she said. \"What's the matter with Sun Valley?\" She knew Carol liked skiing. \"Sun Valley just isn't the place,\" Carol said mysteriously. \"This place is near Colorado Springs.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_016.txt", "text": "In Denver, Carol stopped and sold her diamond engagement ring at a jeweler's. Therese felt a little disturbed by it, but Carol said the ring meant nothing to her and she loathed diamonds anyway. And it was quicker than wiring her bank for money. Carol wanted to stop at a hotel a few miles out from Colorado Springs, where she had been before, but she changed her mind almost as soon as they got there. It was too much like a resort, she said, so they went to a hotel that backed on the town and faced the mountains. Their room was long from the door to the square floor-length windows that overlooked a garden, and beyond, the red and white mountains. There were touches of white in the garden, odd little pyramids of stone, a white bench or a chair, and the garden looked foolish compared to the magnificent land that surrounded it, the flat sweep that rose up into mountains upon mountains, filling the horizon like half a world. The room had blond furniture about the color of Carol's hair, and there was a bookcase as smooth as she could want it, with some good books amid the bad ones, and Therese knew she would never read any of them while they were here. A painting of a woman in a large black hat and a red scarf hung above the bookcase, and on the wall near the door was spread a pelt of brown leather, not a real pelt but something someone had cut out of a piece of brown suede. Above it was a tin lantern with a candle. Carol also rented the room next to them, which had a connecting door, though they did not use it even to put their suitcases in. They planned to stay a week, or longer if they liked it. On the morning of the second day, Therese came back from a tour of inspection of the hotel grounds and found Carol stooped by the bed table. Carol only glanced at her, and went to the dressing table and looked under that, and then to the long built-in closet behind the wall panel. \"That's that,\" Carol said. \"Now let's forget it.\" Therese knew what she was looking for. \"I hadn't thought of it,\" she said. \"I feel like we've lost him.\" \"Except that he's probably gotten to Denver by now,\" Carol said calmly. She smiled, but she twisted her mouth a little. \"And he'll probably drop in down here.\" It was so, of course. There was even the remotest chance that the detective had seen them when they drove back through Salt Lake City, and followed them. If he didn't find them in Salt Lake City, he might inquire at the hotels. She knew that was why Carol had left the Denver address, in fact, because they hadn't intended to go to Denver. Therese flung herself in the armchair, and looked at Carol."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_016.txt", "text": "Carol took the trouble to search for a dictaphone, but her attitude was arrogant. She had even invited trouble by coming here. And the explanation, the resolution of those contradictory facts was nowhere but in Carol herself, unresolved, in her slow, restless step as she walked to the door now and turned, in the nonchalant lift of her head, and in the nervous line of her eyebrows that registered irritation in one second and in the next were serene. Therese looked at the big room, up at the high ceiling, at the large square, plain bed, the room that for all its modernness had a curiously old- fashioned, ample air about it that she associated with the American West, like the oversized Western saddles she had seen in the riding stable downstairs. A kind of cleanness, as well. Yet Carol looked for a dictaphone. Therese watched her, walking back toward her, still in her pajamas and robe. She had an impulse to go to Carol, crush her in her arms, pull her down on the bed, and the fact that she didn't now made her tense and alert filled her with a repressed but reckless exhilaration. Carol blew her smoke up into the air. \"I don't give a damn. I hope the papers find out about it and rub Harge's nose in his own mess. I hope he wastes fifty thousand dollars. Do you want to take that trip that bankrupts the English language this afternoon? Did you ask Mrs. French yet?\" They had met Mrs. French last night in the game room of the hotel. She hadn't a car, and Carol had asked her if she would like to take a drive with them today. \"I asked her,\" Therese said. \"She said she'd be ready right after lunch.\" \"Wear your suede shirt.\" Carol took Therese's face in her hands, pressed her cheeks, and kissed her. \"Put it on now.\" It was a six- or seven-hour trip to the Cripple Creek gold mine, over Ute Pass and down a mountain. Mrs. French went with them, talking the whole time. She was a woman of about seventy, with a Maryland accent and a hearing aid, ready to get out of the car and climb anywhere, though she had to be helped every foot of the way. Therese felt very anxious about her, though she actually disliked even touching her. She felt if Mrs. French fell, she would break in a million pieces. Carol and Mrs. French talked about the State of Washington, which Mrs. French knew well, since she had lived there for the past few years with one of her sons. Carol asked a few questions, and Mrs. French told her all about her ten years of traveling since her husband's death, and about her two sons, the one in Washington and the one in Hawaii who worked for a pineapple company. And obviously Mrs. French adored Carol, and they were going to see a lot more of Mrs. French."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_016.txt", "text": "It was nearly eleven when they got back to the hotel. Carol asked Mrs. French to have supper in the bar with them, but Mrs. French said she was too tired for anything but her shredded wheat and hot milk, which she would have in her room. \"I'm glad,\" Therese said when she had gone. \"I'd rather be alone with you.\" \"Really, Miss Belivet? Whatever do you mean?\" Carol asked as she opened the door into the bar. \"You'd better sit down and tell me all about that.\" But they were not alone in the bar more than five minutes. Two men, one named Dave and the other whose name Therese at least did not know and did not care to, came over and asked to join them. They were the two who had come over last night in the game room and asked Carol and her to play gin rummy. Carol had declined last night. Now she said, \"Of course, sit down.\" Carol and Dave began a conversation that sounded very interesting, but Therese was seated so that she couldn't participate very well. And the man next to Therese wanted to talk about something else, a horseback trip he had just made around Steamboat Springs. After supper, Therese waited for a sign from Carol to leave, but Carol was still deep in conversation. Therese had read about that special pleasure people got from the fact that someone they loved was attractive in the eyes of other people, too. She simply didn't have it. Carol looked at her every now and then and gave her a wink. So Therese sat there for an hour and a half, and managed to be polite, because she knew Carol wanted her to be. The people who joined them in the bar and sometimes in the dining room did not annoy her so much as Mrs. French, who went with them somewhere almost every day in the car. Then an angry resentment that Therese was actually ashamed of would rise in her because someone was preventing her from being alone with Carol. \"Darling, did you ever think you'll be seventy-one, too, some day?\" \"No,\" Therese said. But there were other days when they drove out into the mountains alone, taking any road they saw. Once they came upon a little town they liked and spent the night there, without pajamas or toothbrushes, without past or future, and the night became another of those islands in time, suspended somewhere in the heart or in the memory, intact and absolute. Or perhaps it was nothing but happiness, Therese thought, a complete happiness that must be rare enough, so rare that very few people ever knew it."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_016.txt", "text": "But if it was merely happiness, then it had gone beyond the ordinary bounds and become something else, become a kind of excessive pressure, so that the weight of a coffee cup in her hand, the speed of a cat crossing the garden below, the silent crash of two clouds seemed almost more than she could bear. And just as she had not understood a month ago the phenomenon of sudden happiness, she did not understand her state now, which seemed an aftermath. It was more often painful than pleasant, and consequently she was afraid she had some grave and unique flaw. She was as afraid sometimes as if she were walking about with a broken spine. If she ever had an impulse to tell Carol, the words dissolved before she began, in fear and in her usual mistrust of her own reactions, the anxiety that her reactions were like no one else's, and that therefore not even Carol could understand them. In the mornings, they generally drove out somewhere in the mountains and left the car so they could climb up a hill. They drove aimlessly over the zigzagging roads that were like white chalk lines connecting mountain point to mountain point. From a distance, one could see clouds lying about the projecting peaks, so it seemed they flew along in space, a little closer to heaven than to earth. Therese's favorite spot was on the highway above Cripple Creek, where the road clung suddenly to the rim of a gigantic depression. Hundreds of feet below, lay the tiny disorder of the abandoned mining town. There the eye and the brain played tricks with each other, for it was impossible to keep a steady concept of the proportion below, impossible to compare it on any human scale. Her own hand held up in front of her could look Lilliputian or curiously huge. And the town occupied only a fraction of the great scoop in the earth, like a single experience, a single commonplace event, set in a certain immeasurable territory of the mind. The eye, swimming in space, returned to rest on the spot that looked like a box of matches run over by a car, the man- made confusion of the little town. Always Therese looked for the man with the creases on either side of his mouth, but Carol never did. Carol had not even mentioned him since their second day at Colorado Springs, and now ten days had passed. Because the restaurant of the hotel was famous, new people came every evening to the big dining room, and Therese always glanced about, not actually expecting to see him, but as a kind of precaution that had become a habit. But Carol paid no attention to anyone except Walter, their waiter, who always came up to ask what kind of cocktail they wanted that evening. Many people looked at Carol, however, because she was generally the most attractive woman in the room."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_016.txt", "text": "And Therese was so delighted to be with her, so proud of her, she looked at no one else but Carol. Then as she read the menu, Carol would slowly press Therese's foot under the table to make her smile. \"What do you think about Iceland in the summer?\" Carol might ask, because they made a point of talking about travel, if there was a silence when they first sat down. \"Must you pick such cold places? When'll I ever work?\" \"Don't be dismal. Shall we invite Mrs. French? Think she'd mind our holding hands?\" One morning, there were three letters--from Rindy, Abby, and Dannie. It was Carol's second letter from Abby, who had had no further news before, and Therese noticed Carol opened Rindy's letter first. Dannie wrote that he was still waiting to hear the outcome of two interviews about jobs and reported that Phil said Harkevy was going to do the sets for the English play called The Faint Heart in March. \"Listen to this,\" Carol said. \"'Have you seen any armadillos in Colorado? Can you send me one, because the chameleon got lost. Daddy and I looked everywhere in the house for him. But if you send me the armadillo it will be big enough not to get lost.' New paragraph. 'I got 90 in spelling but only 70 in arithmetic. I hate it. I hate the teacher. Well I must be closing. Love to you and to Abby. Rindy. XX. p. s. Thank you very much for the leather shirt. Daddy bought me a two-wheel bike regular size that he said I was too small for Christmas. I am not too small. It is a beautiful bike.' Period. What's the use? Harge can always top me.\" Carol put the letter down and picked up Abby's. \"Why did Rindy say 'Love to you and to Abby'?\" Therese asked. \"Does she think you're with Abby?\" \"No.\" Carol's wooden letter opener had stopped halfway through Abby's envelope. \"I suppose she thinks I write to her,\" she said, and finished slitting the envelope. \"I mean, Harge wouldn't have told her that, would he?\" \"No, darling,\" Carol said preoccupiedly, reading Abby's letter. Therese got up and crossed the room, and stood by the window looking out at the mountains. She should write to Harkevy this afternoon, she thought, and ask him if there was a chance of an assistant's job with his group in March. She began composing the letter in her head. The mountains looked back at her like majestic red lions, staring down their noses. Twice she heard Carol laugh, but she did not read any of the letter aloud to her. \"No news?\" Therese asked when she was finished. \"No news.\" Carol taught her to drive on the roads around the foot of the mountains, where a car almost never passed. Therese learned faster than she had ever learned anything before, and after a couple of days, Carol let her drive in Colorado Springs."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_016.txt", "text": "In Denver, she took a test and got a license. Carol said she could do half the driving back to New York, if she wanted to. He was sitting one evening at the dinner hour at a table by himself to the left of Carol and behind her. Therese choked on nothing, and put her fork down. Her heart began to beat as if it would hammer its way out of her chest. How had she gotten halfway through the meal without seeing him? She lifted her eyes to Carol's face and saw Carol watching her, reading her with the gray eyes that were not quite so calm as a moment ago. Carol had stopped in the middle of saying something. \"Have a cigarette,\" Carol said, offering her one, lighting it for her. \"He doesn't know that you can recognize him, does he?\" \"No.\" \"Well, don't let him find out.\" Carol smiled at her, lighted her own cigarette, and looked away in the opposite direction from the detective. \"Just take it easy,\" Carol added in the same tone. It was easy to say, easy to have thought she could look at him when she saw him next, but what was the use of trying when it was like being struck in the face with a cannon ball? \"No baked Alaska tonight?\" Carol said, looking at the menu. \"That breaks my heart. You know what we're going to have?\" She called to the waiter. \"Walter!\" Walter came smiling, ardent to serve them, just as he did every evening. \"Yes, madame.\" \"Two Remy Martins, please, Walter,\" Carol told him. The brandy helped very little, if at all. The detective did not once look at them. He was reading a book that he had propped up on the metal napkin holder, and even now Therese felt a doubt as strong as in the cafe outside Salt Lake City, an uncertainty that was somehow more horrible than the positive knowledge would be that he was the detective. \"Do we have to go past him, Carol?\" Therese asked. There was a door in back of her, into the bar. \"Yes. That's the way we go out.\" Carol's eyebrows lifted with her smile, exactly as on any other night. \"He can't do anything to us. Do you expect him to pull a gun?\" Therese followed her, passed within twelve inches of the man whose head was lowered toward his book. Ahead of her she saw Carol's figure bend gracefully as she greeted Mrs. French, who was sitting alone at a table. \"Why didn't you come and join us?\" Carol said, and Therese remembered that the two women Mrs. French usually sat with had left today. Carol even stood there a few moments talking with Mrs. French, and Therese marveled at her but she couldn't stand there herself, and went on, to wait for Carol by the elevators. Upstairs, Carol found the little instrument fastened up in a corner under the bed table."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_016.txt", "text": "Carol got the scissors and using both hands cut through the wire that disappeared under the carpet. \"Did the hotel people let him in here, do you think?\" Therese asked, horrified. \"He probably had a key to fit.\". Carol yanked the thing loose from the table and dropped it on the carpet, a little black box with a trail of wire. \"Look at it, like a rat,\" she said. \"A portrait of Harge.\" Her face had flushed suddenly. \"Where does it go to?\" \"To some room where it's recorded. Probably across the hall. Bless these fancy wall to wall carpets!\" Carol kicked the dictaphone toward the center of the room. Therese looked at the little rectangular box, and thought of it drinking up their words last night. \"I wonder how long it's been there?\" \"How long do you think he could have been here without your seeing him?\" \"Yesterday at the worst.\" But even as she said it, she knew she could be wrong. She couldn't have seen every face in the hotel. And Carol was shaking her head. \"Would it take him nearly two weeks to trace us from Salt Lake City to here? No, he just decided to have dinner with us tonight.\" Carol turned from the bookshelf with a glass of brandy in her hand. The flush had left her face. Now she even smiled a little at Therese. \"Clumsy fellow, isn't he?\" She sat down on the bed, swung a pillow behind her and leaned back. \"Well, we've been here just about long enough, haven't we?\" \"When do you want to go?\" \"Maybe tomorrow. We'll get ourselves packed in the morning and take off after lunch. What do you think?\" Later, they went down to the car and took a drive, westward into the darkness. We shall not go farther west, Therese thought. She could not stamp out the panic that danced in the very core of her, that she felt due to something gone before, something that had happened long ago, not now, not this. She was uneasy, but Carol was not. Carol was not merely pretending coolness, she really was not afraid. Carol said, what could he do, after all, but she simply didn't want to be spied upon. \"One other thing,\" Carol said. \"Try and find out what kind of car he's in.\" That night, talking over the road map about their route tomorrow, talking as matter-of-factly as a couple of strangers, Therese thought surely tonight would not be like last night. But when they kissed good night in bed, Therese felt their sudden release, that leap of response in both of them, as if their bodies were of some materials, which put together inevitably created desire."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 19 THERESE COULD NOT find out what kind of car he had, because the cars were locked in separate garages, and though she had a view of the garages from the sunroom, she did not see him come out that morning. Neither did they see him at lunchtime. Mrs. French insisted that they come into her room for a cordial, when she heard they were leaving. \"You must have a stirrup cup,\" Mrs. French said to Carol. \"Why I haven't even got your address yet!\" Therese remembered that they had promised to exchange flower bulbs. She remembered a long conversation in the car one day about bulbs that had cemented their friendship. Carol was incredibly patient to the last. One would never have guessed, seeing Carol sitting on Mrs. French's sofa with the little glass Mrs. French kept filling, that she was in a hurry to get away. Mrs. French kissed them both on the cheek when they said good-by. From Denver, they took a highway northward toward Wyoming. They stopped for coffee at the kind of place they always liked, an ordinary restaurant with a counter and a juke box. They put nickels into the juke box, but it was not the same as before. Therese knew it would not be the same for the rest of the trip, though Carol talked of going to Washington even yet, and perhaps up into Canada. Therese could feel that Carol's goal was New York. They spent the first night in a tourist camp that was built like a circle of tepees. While they were undressing, Carol looked up at the ceiling where the tepee poles came to a point, and said boredly, \"The trouble some idiots go to,\" and for some reason it struck Therese as hysterically funny. She laughed until Carol got tired of it and threatened to make her drink a tumbler of brandy, if she didn't stop. And Therese was still smiling, standing by the window with a brandy in her hand, waiting for Carol to come out of the shower, when she saw a car drive up beside the large office tepee and stop. After a moment, the man who had gone into the office came out and looked around in the dark area within the circle of tepees, and it was his prowling step that arrested her attention. She was suddenly sure without seeing his face or even his figure very clearly that he was the detective. \"Carol!\" she called. Carol pushed the shower curtain aside and glanced at her and stopped drying herself. \"Is it--\" \"I don't know, but I think so,\" she said, and saw the anger spread slowly over Carol's face and stiffen it, and it shocked Therese to sobriety, as if she had just realized an insult, to herself or to Carol. \"Chr-rist!\" Carol said, and flung the towel at the floor. She drew on her robe and tied the belt of it. \"Well--what's he doing?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "\"I think he's stopping here.\" Therese stood back at the edge of the window. \"His car's still in front of the office, anyway. If we turn out the light, I'll be able to see a lot better.\" Carol groaned. \"Oh, don't. I couldn't. It bores me,\" she said with the utmost boredom and disgust. And Therese smiled, twistedly, and checked another insane impulse to laugh, because Carol would have been furious if she had laughed. Then she saw the car roll under the garage door of a tepee across the circle. \"Yes, he's stopping here. It's a black two-door sedan.\" Carol sat down on the bed with a sigh. She smiled at Therese, a quick smile of fatigue and boredom, of resignation and helplessness and anger. \"Take your shower. And then get dressed again.\" \"But I don't know if it's him at all.\" \"That's just the hell of it, darling.\" Therese took a shower and lay down in her clothes beside Carol. Carol had turned out the light. She was smoking cigarettes in the dark, and said nothing to her until finally she touched her arm and said, \"Let's go.\" It was three thirty when they drove out of the tourist camp. They had paid their bill in advance. There was no light anywhere, and unless the detective was watching them with his light out, no one had observed them. \"What do you want to do, sleep again somewhere?\" Carol asked her. \"No. Do you?\" \"No. Let's see how much distance we can make.\" She pressed the pedal to the floor. The road was clear and smooth as far as the headlights swept. As dawn was breaking, a highway patrolman stopped them for speeding, and Carol had to pay a twenty-two dollar fine in a town called Central City, Nebraska. They lost thirty miles by having to follow the patrolman back to the little town, but Carol went through with it without a word, unlike herself, unlike the time she had argued and cajoled the patrolman out of an arrest for speeding, and a New Jersey speed cop at that. \"Irritating,\" Carol said when they got back into the car, and that was all she said, for hours. Therese offered to drive, but Carol said she wanted to. And the flat Nebraska prairie spread out before them, yellow with wheat stubble, brown- splotched with bare earth and stone, deceptively warm looking in the white winter sun. Because they went a little slower now, Therese had a panicky sensation of not moving at all, as if the earth drifted under them and they stood still. She watched the road behind them for another patrol car, for the detective's car, and for the nameless, shapeless thing she felt pursuing them from Colorado Springs."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "She watched the land and the sky for the meaningless events that her mind insisted on attaching significance to, the buzzard that banked slowly in the sky, the direction of a tangle of weeds that bounced over a rutted field before the wind, and whether a chimney had smoke or not. Around eight o'clock, an irresistible sleepiness weighted her eyelids and clouded her head, so she felt scarcely any surprise when she saw a car behind them like the car she watched for, a two-door sedan of dark color. \"There's a car like that behind us,\" she said. \"It's got a yellow license plate.\" Carol said nothing for a minute, but she glanced in the mirror and blew her breath out through pursed lips. \"I doubt it. If it is, he's a better man than I thought.\" She was slowing down. \"If I let him pass, do you think you can recognize him?\" \"Yes.\" Couldn't she recognize the blurriest glimpse of him by now? Carol slowed almost to a stop and took the road map and laid it across the wheel and looked at it. The other car approached, and it was him inside, and went by. \"Yes,\" Therese said. The man hadn't glanced at her. Carol pressed the gas pedal down. \"You're sure, are you?\" \"Positive.\" Therese watched the speedometer go up to sixty-five and over. \"What are you going to do?\" \"Speak to him.\" Carol slacked her speed as they closed the distance. They drew alongside of the detective's car, and he turned to look at them, the wide straight mouth unchanging, the eyes like round gray dots, expressionless as the mouth. Carol waved her hand downward. The man's car slowed. \"Roll your window down,\" Carol said to Therese. The detective's car pulled over into the sandy shoulder of the road and stopped. Carol stopped her car with its rear wheels on the highway, and spoke across Therese. \"Do you like our company or what?\" she asked. The man got out of his car and closed his door. Some three yards of ground separated the cars, and the detective crossed half of it and stood. His dead little eyes had darkish rims around their gray irises, like a doll's blank and steady eyes. He was not young. His face looked worn by the weathers he had driven it through, and the shadow of his beard deepened the bent creases on either side of his mouth. \"I'm doing my job, Mrs. Aird,\" he said. \"That's pretty obvious. It's nasty work, isn't it?\" The detective tapped a cigarette on his thumbnail and lighted it in the gusty wind with a slowness that suggested a stage performance. \"At least it's nearly over.\" \"Then why don't you leave us alone,\" Carol said, her voice as tense as the arm that supported her on the steering wheel... \"Because I have orders to follow you on this trip. But if you're going back to New York, I won't have to any more."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "I advise you to go back, Mrs. Aird. Are you going back now?\" \"No, I'm not.\" \"Because I've got some information--information that I'd say was in your interest to go back and take care of.\" \"Thanks,\" Carol said cynically. \"Thanks so much for telling me. It's not in my plans to go back just yet. But I can give you my itinerary, so you can leave us alone and catch up on your sleep.\" The detective looked at her with a false and meaningless smile, not like a person at all, but like a machine wound up and set on a course. \"I think you'll go back to New York. I'm giving you sound advice. Your child is at stake. I suppose you know that, don't you?\" \"My child is my property!\" A crease twitched in his cheek. \"A human being is not property, Mrs. Aird.\" Carol raised her voice. \"Are you going to tag along the rest of the way?\" \"Are you going back to New York?\" \"No.\" \"I think you will,\" the detective said, and he turned away slowly toward his car. Carol stepped on the starter. She reached for Therese's hand and squeezed it for a moment in reassurance, and then the car shot forward. Therese sat up with her elbows on her knees and her hands pressed to her forehead, yielding to a shame and shock she had never known before, that she had repressed before the detective. \"Carol!\" Carol was crying, silently. Therese looked at the downward curve of her lips that was not like Carol at all, but rather like a small girl's twisted grimace of crying. She stared incredulously at the tear that rolled over Carol's cheekbone. \"Get me a cigarette,\" Carol said. When Therese handed it to her, lighted, she had wiped the tear away, and it was over. Carol drove for a minute, slowly, smoking the cigarette. \"Crawl in the back and get the gun,\" Carol said. Therese did not move for a moment. Carol glanced at her. \"Will you?\" Therese slid agilely in her slacks over the back seat, and dragged the navy-blue suitcase onto the seat. She opened the clasps and got out the sweater with the gun. \"Just hand it to me,\" Carol said calmly. \"I want it in the side pocket.\" She reached her hand over her shoulder, and Therese put the white handle of the gun into it, and crawled back into the front seat. The detective was still following them, half a mile behind them, back of the horse and farm wagon that had turned into the highway from a dirt road. Carol held Therese's hand and drove with her left hand. Therese looked down at the faintly freckled fingers that dug their strong cool tips into her palm. \"I'm going to talk to him again,\" Carol said, and pressed the gas pedal down steadily."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "\"If you want to get out, I'll put you off at the next gas station or something and come back for you.\" \"I don't want to leave you,\" Therese said. Carol was going to demand the detective's records, and Therese had a vision of Carol hurt, of his pulling a gun with an expert's oily speed and firing it before Carol could even pull the trigger. But those things didn't happen, wouldn't happen, she thought, and she set her teeth. She kneaded Carol's hand in her fingers. \"All right. And don't worry. I just want to talk to him.\" She swung the car suddenly into a smaller road off the highway to the left. The road went up between sloping fields, and turned and went through woods. Carol drove fast, though the road was bad. \"He's coming on, isn't he?\" \"Yes.\" There was one farmhouse set in the rolling hills, and then nothing but scrubby, rocky land and the road that kept disappearing around the curves before them. Where the road clung to a sloping hill, Carol went round a curve and stopped the car carelessly, half in the road. She reached for the side pocket and pulled the gun, out. She opened something on it, and Therese saw the bullets inside. Then Carol looked through the windshield, and let her hands with the gun fall in her lap. \"I'd better not, better not,\" she said quickly, and dropped the gun back in the side pocket. Then she pulled the car up, and straightened it by the side of the hill. \"Stay in the car,\" she said to Therese, and got out. Therese heard the detective's car. Carol walked slowly toward the sound, and then the detective's car came around the curve, not fast, but his brakes shrieked, and Carol stepped to the side of the road. Therese opened the door slightly, and leaned on the window sill. The man got out of his car. \"Now what?\" he said, raising his voice in the wind. \"What do you think?\" Carol came a little closer to him. \"I'd like everything you've got about me--dictaphone tapes and whatever.\" The detective's brows hardly rose over the pale dots of his eyes. He leaned against the front fender of his car, smirking with his wide thin mouth. He glanced at Therese and back at Carol. \"Everything's sent away. I haven't a thing but a few notes. About times and places.\" \"All right, I'd like to have them.\" \"You mean, you want to buy them?\" \"I didn't say that, I said I'd like to have them. Do you prefer to sell them?\" \"I'm not one you can buy off,\" he said. \"What're you doing this for anyway, if not money?\" Carol asked impatiently. \"Why not make a little more? What'll you take for what you've got?\" He folded his arms. \"I told you everything's sent away. You'd be wasting your money.\" \"I don't think you mailed the dictaphone records yet from Colorado Springs,\" Carol said."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "\"No?\" he asked sarcastically. \"No. I'll give you whatever you ask for them.\" He looked Carol up and down, glanced at Therese, and again his mouth widened. \"Get them--tapes, records or whatever they are,\" Carol said, and the man moved. He walked around his car to the luggage compartment, and Therese heard his keys jingle as he opened it. Therese got out of the car, unable to sit there any longer. She walked to within a few feet of Carol and stopped. The detective was reaching for something in a big suitcase. When he straightened up, the raised lid of the compartment knocked his hat off. He stepped on the brim to hold it from the wind. He had something in one hand now, too small to see. \"There's two,\" he said. \"I guess they're worth five hundred. They'd be worth more if there weren't more of them in New York.\" \"You're a fine salesman. I don't believe you,\" Carol said. \"Why? They're in a hurry for them in New York.\" He picked up his hat, and closed the luggage compartment. \"But they've got enough now. I told you you'd better go back to New York, Mrs. Aird.\" He ground his cigarette out in the dirt, twisting his toe in front of him. \"Are you going back to New York now?\" \"I don't change my mind,\" Carol said. The detective shrugged. \"I'm not on any side. The sooner you go back to New York, the sooner we can call it quits.\" \"We can call it quits right now. After you give me those, you can take off and keep going in the same direction.\" The detective had slowly extended his hand in a fist, like the fist in a guessing game in which there might be nothing. \"Are you willing to give me five hundred for these?\" he asked. Carol looked at his hand, then opened her shoulder strap bag. She took out her billfold, and then her checkbook. \"I prefer cash,\" he said. \"I haven't got it.\" He shrugged again. \"Ail right, I'll take a check.\" Carol wrote it, resting it on the fender of his car. Now as he bent over, watching Carol, Therese could see the little black object in his hand. Therese came closer. The man was spelling his name. When Carol gave him the check, he dropped the two little boxes in her hand. \"How long have you been collecting them?\" Carol asked. \"Play them and see.\" \"I didn't come out here to joke!\" Carol said, and her voice broke. He smiled, folding the check. \"Don't say I didn't warn you. What you've gotten from me isn't all of it. There's plenty in New York.\" Carol fastened her bag, and turned toward her car, not even looking at Therese. Then she stopped and faced the detective again. \"If they've got all they want, you can knock off now, can't you? Have I got your promise to do that?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "He was standing with his hand on his car door, watching her. \"I'm still on the job, Mrs. Aird--still working for my office. Unless you want to catch a plane for home now. Or for some other place. Give me the slip. I'll have to tell my office something--not having the last few days at Colorado Springs--something more exciting than this.\" \"Oh, let them invent something exciting!\" The detective's smile showed a little of his teeth. He got back into his car. He shoved his gear, put his head out to see behind him, and backed the car in a quick turn. He drove off toward the highway. The sound of his motor faded fast. Carol walked slowly toward the car, got in and sat staring through the windshield at the dry rise of earth a few yards ahead. Her face was as blank as if she had fainted. Therese was beside her. She put her arm around Carol's shoulder. She squeezed the cloth shoulder of the coat, and felt as useless as any stranger. \"Oh, I think it's mostly bluff,\" Carol said suddenly. But it had made Carol's face gray, had taken the energy out of her voice. Carol opened her hand and looked at the two little round boxes. \"Here's as good a place as any.\" She got out of the car, and Therese followed her. Carol opened a box and took out the coil of tape that looked like celluloid. \"Tiny, isn't it. I suppose it burns. Let's burn it.\" Therese struck the match in the shelter of the car. The tape burned fast, and Therese dropped it on the ground, and then the wind blew it out. Carol said not to bother, they could throw both of them in a river. Carol was sitting in the car, smoking a cigarette. \"What time is it?\" Carol asked. \"Twenty to twelve.\" She got back in the car, and Carol started immediately, back down the road toward the highway. \"I'm going to call Abby in Omaha, and then my lawyer.\" Therese looked at the road map. Omaha was the next big town, if they made a slight turn south. Carol looked tired, and Therese felt her anger, still unappeased, in the silence she kept. The car jolted over a rut, and Therese heard the bump and clink of the can of beer that rolled somewhere under the front seat, the beer they had not been able to open that first day. She was hungry, had been sickly hungry for hours. \"How about my driving?\" \"All right,\" Carol said tiredly, relaxing as if she surrendered. She slowed the car quickly. Therese slid across her, under the wheel. \"And how about stopping for a breakfast?\" \"I couldn't eat.\" \"Or a drink.\" \"Let's get it in Omaha.\" Therese sent the speedometer up to sixty-five, and held it just under seventy. It was Highway 30. Then two seventy-five into Omaha, and the road was not first class."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "\"You don't believe him about dictaphone records in New York, do you?\" \"Don't talk about it!--I'm sick of it!\" Therese squeezed the wheel, then deliberately relaxed. She sensed a tremendous sorrow hanging over them, ahead of them, that was just beginning to reveal the edge of itself, that they were driving into. She remembered the detective's face and the barely legible expression that she realized now was malice. It was malice she had seen in his smile, even as he said he was on no side, and she could feel in him a desire that was actually personal to separate them, because he knew they were together. She had seen just now what she had only sensed before, that the whole world was ready to be their enemy, and suddenly what she and Carol had together seemed no longer love or anything happy but a monster between them, with each of them caught in a fist. \"I'm thinking of that check,\" Carol said. It fell like another stone inside her. \"Do you think they're going over the house?\" Therese asked. \"Possibly. Just possibly.\" \"I don't think they'd find it. It's way under the runner.\" But there was the letter in the book. A curious pride lifted her spirit for an instant, and vanished. It was a beautiful letter, and she would rather they found it than the check, though as to incrimination they would probably have the same weight, and they would make the one as dirty as the other. The letter she had never given, and the check she had never cashed. It was more likely they would find the letter, certainly. Therese could not bring herself to tell Carol of the letter, whether from plain cowardice or a desire to spare Carol any more now, she didn't know. She saw a bridge ahead. \"There's a river,\" she said. \"How about here?\" \"Good enough.\" Carol handed her the little boxes. She had put the half- burned tape back in its box. Therese got out and flung them over the metal rail, and did not watch. She looked at the young man in overalls walking onto the bridge from the other side, hating the senseless antagonism in herself against him. Carol telephoned from a hotel in Omaha. Abby was not at home, and Carol left a message that she would call at six o'clock that evening, when Abby was expected. Carol said it was of no use to call her lawyer now, because he would be out to lunch until after two by their time. Carol wanted to wash up, and then have a drink. They had Old Fashioneds in the bar of the hotel, in complete silence. Therese asked for a second when Carol did, but Carol said she should eat something instead. The waiter told Carol that food was not served in the bar. \"She wants something to eat,\" Carol said firmly."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "\"The dining room is across the lobby, madame, and there's a coffee shop--\" \"Carol, I can wait,\" Therese said. \"Will you please bring me the menu? She prefers to eat here,\" Carol said with a glance at the waiter. The waiter hesitated, then said, \"Yes, madame,\" and went to get the menu. While Therese ate scrambled eggs and sausage, Carol had her third drink. Finally, Carol said in a tone of hopelessness, \"Darling, can I ask you to forgive me?\" The tone hurt Therese more than the question. \"I love you, Carol.\" \"But do you see what it means?\" \"Yes.\" But that moment of defeat in the car, she thought, that had been only a moment, as this time now was only a situation. \"I don't see why it should mean this forever. I don't see how this can destroy anything,\" she said earnestly. Carol took her hand down from her face and sat back, and now in spite of the tiredness she looked as Therese always thought of her--the eyes that could be tender and hard at once as they tested her, the intelligent red lips strong and soft, though the upper lip trembled the least bit now. \"Do you?\" Therese asked, and she realized suddenly it was a question as big as the one Carol had asked her without words in the room in Waterloo. In fact, the same question. \"No. I think you're right,\" Carol said. \"You make me realize it.\" Carol went to telephone. It was three o'clock. Therese got the check, then sat there waiting, wondering when it was going to be over, whether the reassuring word would come from Carol's lawyer or from Abby, or whether it was going to get worse before it got better. Carol was gone about half an hour. \"My lawyer hasn't heard anything,\" she said. \"And I didn't tell him anything. I can't. I'll have to write it.\" \"I thought you would.\" \"Oh, you did,\" Carol said with her first smile that day. \"What do you say we get a room here? I don't feel like traveling any more.\" Carol had her lunch sent up to their room. They both lay down to take a nap, but when Therese awakened at a quarter to five, Carol was gone. Therese glanced around the room, noticing Carol's black gloves on the dressing table, and her moccasins side by side near the armchair. Therese sighed, tremulously, unrefreshed by her sleep. She opened the window and looked down. It was the seventh or eighth floor, she couldn't remember which. A streetcar crawled past the front of the hotel, and people on the sidewalk moved in every direction, with legs on either side of them, and it crossed her mind to jump. She looked off at the drab little skyline of gray buildings and closed her eyes on it. Then she turned around and Carol was in the room, standing by the door, watching her. \"Where have you been?\" Therese asked."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "\"Writing that damned letter.\" Carol crossed the room and caught Therese in her arms. Therese felt Carol's nails through the back of her jacket. When Carol went to the telephone, Therese left the room and wandered down the hall toward the elevators. She went down to the lobby and sat there reading an article on weevils in the Corngrower's Gazette, and wondered if Abby knew all that about corn weevils. She watched the clock, and after twenty-five minutes went upstairs again. Carol was lying on the bed, smoking a cigarette. Therese waited for her to speak. \"Darling, I've got to go to New York,\" Carol said. Therese had been sure of that. She came to the foot of the bed. \"What else did Abby say?\" \"She saw the fellow named Bob Haversham again.\" Carol raised herself on her elbow. \"But he certainly doesn't know as much as I do at this point. Nobody seems to know anything, except that trouble's brewing. Nothing much can happen until I get there. But I've got to be there.\" \"Of course.\" Bob Haversham was the friend of Abby's who worked in Harge's firm in Newark, not a close friend either of Abby's or Harge's, just a link, a slim link between the two of them, the one person who might know, something of what Harge was doing\", if he could recognize a detective, or overhear part of a telephone call, in Harge's office. It was worth almost nothing, Therese felt. \"Abby's going to get the check,\" Carol said, sitting up on the bed, reaching for her moccasins. \"Has she got a key?\" \"I wish she had. She's got to get it from Florence. But that'll be all right. I told her to tell Florence I wanted a couple of things sent to me.\" \"Can you tell her to get a letter, too? I left a letter to you in a book in my room. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. I didn't know you were going to have Abby go there.\" Carol gave her a frowning glance. \"Anything else?\" \"No. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before.\" Carol sighed, and stood up. \"Oh, let's not worry any more. I doubt if they'll bother about the house, but I'll tell Abby about the letter anyway. Where is it?\" \"In the Oxford Book of English Verse. I think I left it on top of the bureau.\" She watched Carol glance around the room, looking anywhere but at her. \"I don't want to stay here tonight after all,\" Carol said. Half an hour later, they were in the car going eastward. Carol wanted to reach Des Moines that night. After a silence of more than an hour, Carol suddenly stopped the car at the edge of the road, bent her head, and said, \"Damn!\" She could see the darkish sinks under Carol's eyes in the glare of passing cars. Carol hadn't slept at all last night. \"Let's go back to that last town,\" Therese said."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "\"It's still about seventy-five miles to Des Moines.\" \"Do you want to go to Arizona?\" Carol asked her, as if all they had to do was turn around. \"Oh, Carol--why talk about it?\" A feeling of despair came over her suddenly. Her hands were shaking as she lighted a cigarette. She gave the cigarette to Carol, and lighted one for herself. \"Because I want to talk about it. Can you take another three weeks off?\" \"Of course.\" Of course, of course. What else mattered except being with Carol, anywhere, anyhow? There was the Harkevy show in March, Harkevy might recommend her for a job somewhere else, but the jobs were uncertain and Carol was not. \"I shouldn't have to stay in New York more than a week at most, because the divorce is all set, Fred, my lawyer, said so today. So why don't we have a few more weeks in Arizona? Or New Mexico? I don't want to hang around New York the rest of the winter.\" Carol drove slowly. Her eyes were different now. They had come alive, like her voice. \"Of course I'd like to. Anywhere.\" \"All right. Come on. Let's get to Des Moines. How about you driving a while?\" They changed places. It was a little before midnight when they got to Des Moines and found a hotel room. \"Why should you go back to New York at all?\" Carol asked her. \"You could keep the car and wait for me somewhere like Tucson or Santa Fe, and I could fly back.\" \"And leave you?\" Therese turned from the mirror where she was brushing her hair. Carol smiled. \"What do you mean, leave me?\" It had taken Therese by surprise, and now she saw an expression on Carol's face, even though Carol looked at her intently, that made her feel shut off, as if Carol had thrust her away in a back corner of her mind to make room for something more important. \"Just leave you now, I meant,\" Therese said, turning back to the mirror. \"No, it might be a good idea. It's quicker for you.\" \"I thought you might prefer staying somewhere in the West. Unless you want to do something in New York those few days,\" Carol's voice was casual. \"I don't.\" She dreaded the cold days in Manhattan, when Carol would be too busy to see her. And she thought of the detective. If Carol flew, she wouldn't be haunted by his trailing her. She tried to imagine it already, Carol arriving in the East alone, to face something she didn't yet know, something impossible to prepare for. She imagined herself in Santa Fe, waiting for a telephone call, waiting for a letter from Carol. But to be two thousand miles away from Carol, she could not imagine that so easily. \"Only a week, Carol?\" she asked, drawing the comb along her part again, flicking the long, fine hair to one side."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "She had gained weight, but her face was thinner, she noticed suddenly, and it pleased her. She looked older. In the mirror, she saw Carol come up behind her, and there was no answer but the pleasure of Carol's arms sliding around her, that made it impossible to think, and Therese twisted away more suddenly than she meant to, and stood by the corner of the dressing table looking at Carol, bewildered for a moment by the elusiveness of what they talked about, time and space, and the four feet that separated them now and the two thousand miles. She gave her hair another stroke. \"Only about a week?\" \"That's what I said.\" Carol replied with a smile in her eyes, but Therese heard the same hardness in it as in her own question, as if they exchanged challenges. \"If you mind keeping the car, I can have it driven East.\" \"I don't mind keeping it.\". \"And don't worry about the detective. I'll wire Harge that I'm on my way.\" \"I won't worry about that.\" How could Carol be so cold about it, Therese wondered, thinking of everything else but their leaving each other? She put the hairbrush down on the dressing table. \"Therese, do you think I'm going to enjoy it?\" And Therese thought of the detectives, the divorce, the hostility, all Carol had to face. Carol touched her cheek, pressed both palms hard against her cheeks so her mouth opened like a fish's, and Therese had to smile. Therese stood by the dressing table and watched her, watching every move of her hands, of her feet as she peeled off her stockings and stepped into her moccasins again. There were no words, she thought, after this point. What else did they need to explain, or ask, or promise in words? They did not even need to see each other's eyes. Therese watched her pick up the telephone, and then she lay face down on the bed, while Carol made her plane reservation for tomorrow, one ticket, one way, tomorrow at eleven a. m. \"Where do you think you'll go?\" Carol asked her. \"I don't know.\" I might go back to Sioux Falls.\" \"South Dakota?\" Carol smiled at her. \"You wouldn't prefer Santa Fe? It's warmer.\" \"I'll wait and see it with you.\" \"Not Colorado Springs?\" \"No!\" Therese laughed, and got up. She took her toothbrush into the bathroom. \"I might even take a job somewhere for a week.\" \"What kind of a job?\" \"Any kind. Just to keep me from thinking of you, you now.\" \"I want you to think of me. Not a job in a department store.\" \"No.\" Therese stood by the bathroom door, watching Carol take off her slip and put her robe on. \"You're not worrying about money again, are you?\" Therese slid her hands into her robe pockets and crossed her feet. \"If I'm broke, I don't care. I'll start worrying when it's used up.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "index_split_017.txt", "text": "\"I'm going to give you a couple of hundred tomorrow for the car.\" Carol pulled Therese's nose, as she passed by. \"And you're not to use that car to pick up any strangers.\" Carol went into the bathroom arid turned on the shower. Therese came in after her. \"I thought I was using this John.\" \"I'm using it, but I'll let you come in.\" \"Oh, thanks.\" Therese took off her robe as Carol did. \"Well?\" Carol said. \"Well?\" Therese stepped under the shower. \"Of all the nerve.\" Carol got under it, too, and twisted Therese's arm behind her, but Therese only giggled. Therese wanted to embrace her, kiss her, but her free arm reached out convulsively and dragged Carol's head against her, under the stream of water, and there was the horrible sound of a foot slipping. \"Stop it, we'll fall!\" Carol shouted. \"For Christ's sake, can't two people take a shower in peace?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_018.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 20 IN SIOUX FALLS, Therese stopped the car in front of the hotel they had stayed in before, the Warrior Hotel. It was nine-thirty in the evening. Carol had got home about an hour ago, Therese thought. She was to call Carol at midnight. She took a room, had her bags carried up, then went out for a walk through the main street. There was a movie house, and it occurred to her she had never seen a movie with Carol. She went in. But she was in no mood to follow the picture, even though there was a woman in it whose voice was a little like Carol's, not at all like the flat nasal voices she heard all around her. She thought of Carol, over a thousand miles away now, thought of sleeping alone tonight, and she got up and wandered out on the street again. There was the drugstore where Carol had bought cleansing tissues and toothpaste one morning. And the corner where Carol had looked up and read the street names--Fifth and Nebraska streets. She bought a pack of cigarettes at the same drugstore, walked back to the hotel and sat in the lobby, smoking, savoring the first cigarette since she had left Carol, savoring the forgotten state of being alone. It was only a physical state. She really did not feel at all alone. She read some newspapers for a while, then took the letters from Dannie and Phil, that had come in the last days at Colorado Springs, out of her handbag and glanced over them. I saw Richard two nights ago in the Palermo all by himself [Phil's letter said]. I asked about you and he said he wasn't writing to you. I gather there has been a small rupture, but I didn't press for information. He was in no mood for talking. And we are not too chummy lately, as you know.... Have been talking you up to an angel named Francis Puckett who will put up fifty thousand if a certain play from France comes over in April. Shall keep you posted, as there is not even a producer yet.... Dannie sends his love, I am sure. He is leaving soon for somewhere probably, he has that look, and I'll have to scout for new winter quarters or find a roommate.... Did you get the clippings I sent you on Small Rain? Best, Phil Dannie's short letter was: Dear Therese, There is a possibility I may go out to the Coast at the end of the month to take a job in California. I must decide between this (a lab job) and an offer in a commercial chemical place in Maryland. But if I could see you in Colorado or anywhere else for a while, I would leave a little early. Shall probably take the California job, as I think it has better prospects. So would you let me know where you'll be? It doesn't matter."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_018.txt", "text": "There are a lot of ways of getting to California. If your friend wouldn't mind, it would be nice to spend a few days with you somewhere. I'll be in New York until the 28 of February anyway. Love, Dannie She had not yet answered him. She would send him an address tomorrow, as soon as she found a room somewhere in the town. But as to the next destination, she would have to talk to Carol about that. And when would Carol be able to say? She wondered what Carol might already have found tonight in New Jersey, and Therese's courage sank dismally. She reached for a newspaper and looked at the date. February fifteenth. Twenty-nine days since she had left New York with Carol. Could it be so few days? Upstairs in her room, she put the call through to Carol, and bathed and got into pajamas. Then the telephone rang. \"Hel-lo,\" Carol said, as if she had been waiting a long while. \"What's the name of that hotel?\" \"The Warrior. But I'm not going to stay here.\" \"You didn't pick up any strangers on the road, did you?\" Therese laughed. Carol's slow voice went through her as if she touched her. \"What's the news?\" Therese asked. \"Tonight? Nothing. The house is freezing and Florence can't get here till day after tomorrow. Abby's here. Do you want to say hello to her?\" \"Not right there with you.\" \"No-o. Upstairs in the green room with the door shut.\" \"I don't really want to talk to her now.\" Carol wanted to know everything she had done, how the roads were, and whether she had on the yellow pajamas or the blue ones. \"I'll have a hard time getting to sleep tonight without you.\" \"Yes.\" Immediately, out of nowhere, Therese felt tears pressing behind her eyes. \"Can't you say anything but yes?\" \"I love you.\" Carol whistled. Then silence. \"Abby got the check, darling, but no letter. She missed my wire, but there isn't any letter anyway.\" \"Did you find the book?\" \"We found the book, but there's nothing in it.\" Therese wondered if the letter could be in her own apartment after all. But she had a picture of the letter in the book, marking a place. \"Do you think anybody's been through the house?\" \"No. I can tell by various things. Don't worry about that. Will you?\" A moment later, Therese slid down into bed and pulled her light out. Carol had asked her to call tomorrow night, too. For a while the sound of Carol's voice was in her ears. Then a melancholy began to seep into her. She lay on her back with her arms straight at her sides, with a sense of empty space all around her, as if she were laid out ready for the grave, and then she fell asleep."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_018.txt", "text": "The next morning, Therese found a room she liked in a house on one of the streets that ran uphill, a large front room with a bay window full of plants and white curtains. There was a four-poster bed and an oval hooked rug on the floor. The woman said it was seven dollars a week, but Therese said she was not sure if she would be here a week, so she had better take it by the day. \"That'll be the same thing,\" the woman said. \"Where're you from?\" \"New York.\" \"Are you going to live here?\" \"No. I'm just waiting for a friend to join me.\" \"Man or a woman?\" Therese smiled. \"A woman,\" she said. \"Is there any space in those garages in back? I've got a car with me.\" The woman said there were two garages empty, and that she didn't charge for the garages, if people lived here. She was not old, but she stooped a little and her figure was frail. Her name was Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper. She had been keeping roomers for fifteen years, she said, and two of the three she had started with were still here. The same day, she made the acquaintance of Dutch Huber and his wife who ran the diner near the public library. He was a skinny man of about fifty with small curious blue eyes. His wife Edna was fat and did the cooking, and talked a great deal less than he. Dutch had worked in New York for a while years ago. He asked her questions about sections of the city she happened not to know at all, while she mentioned places Dutch had never heard of or had forgotten, and somehow the slow, dragging conversation made them both laugh. Dutch asked her if she would like to go with him and his wife to the motorcycle races that were to be held a few miles out of town on Saturday, and Therese said yes. She bought cardboard and glue and worked on the first of the models she meant to show Harkevy when she got back to New York. She had it nearly done when she went out at eleven thirty to call Carol from the Warrior. Carol was not in and no one answered. Therese tried until one o'clock, then went back to Mrs. Cooper's house. Therese reached her the next morning around ten thirty. Carol said she had talked over everything with her lawyer the day before, but there was nothing she or her lawyer could do until they knew Harge's next move. Carol was a little short with her, because she had a luncheon appointment in New York and a letter to write first. She seemed anxious for the first time about what Harge was doing. She had tried to call him twice without being able to reach him. But it was her brusqueness that disturbed Therese most of all. \"You haven't changed your mind about anything?\" Therese said."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_018.txt", "text": "\"Of course not, darling. I'm giving a party tomorrow night. I'll miss you.\" Therese tripped on the hotel threshold as she went out, and she felt the first hollow wave of loneliness break over her. What would she be doing tomorrow night? Reading in the library until it closed at nine? Working on another set? She went over the names of the people Carol had said were coming to the party--Max and Clara Tibbett, the couple who had a greenhouse on some highway near Carol's house and whom Therese had met once, Carol's friend Tessie she had never met, and Stanley McVeigh, the man Carol had been with the evening they went to Chinatown. Carol hadn't mentioned Abby. And Carol hadn't said to call tomorrow. She walked on, and the last moment she had seen Carol came back as if it were happening in front of her eyes again. Carol waving from the door of the plane at the Des Moines airport, Carol already small and far away, because Therese had had to stand back of the wire fence across the field. The ramp had been moved away, but Therese had thought, there were still a few seconds of time before they closed the door, and then Carol had appeared again, just long enough to stand still in the doorway for a second, to find her again, and make the gesture of blowing her a kiss. But it meant an absurd lot that she had come back. Therese drove out to the motorcycle races on Saturday, and took Dutch and Edna with her, because Carol's car was bigger. Afterward, they invited her to supper at their house, but she did not accept. There hadn't been a letter from Carol that day, and she had expected a note at least. Sunday depressed her, and even the drive she took up the Big Sioux River to Dell Rapids in the afternoon did not change the scene inside her mind. Monday morning, she sat in the library reading plays. Then around two, when the noonday rush was slacking off in Dutch's diner, she went in and had some tea, and talked with Dutch while she played the songs on the juke box that she and Carol had used to play. She had told Dutch that the car belonged to the friend for whom she was waiting. And gradually, Dutch's intermittent questions led her to tell him that Carol lived in New Jersey, that she would probably fly out, that Carol wanted to go to New Mexico. \"Carol does?\" Dutch said, turning to her as he polished a lass. Then a strange resentment rose in Therese because he had said her name, and she made a resolution not to speak of Carol again at all, not to anyone in the city."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_018.txt", "text": "Tuesday the letter came from Carol, nothing but a short note, but it said Fred was more optimistic about everything, and it looked as if there would be nothing but the divorce to worry about and she could probably leave the twenty-fourth of February. Therese began to smile as she read it. She wanted to go out and celebrate with someone, but there was no one, so there was nothing to do but take a walk, have a lonely drink at the bar of the Warrior, and think of Carol five days away. There was no one she would have wanted to be with, except perhaps Dannie. Or Stella Overton. Stella was jolly, and though she couldn't have told Stella anything about Carol--whom could she tell?--it would have been good to see her now. She had meant to write Stella a card days ago, but she hadn't yet. She wrote to Carol late that night. The news is wonderful. I celebrated with a single daiquiri at the Warrior. Not that I am conservative, but did you know that one drink has the kick of three when you are alone?... I love this town because it all reminds me of you. I know you don't like it any more than any other town, but that isn't the point. I mean you are here as much as I can bear you to be, not being here... Carol wrote: I never liked Florence. I say this as a prelude. It seems Florence found the note you wrote to me and sold it to Harge--at a price. She is also responsible for Harge's knowing where we (or at least I) were going, I've no doubt. I don't know what I left around the house or what she might have overheard, I thought I was pretty silent, but if Harge took the trouble to bribe her and I'm sure he did, there's no telling. They picked us up in Chicago, anyway. Darling, I had no idea how far this thing had gone. To give you the atmosphere--nobody tells me anything, things are just suddenly discovered. If anyone is in possession of the facts, it is Harge. I spoke with him on the phone, and he refuses to tell me anything, which of course is calculated to terrorize me into giving all my ground before the fight has even begun. They don't know me, any of them, if they think I will. The fight of course is over Rindy, and yes, darling, I'm afraid there will be one, and I can't leave the 24th. That much Harge did tell me when he sprang the letter this morning on the phone. I think the letter may be his strongest weapon (the dictaphone business only went on in Colorado S. so far as I can possibly imagine) hence his letting me know about it."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_018.txt", "text": "But I can imagine the kind of letter it is, written even before we took off, and there'll be a limit to what even Harge can read into it. Harge is merely threatening--in the peculiar form of silence--hoping I will back out completely as far as Rindy is concerned. I won't, so there will come some kind of a showdown, I hope not in court. Fred is prepared for anything however. He is wonderful, the only person who talks straight to me, but unfortunately he knows least of all too. You ask if I miss you. I think of your voice, your hands, and your eyes when you look straight into mine. I remember your courage that I hadn't suspected, and it gives me courage. Will you call me, darling? I don't want to call you if your phone is in the hall. Call me collect around 7 P.M. preferably, which is 6 your time. And Therese was about to call her that day when a telegram came: DON'T TELEPHONE FOR A WHILE, EXPLAIN LATER, ALL MY LOVE, DARLING CAROL. Mrs. Cooper watched her reading it in the hall. \"That from your friend?\" she asked. \"Yes.\" \"Hope nothing's the matter.\" Mrs. Cooper had a way of peering at people, and Therese lifted her head deliberately. \"No, she's coming,\" Therese said. \"She's been delayed.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_019.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 21 ALBERT KENNEDY, BERT to people he liked, lived in a room at the back of the house, and was one of Mrs. Cooper's original lodgers. He was forty-five, a native of San Francisco, and more like a New Yorker than anyone Therese had met in the town, and this fact alone inclined her to avoid him. Often he asked Therese to go to the movies with him, but she had gone only once. She was restless and she preferred to wander about by herself, mostly just looking and thinking, because the days were too cold and windy for any outdoor sketching. And the scenes she had liked at first had grown too stale to sketch, from too much looking, too much waiting. Therese went to the library almost every evening, sat at one of the long tables looking over half a dozen books, and then took a meandering course homeward. She came back to the house only to wander out again after a while, stiffening herself against the erratic wind, or letting it turn her down streets she would not otherwise have followed. In the lighted windows she would see a girl seated at a piano, in another a man laughing, in another a woman sewing. Then he remembered she could not even call Carol, admitted to herself she did not even know what Carol was doing at this moment, and she felt emptier than the wind. Carol did not tell her everything in her letters, she felt, did not tell her the worst. In the library, she looked at books with photographs of Europe in them, marble fountains in Sicily, ruins of Greece in sunlight, and she wondered if she and Carol would really ever go there. There was still so much they had not done. There was the first voyage across the Atlantic. There were simply the mornings, mornings anywhere, when she could lift her head from a pillow and see Carol's face, and know that the day was theirs and that nothing would separate them. And there was the beautiful thing, transfixing the heart and the eyes at once, in the dark window of an antique shop in a street where she had never been. Therese stared at it, feeling it quench some forgotten and nameless thirst inside her. Most of its porcelain surface was painted with small bright lozenges of colored enamel, royal blue and deep red and green, outlined with coin gold as shiny as silk embroidery, even under its film of dust. There was a gold ring at the rim for the finger. It was a tiny candlestick holder. Who had made it, she wondered, and for whom? She came back the next morning and bought it to give to Carol. A letter from Richard had come that morning, forwarded from Colorado Springs. Therese sat down on one of the stone benches in the street where the library was, and opened it."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_019.txt", "text": "It was on business stationery: The Semco Bottled Gas Company. Cooks--Heats--Makes Ice. Richard's name was at the top as General Manager of the Port Jefferson Branch. Dear Therese, I have Dannie to thank for telling me where you are. You may think this letter unnecessary and perhaps it is to you. Perhaps you are still in that fog you were, when we talked that evening in the cafeteria. But I feel it is necessary to make one thing clear, and that is that I no longer feel the way I did even two weeks ago, and the letter I wrote you last was nothing but a last spasmodic effort, and I knew it was hopeless when I wrote it, and I knew you wouldn't answer and I didn't want you to. I know I had stopped loving you then, and now the uppermost emotion I feel toward you is one that was present from the first--disgust. It is your hanging onto this woman to the exclusion of everyone else, this relationship which I am sure has become sordid and pathological by now, that disgusts me. I know that it will not last, as I said from the first. It is only regrettable that you will be disgusted later yourself, in proportion to how much of your life you waste now with it. It is rootless and infantile, like living on lotus blossoms or some sickening candy instead of the bread and meat of life. I have often thought of those questions you asked me the day we were flying the kite. I wish I had acted then before it was too late, because I loved you enough then to try to rescue you. Now I don't. People still ask me about you. What do you expect me to tell them? I intend to tell them the truth. Only that way can I get it out of myself--and I can no longer bear to carry it around with me. I have sent a few things you had at the house back to your apartment. The slightest memory or contact with you depresses me, makes me not want to touch you or anything concerned with you. But I am talking sense and very likely you are not understanding a word of it. Except maybe this: I want nothing to do with you. Richard She saw Richard's thin soft lips tensed in a straight line as they must have looked when he wrote the letter, a line that still did not keep the tiny, taut curl in the upper lip from showing-she saw his face clearly for a moment, and then it vanished with a little jolt that seemed as muffled and remote from her as the clamor of Richard's letter. She stood up, put the letter back in the envelope, and walked on. She hoped he succeeded in purging himself of her."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_019.txt", "text": "But she could only imagine him telling other people about her with that curious attitude of passionate participation she had seen in New York before she left. She imagined Richard telling Phil as they stood some evening at the Palermo bar, imagined him telling the Kellys. She wouldn't care at all, whatever he said. She wondered what Carol was doing now, at ten o'clock, at eleven in New Jersey. Listening to some stranger's accusations? Thinking of her, or was there time for that? It was a fine day, cold and almost windless, bright with sun. She could take, the car and drive somewhere. She had not used the car for three days. Suddenly she realized she did not want to use it. The day she had taken it out and driven it up to ninety on the straight road to Dell Rapids, exultant after a letter from Carol, seemed very long ago. Mr. Bowen, another of the roomers, was on the front porch when she came back to Mrs. Cooper's house. He was sitting in the sun with his legs wrapped in a blanket and his cap pulled down over his eyes as if he were asleep, but he called out, \"Hi, there! How's my girl?\" She stopped and chatted with him for a while, asked him about his arthritis, trying to be as courteous as Carol had always been with Mrs. French. They found something to laugh at, and she was still smiling when she went to her room. Then the sight of the geranium ended it. She watered the geranium and set it at the end of the window sill, where it would get the sun for the longest time. There was even brown at the tips of the smallest leaves at the top. Carol had bought it for her in Des Moines just before she took the plane. The pot of ivy had died already--the man in the shop had warned them it was delicate, but Carol had wanted it anyway--and Therese doubted that the geranium would live. But Mrs. Cooper's motley collection of plants flourished in the bay window. \"I walk and walk around the town,\" she wrote to Carol, \"but I wish I could keep walking in one direction--east--and finally come to you. When can you come, Carol? Or shall I come to you? I really cannot stand being away from you so long....\" She had her answer the next morning. A check fluttered out of Carol's letter onto Mrs. Cooper's hall floor. The check was for two hundred and fifty dollars. Carol's letter--the long loops looser and lighter, the t-bars stretching the length of the word--said that it was impossible for her to come out within the next two weeks, if then. The check was for her to fly back to New York and have the car driven East. \"I'd feel better if you took the plane. Come now and don't wait,\" was the last paragraph."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_019.txt", "text": "Carol had written the letter in haste, had probably snatched a moment to write it, but there was a coldness in it, too, that shocked Therese. She went out and walked dazedly to the corner and dropped the letter she had written the night before into the mailbox anyway, a heavy letter with three airmail stamps on it. She might see Carol within twelve hours. The thought did not bring any reassurance. Should she leave this morning? This afternoon? What had they done to Carol? She wondered if Carol would be furious if she telephoned her, if it would precipitate some crisis into a total defeat if she did? She was sitting at a table somewhere with coffee and orange juice in front of her, before she looked at the other letter in her hand. In the upper left corner she could just make out the scrawly handwriting. It was from Mrs. R. Robichek. Dear Therese, Thank you very much for the delicious sausage that came last month. You are a nice sweet girl and I am glad to have the opportunity to thank you many times. It was nice of you to think of me making such a long trip. I enjoy the pretty post cards, specially the big one from Sioux Falls. How is in South Dakota? Are mountains and cowboys? I have never had chance to travel except Pennsylvania. You are a lucky girl, so young and pretty and kind. Myself I still work. The store is just the same. Everything is the same but it is colder. Please visit me when you come back. I cook a nice dinner for you not from delicatessen. Thank you for the sausage again. I lived from it for many days, really something special and nice. With best regards and yours truly. Ruby Robichek Therese slid off the stool, left some money on the counter and ran out. She ran all the way to the Warrior Hotel, put the call in and waited with the receiver against her ear until she heard the telephone ringing in Carol's house. No one answered. It rang twenty times and no one answered. She thought of calling Carol's lawyer, Fred Haymes. She decided she shouldn't. Neither did she want to call Abby. That day it rained, and Therese lay on her bed in her room, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for three o'clock, when she intended to telephone again. Mrs. Cooper brought her a tray of lunch around midday. Mrs. Cooper thought she was sick. Therese could not eat the food, however, and she did not know what to do with it. She was still trying to reach Carol at five o'clock. Finally the ringing stopped and there was confusion on the wire, a couple of operators questioning each other about the call, and the first words Therese heard from Carol were \"Yes, damn it!\" Therese smiled and the ache went out of her arms. \"Hello?\" Carol said brusquely. \"Hello?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_019.txt", "text": "The connection was bad. \"I got the letter--the one with the check. What happened, Carol?... What?\" Carol's harassed sounding voice repeated through the crackling interference,\"This wire I think is tapped, Therese.... Are you all right? Are you coming home? I can't talk very long now.\" Therese frowned, wordless. \"Yes, I suppose I can leave today.\" Then she blurted, \"What is it, Carol? I really can't stand this, not knowing anything!\" \"Therese!\" Carol drew the word all across Therese's words, like a deletion. \"Will you come home so I can talk to you?\" Therese thought she heard Carol sigh impatiently. \"But I've got to know now. Can you see me at all when I come back?\" \"Hang onto yourself, Therese.\" Was this the way they talked together? Were these the words they used? \"But can you?\" \"I don't know,\" Carol said. A chill ran up her arm, into the fingers that held the telephone. She felt Carol hated her. Because it was her fault, her stupid blunder about the letter Florence had found. Something had happened and perhaps Carol couldn't and wouldn't even want to see her again. \"Has the court thing started yet?\" \"It's finished. I wrote you about that. I can't talk any longer. Good-by, Therese.\" Carol waited for her to reply. \"I've got to say good-by.\" Therese put the receiver slowly back on the hook. She stood in the hotel lobby, staring at the blurred figures around the front desk. She pulled Carol's letter out of her pocket and read it again, but Carol's voice was closer, saying impatiently, \"Will you come home so I can talk to you?\" She pulled the check out and looked at it again, upside down, and slowly tore it up. She dropped the pieces into a brass spittoon. But the tears did not come until she got back to the house and saw her room again, the double bed that sagged in the middle, the stack of letters from Carol on the desk. She couldn't stay here another night. She would go to a hotel for the night, and if the letter Carol had mentioned wasn't here tomorrow morning, she would leave anyway. Therese dragged her suitcase down from the closet and opened it on the bed. The folded corner of a white handkerchief stuck out of one of the pockets. Therese took it out and lifted it to her nose, remembering the morning in Des Moines when Carol had put it there, with the dash of perfume on it, and the derisive remark Carol had made about putting it there, that she had laughed at. Therese stood with her hand on the back of a chair and the other hand clenched in a fist that rose and fell aimlessly, and what she felt was as blurred as the desk and the letters that she frowned at in front of her. Then her hand reached out suddenly for the letter propped against the books at the back of the desk."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_019.txt", "text": "She hadn't seen the letter before, though it was in plain view. Therese tore it open. This was the letter Carol had meant. It was a long letter, and the ink was pale blue on some pages and dark on others, and there were words crossed out. She read the first page, then went back and read it again. Monday My darling, I am not even going into court. This morning I was given a private showing of what Harge intended to bring against me. Yes, they have a few conversations recorded--namely Waterloo, and it would be useless to try to face a court with this. I should be ashamed, not for myself oddly enough, but for my own child, to say nothing of not wanting you to have to appear. Everything was very simple this morning--I simply surrendered. The important thing now is what I intend to do in the future, the lawyers said. On this depends whether I would ever see my child again, because Harge has with ease now complete custody of her. The question was would I stop seeing you (and others like you, they said!). It was not so clearly put. There were a dozen faces that opened their mouths and spoke like the judges of doomsday--reminding me of my duties, my position, and my future. (What future have they fixed up for me? Are they going to look in on it in six months?) --I said I would stop seeing you. I wonder if you will understand, Therese, since you are so young and never even knew a mother who cared desperately for you. For this promise, they present me with their wonderful reward, the privilege of seeing my child a few weeks of the year. Hours later-- Abby is here. We talk of you--she sends you her love as I send mine. Abby reminds me of the things I know already--that you are very young and you adore me. Abby does not think I should send this to you, but tell you when you come. We have just had quite an argument about it. I tell her she does not know you as well as I, and I think now she does not know me as well as you in some ways, and those ways are the emotions. I am not very happy today, my sweet. I am drinking my ryes and you would tell me they depress me, I know. But I wasn't prepared for these days after those weeks with you. They were happy weeks--you knew it more than I did. Though all we have known is only a beginning. I meant to try to tell you in this letter that you don't even know the rest and perhaps you never will and are not supposed to-- meaning destined to. We never fought, never came back knowing there was nothing else we wanted in heaven or hell but to be together."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_019.txt", "text": "Did you ever care for me that much, I don't know. But that is all part of it and all we have known is only a beginning. And it has been such a short time. For that reason it will have shorter roots in you. You say you love me however I am and when I curse. I say I love you always, the person you are and the person you will become. I would say it in a court if it would mean anything to those people or possibly change anything, because those are not the words I am afraid of. I mean, darling, I shall send you this letter and I think you will understand why I do, why I told the lawyers yesterday I would not see you again and why I had to tell them that, and I would be underestimating you to think you could not and to think you would prefer delay. She stopped reading and stood up, and walked slowly to her writing table. Yes, she understood why Carol had sent the letter. Because Carol loved her child more than her. And because of that, the lawyers had been able to break her, to force her to do exactly what they wanted her to do. Therese could not imagine Carol forced. Yet here it was in Carol's writing. It was a surrender. Therese knew no situation in which she was the stake could have wrested her from Carol. For an instant there came the fantastic realization that Carol had devoted only a fraction of herself to her, Therese, and suddenly the whole world of the last month, like a tremendous lie, cracked and almost toppled. In the next instant, Therese did not believe that. Yet the fact remained, she had chosen her child. She stared at Richard's envelope on her table, and felt all the words she wanted to say to him, that she had never said to him, rising in a torrent inside her. What right had he to talk about whom she loved or how? What did he know about her? What had he ever known? ... exaggerated and at the same time minimized [she read on another page of Carol's letter]. But between the pleasure of a kiss and of what a man and woman do in bed seems to me only a gradation. A kiss, for instance, is not to be minimized, or its value judged by anyone else. I wonder do these men grade their pleasure in terms of whether their actions produce a child or not, and do they consider them more pleasant if they do. It is a question of pleasure after all, and what's the use of debating the pleasure of an ice cream cone versus a football game--or a Beethoven quartet versus the Mona Lisa. I'll leave that to the philosophers."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_019.txt", "text": "But their attitude was that I must be somehow demented or blind (plus a kind of regret, I thought, at the fact a fairly attractive woman is presumably unavailable to men). Someone brought \"aesthetics\" into the argument, I mean against me of course. I said did they really want to debate that--it brought the only laugh in the whole show. But the most important point I did not mention and was not thought of by anyone--that the rapport between two men or two women can be absolute and perfect, as it can never be between man and woman, and perhaps some people want just this, as others want that more shifting and uncertain thing that happens between men and women. It was said or at least implied yesterday that my present course would bring me to the depths of human vice and degeneration. Yes, I have sunk a good deal since they took you from me. It is true, if I were to go on like this and be spied upon, attacked, never possessing one person long enough so that knowledge of a person is a superficial thing--that is degeneration. Or to live against one's grain, that is degeneration by definition. Darling, I pour all this out to you [the next lines were crossed out]. You will undoubtedly handle your future better than I. Let me be a bad example to you. If you are hurt now beyond what you think you can bear and if it makes you-- either now or one day--hate me, and this is what I told Abby, then I shan't be sorry. I may have been that one person you were fated to meet, as you say, and the only one, and you can put it all behind you. Yet if you don't, for all this failure and the dismalness now, I know what you said that afternoon is right--it needn't be like this. I do want to talk with you once when you come back, if you're willing, unless you think you can't. Your plants are still thriving on the back porch. I water them every day.... Therese could not read any more. Beyond her door she heard footsteps slowly descending the stairs, walking more confidently across the hall. When the footsteps were gone, she opened her door and stood there a moment, struggling against an impulse to walk straight out of the house and leave everything behind her. Then she went down the hall to Mrs. Cooper's door in the rear. Mrs. Cooper answered her knock, and Therese said the words she had prepared, about leaving that night. She watched Mrs. Cooper's face that didn't listen to her but only reacted to the sight of her own face, and Mrs. Cooper seemed suddenly her own reflection, that she could not turn away from. \"Well, I'm sorry, Miss Belivet. I'm sorry if your plans have gone wrong,\" she said, while her face registered only shock and curiosity."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_019.txt", "text": "Then Therese went back to her room and began to pack, laying in the bottom of her suitcase the cardboard models she had folded flat, and then her books. After a moment, she heard Mrs. Cooper approaching her door slowly, as if she carried something, and Therese thought, if she was bringing her another tray, she would scream. Mrs. Cooper knocked. \"Where shall I forward your mail to, honey, in case there's any more letters?\" Mrs. Cooper asked. \"I don't know yet. I'll have to write and let you know.\" Therese felt lightheaded and sickish when she straightened up. \"You're not starting back for New York this late at night, are you?\" Mrs. Cooper called anything after six \"night.\" \"No,\" Therese said. \"I'll just go a little ways.\" She was impatient to be alone. She looked at Mrs. Cooper's hand bulging the gray checked apron under the waistband, at the cracked soft house shoes worn paper thin on these floors, that had walked these floors years before she came here and would go on in the same foot tracks years after she was gone. \"Well, you be sure and let me hear how you make out,\" Mrs. Cooper said. \"Yes.\" She drove to a hotel, a different hotel from the one where she had always called Carol. Then she went out for a walk, restlessly, avoiding all the streets she had been in with Carol. She might have driven to another town, she thought, and stopped, half decided to go back to the car. Then she walked on, not caring, actually, where she was. She walked until she was cold, and the library was the closest place to go and get warm. She passed the diner and glanced in. Dutch saw her, and with the familiar dip of his head, as if he had to look under something to see her through the window, he smiled and waved to her. Automatically, her hand waved back, good-by, and suddenly she thought of her room in New York, with the dress still on the studio couch, and the corner of the carpet turned back. If she could only reach out now and pull the carpet flat, she thought. She stood staring down the narrowish, solid looking avenue with its round street lights. A single figure walked along the sidewalk toward her. Therese went up the library steps. Miss Graham, the librarian, greeted her as usual, but Therese did not go into the main reading room. There were two or three people there tonight, the baldheaded man with the black-rimmed glasses who was often at the middle table, and how often had she sat in that room with a letter from Carol in her pocket? With Carol beside her. She climbed the stairs, passed the history and art room on the second floor, up to the third floor where she had never been before."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "index_split_019.txt", "text": "There was a single large dusty looking room with glass-front bookcases around the walls, a few oil paintings and marble busts on pedestals. Therese sat down at one of the tables, and her body relaxed with an ache. She put her head down on her arms on the table, suddenly limp and sleepy, but in the next second, she slid the chair back and stood up. She felt prickles of terror in the roots of her hair. She had been somehow pretending until this moment that Carol was not gone, that when she went back to New York, she would see Carol and everything would be, would have to be as it had been before. She glanced nervously around the room, as if looking for some contradiction, some redress. For a moment, she felt her body might shatter apart of itself, or might hurl itself through the glass of the long windows across the room. She stared at a pallid bust of Homer, the inquisitively lifted eyebrows delineated faintly by dust. She turned to the door, and for the first time noticed the picture over the lintel. It was only similar, she thought, not quite the same, not the same, but the recognition had shaken her at the core, was growing as she looked at it, and she knew the picture was exactly the same, only much larger, and she had seen it many times in the hall that led to the music room before they had taken it down when she was still small--the smiling woman in the ornate dress of some court, the hand poised just below the throat, the arrogant head half turned, as if the painter had somehow caught her in motion so that even the pearls that hung from each ear seemed to move. She knew the short, firmly modeled cheeks, the full coral lips that smiled at one corner, the mockingly narrowed lids, the strong, not very high forehead that even in the picture seemed to project a little over the living eyes that knew everything beforehand, and sympathized and laughed at once. It was Carol. Now in the long moment while she could not look away from it, the mouth smiled and the eyes regarded her with nothing but mockery, the last veil lifted and revealing nothing but mockery and gloating, the splendid satisfaction of the betrayal accomplished. With a shuddering gasp, Therese ran under the picture and down the stairs. In the downstairs hall, Miss Graham said something to her, an anxious question, and Therese heard her own reply like an idiot's babble, because she was still gasping, fighting for breath, and she passed Miss Graham and rushed out of the building."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_020.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 22 IN THE MIDDLE of the block, she opened the door of a coffee shop, but they were playing one of the songs she had heard with Carol everywhere, and she let the door close and walked on. The music lived, but the world was dead. And the song would die one day, she thought, but how would the world come back to life? How would its salt come back? She walked to the hotel. In her room, she wet a face towel with cold water to put over her eyes. The room was chilly, so she took off her dress and shoes and got into bed. From outside, a shrill voice, muted in empty space, cried: \"Hey, Chicago Sun-Times!\" Then silence, and she debated trying to fall asleep, while fatigue already began to rock her unpleasantly, like drunkenness. Now there were voices in the hall, talking of a misplaced piece of luggage, and a sense of futility overwhelmed her as she lay there with the wet, medicinally smelling face towel over her swollen eyes. The voices wrangled, and she felt her courage running out, and then her will, and in panic she tried to think of the world outside, of Dannie and Mrs. Robichek, of Frances Cotter at the Pelican Press, of Mrs. Osborne, and of her own apartment still in New York, but her mind refused to survey or to renounce, and her mind was the same as her heart now and refused to renounce Carol. The faces swam together like the voices outside. There was also the face of Sister Alicia, and of her mother. There was the last room she had slept in at school. There was the morning she had sneaked out of the dormitory very early and run across the lawn like a young animal crazy with spring, and had seen Sister Alicia running crazily through a field herself, white shoes flashing like ducks through the high grass, and it had been minutes before she realized that Sister Alicia was chasing an escaped chicken. There was the moment, in the house of some friend of her mother's, when she had reached for a piece of cake and had upset the plate on the floor, and her mother had slapped her in the face. She saw the picture in the hall at school, it breathed and moved now like Carol, mocking and cruel and finished with her, as if some evil and long-destined purpose had been accomplished. Therese's body tensed in terror, and the conversation went on and on in the hall obliviously, falling on her ear with the sharp, alarming sound of ice cracking somewhere out on a pond. \"What do you mean you did?\" \"No...\" \"If you did, the suitcase would be downstairs in the checkroom...\" \"Oh, I told you...\" \"But you want me to lose a suitcase so you won't lose your job!\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_020.txt", "text": "Her mind attached meaning to the phrases one by one, like some slow translator that lagged behind, and at last got lost. She sat up in bed with the end of a bad dream in her head. The room was nearly dark, its shadows deep and solid in the corners. She reached for the lamp switch and half closed her eyes against the light. She dropped a quarter into the radio on the wall, and turned the volume quite loud at the first sound she got. It was a man's voice, and then music began, a lilting, Oriental- sounding piece that had been among the selections in music appreciation class at school. \"In a Persian Market,\" she remembered automatically, and now its undulant rhythm that had always made her think of a camel walking took her back to the rather small room at the Home, with the illustrations from Verdi operas around the walls above the high wainscoting. She had heard the piece occasionally in New York, but she had never heard it with Carol, had not heard it or thought of it since she had known Carol, and now the music was like a bridge soaring across time without touching anything. She picked up Carol's letter opener from the bed table, the wooden knife that had somehow gotten into her suitcase when they packed, and she squeezed the handle and rubbed her thumb along its edge, but its reality seemed to deny Carol instead of affirm her, did not evoke her so much as the music they had never heard together. She thought of Carol with a twist of resentment, Carol like a distant spot of silence and stillness. Therese went to the basin to wash her face in cold water. She should get a job, tomorrow if she could. That had been her idea in stopping here, to work for two weeks or so, not to weep in hotel rooms. She should send Mrs. Cooper the hotel name as an address, simply for courtesy's sake. It was another of the things she must do, although she did not want to. And was it worth while to write to Harkevy again, she wondered, after his polite but explicit note in Sioux Falls. \"... I should be glad to see you again when you come to New York, but it is impossible for me to promise anything this spring. It would be a good idea for you to see Mr. Ned Bernstein, the co-producer, when you get back. He can tell you more of what is happening in designing studios than I can....\" No, she wouldn't write again about that. Downstairs, she bought a picture post card of Lake Michigan, and deliberately wrote a cheerful message on it to Mrs. Robichek."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_020.txt", "text": "It seemed false as she wrote it, but walking away from the box where she had dropped it, she was conscious suddenly of the energy in her body, the spring in her toes, the youth in her blood that warmed her cheeks as she walked faster, and she knew she was free and blessed compared to Mrs. Robichek, and what she had written was not false, because she could so well afford it. She was not crumpled or half blind, not in pain. She stood by a store window and quickly put on some more lipstick. A gust of wind made her step to catch her balance. But she could feel in the wind's coldness its core of spring, like a heart warm and young inside it. Tomorrow morning, she would start to look for a job. She should be able to live on the money she had left, and save whatever she earned to get back to New York on. She could wire her bank for the rest of her money, of course, but that was not what she wanted. She wanted two weeks of working among people she didn't know, doing the kind of work a million other people did. She wanted to step into someone else's shoes. She answered an advertisement for a receptionist-filing clerk that said little typing required and call in person. They seemed to think she would do, and she spent all morning learning the files. Then one of the bosses came in after lunch and said he wanted a girl who knew some shorthand. Therese didn't. The school had taught her typing, but not shorthand, so she was out. She looked through the help-wanted columns again that afternoon. Then she remembered the sign on the fence of the lumberyard not far from the hotel. \"Girl wanted for general office work and stock. $40 weekly.\" If they didn't demand shorthand, she might qualify. It was around three when she turned into the windy street where the lumberyard lay. She lifted her head and let the wind blow her hair back from her face. And she remembered Carol saying, I like to see you walking. When I see you from a distance, I feel you're walking on the palm of my hand and you're about five inches high. She could hear Carol's soft voice under the babble of the wind, and she grew tense, with bitterness and fear. She walked faster, ran a few steps, as if she could run out of that morass of love and hate and resentment in which her mind suddenly floundered. There was a wooden shack of an office at the side of the lumberyard. She went in and spoke with a Mr. Zambrowski, a slow moving baldheaded man with a gold watch chain that barely stretched across his front. Before Therese asked him about shorthand, he volunteered that he didn't need it. He said he would try her out the rest of the afternoon and tomorrow."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_020.txt", "text": "Two other girls came in for the job the next morning, and Mr. Zambrowski took their names, but before noon, he said the job was hers. \"If you don't mind getting here at eight in the morning,\" Mr. Zambrowski said. \"I don't mind.\" She had come in at nine that morning. But she would have gotten there at four in the morning if he had asked her to. Her hours were from eight to four thirty, and her duties consisted simply in checking the mill shipments to the yard against the orders received, and in writing letters of confirmation. She did not see much lumber from her desk in the office, but the smell of it was in the air, fresh as if the saws had just exposed the surface of the white pine boards, and she could hear it bouncing and rattling as the trucks pulled into the center of the yard. She liked the work, liked Mr. Zambrowski, and liked the lumberjacks and truck drivers who came into the office to warm their hands at the fire. One of the lumberjacks named Steve, an attractive young man with a golden stubble of beard, invited her a couple of times to have lunch with him in the cafeteria down the street. He asked her for a date on Saturday night, but Therese did not want to spend a whole evening with him or with anyone yet. One night, Abby telephoned her. \"Do you know I had to call South Dakota twice to find you?\" Abby said irritably. \"What're you doing out there? When're you coming back?\" Abby's voice brought Carol as close as if it were Carol she heard. It brought the hollow tightness in her throat again, and for a moment she couldn't answer anything. \"Therese?\" \"Is Carol there with you?\" \"She's in Vermont. She's been sick,\" Abby's hoarse voice said, and there was no smile in it now. \"She's taking a rest.\" \"She's too sick to call me? Why don't you tell me, Abby? Is she getting better or worse?\" \"Better. Why didn't you try to call to find out?\" Therese squeezed the telephone. Yes, why hadn't she? Because she had been thinking of a picture instead of Carol. \"What's the matter with her? Is she--\" \"That's a fine question. Carol wrote you what happened, didn't she?\" \"Yes.\" \"Well, do you expect her to bounce up like a rubber ball? Or chase you all over America? What do you think this is, a game of hide and seek?\" All the conversation of that lunch with Abby crashed down on Therese. As Abby saw it, the whole thing was her fault. The letter Florence had found was only the final blunder. \"When're you coming back?\" Abby asked. \"In about ten days. Unless Carol wants the car sooner.\" \"She doesn't. She won't be home in ten days.\" Therese forced herself to say, \"About that letter--the one I wrote--do you know if they found it before or after?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_020.txt", "text": "\"Before or after what?\" \"After the detectives started following us.\" \"They found it afterward,\" Abby said, sighing. Therese set her teeth. But it didn't matter what Abby thought of her, only what Carol thought. \"Where is she in Vermont?\" \"I wouldn't call her if I were you.\" \"But you're not me and I want to call her.\" \"Don't. That much I can tell you. I can give her any message--that's important.\" And there was a cold silence. \"Carol wants to know if you need any money and what about the car.\" \"I don't need any money. The car's all right.\" She had to ask one more question. \"What does Rindy know about this?\" \"She knows what the word divorce means. And she wanted to stay with Carol. That doesn't make it easier for Carol, either.\" Very well, very well, Therese wanted to say. She wouldn't trouble Carol by telephoning, by writing, by any messages, unless it was a message about the car. She was shaking when she put the telephone down. And she immediately picked it up again. \"This is room six eleven,\" she said. \"I don't want to take any more long distance calls--none at all.\" She looked at Carol's letter opener on the bed table, and now it meant Carol, the person of flesh and blood, the Carol with freckles and the corner nicked off one tooth. Did she owe Carol anything, Carol the person? Hadn't Carol been playing with her, as Richard had said? She remembered Carol's words, \"When you have a husband and child it's a little different.\" She frowned at the letter opener, not understanding why it had become only a letter opener suddenly, why it was a matter of indifference to her whether she kept it or threw it away. Two days later, a letter arrived from Abby enclosing a personal check for a hundred and fifty dollars that Abby told her to \"forget about.\" Abby said she had spoken with Carol, and that Carol would like to hear from her, and she gave Carol's address. It was a rather cold letter, but the gesture of the check was not cold. It hadn't been prompted by Carol, Therese knew. \"Thank you for the check,\" Therese wrote back to her. \"It's terribly nice of you, but I won't use it and I don't need it. You ask me to write to Carol. I don't think I can or that I should.\" Dannie was sitting in the hotel lobby one afternoon when she came home from work. She could not quite believe it was he, the dark-eyed young man who got up from the chair smiling and came slowly toward her. Then the sight of his loose black hair, mussed a little more by the upturned coat collar, the symmetrical broad smile, was as familiar as if she had seen him only the day before. \"Hello, Therese,\" he said. \"Surprised?\" \"Well, terrifically. I'd given you up. No word from you in--two weeks.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_020.txt", "text": "She remembered the twenty-eighth was the day he said he would leave New York, and it was the day she had come to Chicago. \"I'd just about given you up,\" Dannie said, laughing. \"I got delayed in New York. I guess it's lucky I did, because I tried to telephone you and your landlady gave me your address.\" Dannie's fingers kept a firm grip on her elbow. They were walking slowly toward the elevators. \"You look wonderful, Therese.\" \"Do I? I'm awfully glad to see you.\" There was an open elevator in front of them. \"Do you want to come up?\" \"Let's go have something to eat. Or is it too early? I didn't have any lunch today.\" \"It's certainly not too early, then.\" They went to a place Therese knew about, that specialized in steaks. Dannie even ordered cocktails, though he usually never drank. \"You're here by yourself?\" he said. \"Your landlady in Sioux Falls told me you left by yourself.\" \"Carol couldn't come out finally.\" \"Oh. And you decided to stay out longer?\" \"Yes.\" \"Until when?\" \"Until just about now. I'm going back next week.\" Dannie listened with his warm dark eyes fixed on her face, without any surprise. \"Why don't you just go west instead of east and spend a little time in California. I've got a job in Oakland. I have to be there day after tomorrow.\" \"What kind of a job?\" \"Researching--just what I asked for. I came out better than I thought I would on my exams.\" \"Were you first in the class?\" \"I don't know. I doubt it. They weren't graded like that. You didn't answer my question.\" \"I want to get back to New York, Dannie.\" \"Oh.\" He smiled, looking at her hair, her lips, and it occurred to her Dannie had never seen her with this much makeup on. \"You look grown up all of a sudden,\" he said. \"You changed your hair, didn't you?\" \"A little.\" \"You don't look frightened any more. Or even so serious.\" \"That pleases me.\" She felt shy with him, yet somehow close, a closeness charged with something she had never felt with Richard. Something suspenseful, that she enjoyed. A little salt, she thought. She looked at Dannie's hand on the table, at the strong muscle that bulged below the thumb. She remembered his hands on her shoulders that day in his room. The memory was a pleasant one. \"You did miss me a little, didn't you, Terry?\" \"Of course.\" \"Did you ever think you might care something about me? As much as you did for Richard, for instance?\" he asked with a note of surprise in his own voice, as if it were a fantastic question. \"I don't know,\" she said quickly. \"But you're not still thinking about Richard, are you?\" \"You must know I'm not.\" \"'Who is it then? Carol?\" She felt suddenly naked, sitting there opposite him. \"Yes. It was.\" \"But not now?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_020.txt", "text": "Therese was amazed that he could say the words without any surprise, any attitude at all. \"No. It's--I can't talk to anyone about it, Dannie,\" she finished, and her voice sounded deep and quiet in her ears, like the voice of another person. \"Don't you want to forget it, if it's past?\" \"I don't know. I don't know just how you mean that.\" \"I mean, are you sorry?\" \"No. Would I do the same thing again? Yes.\" \"Do you mean with somebody else, or with her?\" \"With her,\" Therese said. The corner of her mouth went up in a smile. \"But the end was a fiasco.\" \"Yes. I mean I'd go through the end, too.\" \"And you're still going through it.\" Therese didn't say anything. \"Are you going to see her again? Do you mind if I ask you all these questions?\" \"I don't mind,\" she said. \"No, I'm not going to see her again. I don't want to.\" \"But somebody else?\" \"Another woman?\" Therese shook her head. \"No.\" Dannie looked at her and smiled, slowly. \"That's what matters. Or rather, that's what makes it not matter.\" \"What do you mean?\" \"I mean, you're so young, Therese. You'll change. You'll forget.\" She did not feel young. \"Did Richard talk to you?\" she asked. \"No. I think he wanted to one night, but I cut it off before he got started.\" She felt the bitter smile on her mouth, and she took a last pull on her short cigarette and put it out. \"I hope he finds somebody to listen to him. He needs an audience.\" \"He feels jilted. His ego's suffering. Don't ever think I'm like Richard. I think people's lives are their own.\" Something Carol had said once came suddenly to her mind: every adult has secrets. Said as casually as Carol said everything, stamped as indelibly in her brain as the address she had written on the sales slip in Frankenberg's. She had an impulse to tell Dannie the rest, about the picture in the library, the picture in the school. And about the Carol who was not a picture, but a woman with a child and a husband, with freckles on her hands and a habit of cursing, of growing melancholy at unexpected moments, with a bad habit of indulging her will. A woman who had endured much more in New York than she had in South Dakota. She looked at Dannie's eyes, at his chin with the faint cleft. She knew that up to now she had been under a spell that prevented her from seeing anyone in the world but Carol. \"Now what are you thinking?\" he asked. \"Of what you said once in New York, about using things and throwing them away.\" \"Did she do that to you?\" Therese smiled. \"I shall do it.\" \"Then find someone you'll never want to throw away.\" \"Who won't wear out,\" Therese said. \"Will you write to me?\" \"Of course.\" \"Write me in three months.\" \"Three months?\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_020.txt", "text": "But suddenly she knew what he meant. \"And not before?\" \"No.\" He was looking at her steadily. \"That's a fair time, isn't it?\" \"Yes. All right. It's a promise.\" \"Promise me something else--take tomorrow off so you can be with me. I've got till nine tomorrow night.\" \"I can't, Dannie. There's work to do--and I've got to tell him anyway that I'm leaving in another week.\" Those weren't quite the reasons, she knew. And perhaps Dannie knew, looking at her. She didn't want to spend tomorrow with him, it would be too intense, he would remind her too much of herself, and she still was not ready. Dannie came round to the lumberyard the next day at noon. They had intended to have lunch together, but they walked and talked on Lake Shore Drive for the whole hour instead. That evening at nine, Dannie took a plane westward. Eight days later, she started for New York. She meant to move away from Mrs. Osborne's as soon as possible. She wanted to look up some of the people she had run away from last fall. And there would be other people, new people. She would go to night school this spring. And she wanted to change her wardrobe completely. Everything she had now, the clothes she remembered in her closet in New York, seemed juvenile, like clothes that had belonged to her years ago. In Chicago she had looked around in the stores and hungered for the clothes she couldn't buy yet. All she could afford now was a new haircut."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 23 THERESE WENT INTO HER old room, and the first thing she noticed was that the carpet corner lay flat. And how small and tragic the room looked. And yet hers, the tiny radio on the bookshelf, and the pillows on the studio couch, as personal as a signature she had written long ago and forgotten. Like the two or three set models hanging on the walls that she deliberately avoided looking at. She went to the bank and took out a hundred of her last two hundred dollars, and bought a black dress and a pair of shoes. Tomorrow, she thought, she would call Abby and arrange something about Carol's car, but not today. That same afternoon, she made an appointment with Ned Bernstein, the co-producer of the English show for which Harkevy was to do the sets. She took three of the models she had made in the West and also the Small Rain photographs to show him. An apprentice job with Harkevy, if she got it, wouldn't pay enough to live on, but there were other sources, other than department stores, anyway. There was television, for instance. Mr. Bernstein looked at her work indifferently. Therese said she hadn't spoken to Mr. Harkevy yet, and asked Mr. Bernstein if he knew anything about his taking on helpers. Mr. Bernstein said that was up to Harkevy, but as far as he knew, he didn't need any more assistants. Neither did Mr. Bernstein know of any other set studio that needed anyone at the moment. And Therese thought of the sixty-dollar dress. And of the hundred dollars left in the bank. And she had told Mrs. Osborne she might show the apartment any time she wished, because she was moving. Therese hadn't yet any idea where. She got up to leave, and thanked Mr. Bernstein anyway for looking at her work. She did it with a smile. \"How about television?\" Mr. Bernstein asked. \"Have you tried to start that way? It's easier to break into.\" \"I'm going over to see someone at Dumont later this afternoon.\" Mr. Donohue had given her a couple of names last January. Mr. Bernstein gave her some more names. Then she telephoned Harkevy's studio. Harkevy said he was just going out, but she could drop her models by his studio today and he could look at them tomorrow morning. \"By the way, there'll be a cocktail party at the St. Regis for Genevieve Cranell tomorrow at about five o'clock. If you care to drop in,\" Harkevy said, with his staccato accent that made his soft voice as precise as mathematics, \"at least we'll be sure to see each other tomorrow. Can you come?\" \"Yes. I'd love to come. Where in the St. Regis?\" He read from the invitation. Suite D. Five to seven o'clock. \"I shall be there by six.\" She left the telephone booth feeling as happy as if Harkevy had just taken her into partnership."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "She walked the twelve blocks to his studio, and left the models with a young man there, a different young man from the one she had seen in January. Harkevy changed his assistants often. She looked around his workroom reverently before she closed the door. Perhaps he would let her come soon. Perhaps she would know tomorrow. She went into a drugstore on Broadway and called Abby in New Jersey. Abby's voice was entirely different from the way it had sounded in Chicago. Carol must be much better, Therese thought. But she did not ask about Carol. She was calling to arrange about the car. \"I can come and get it if you want me to,\" Abby said. \"But why don't you call Carol about it? I know she'd like to hear from you.\" Abby was actually bending over backward. \"Well--\" Therese didn't want to call her. But what was she afraid of? Carol's voice? Carol herself? \"All right. I'll take the car to her, unless she doesn't want me to. In that case, I'll call you back.\" \"When? This afternoon?\" \"Yes. In a few minutes.\" Therese went to the door of the drugstore and stood there for a few moments, looking out at the Camel advertisement with the giant face puffing smoke rings like gigantic doughnuts, at the low-slung, sullen-looking taxis maneuvering like sharks in the after-matinee rush, at the familiar hodgepodge of restaurant and bar signs, awnings, front steps and windows, that reddish- brown confusion of the side street that was like hundreds of streets in New York. She remembered walking in a certain street in the West Eighties once, the brownstone fronts, overlaid and overlaid with humanity, human lives, some beginning and some ending there, and she remembered the sense of oppression it had given her, and how she had hurried through it to get to the avenue. Only two or three months ago. Now the same kind of street filled her with a tense excitement, made her want to plunge headlong into it, down the sidewalk with all the signs and theater marquees and rushing, bumping people. She turned and walked back to the telephone booths. A moment later, she heard Carol's voice. \"When did you get in, Therese?\" There was a brief, fluttering shock at the first sound of her voice, and then nothing. \"Yesterday.\" \"How are you? Do you still look the same?\" Carol sounded repressed, as if someone might be with her, but Therese was sure there was no one else. \"Not exactly. Do you?\" Carol waited. \"You sound different.\" \"I am.\" \"Am I going to see you? Or don't you want to. Once.\" It was Carol's voice, but the words were not hers. The words were cautious and uncertain. \"What about this afternoon? Have you got the car?\" \"I've got to see a couple of people this afternoon. There won't be time.\" When had she ever refused Carol when Carol wanted to see her?"}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "\"Would you like me to drive the car out tomorrow?\" \"No, I can come in for it. I'm not an invalid. Did the car behave itself?\" \"It's in good shape,\" Therese said. \"No scratches anywhere.\" \"And you?\" Carol asked, but Therese didn't answer anything. \"Shall I see you tomorrow? Do you have any time in the afternoon?\" They arranged to meet in the bar of the Ritz Tower on Fifty-seventh Street, at four thirty, and then they hung up. Carol was a quarter of an hour late. Therese sat waiting for her at a table where she could see the glass doors that led into the bar, and finally she saw Carol push open one of the doors, and the tension broke in her with a small dull ache. Carol wore the same fur coat, the same black suede pumps she had worn the day Therese first saw her, but now a red scarf set off the blond lifted head. She saw Carol's face, thinner now, alter with surprise, with a little smile, as Carol caught sight of her. \"Hello,\" Therese said. \"I didn't even know you at first.\" And Carol stood by the table a moment, looking at her, before she sat down. \"It's nice of you to see me.\" \"Don't say that.\" The waiter came, and Carol ordered tea. So did Therese, mechanically. \"Do you hate me, Therese?\" Carol asked her. \"No.\" Therese could smell Carol's perfume faintly, that familiar sweetness that was strangely unfamiliar now, because it did not evoke what it had once evoked. She put down the match cover she had been crushing in her hand. \"How can I hate you, Carol?\" \"I suppose you could. You did for a while, didn't you?\" Carol said, as if she told her a fact. \"Hate you? No.\" Not quite, she might have said. But she knew that Carol's eyes were reading it in her face. \"And now--you're all grown up--with grown-up hair and grown-up clothes.\" Therese looked into her gray eyes that were more serious now, somehow wistful, too, despite the assurance of the proud head, and she looked down again, unable to fathom them. She was still beautiful, Therese thought with a sudden pang of loss. \"I've learned a few things,\" Therese said. \"What?\" \"That I--\" Therese stopped, her thoughts obstructed suddenly by the memory of the portrait in Sioux Falls. \"You know, you look very fine,\" Carol said. \"You've come out all of a sudden. Is that what comes of getting away from me?\" \"No,\" Therese said quickly. She frowned down at the tea she didn't want. Carol's phrase \"come out\" had made her think of being born, and it embarrassed her. Yes, she had been born since she left Carol. She had been born the instant she saw the picture in the library, and her stifled cry then was like the first yell of an infant, being dragged into the world against its will. She looked at Carol."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "\"There was a picture in the library at Sioux Falls,\" she said. Then she told Carol about it, simply and without emotion, like a story that had happened to somebody else. And Carol listened, never taking her eyes from her. Carol watched her as she might have watched from a distance someone she could not help. \"Strange,\" Carol said quietly. \"And horrifying.\" \"It was.\" Therese knew Carol understood. She saw the sympathy in Carol's eyes, too, and she smiled, but Carol did not smile back. Carol was still staring at her. \"What are you thinking?\" Therese asked. Carol took a cigarette. \"What do you think? Of that day in the store.\" Therese smiled again. \"It was so wonderful when you came over to me. Why did you come to me?\" Carol waited. \"For such a dull reason. Because you were the only girl not busy as hell. You didn't have a smock either, I remember.\" Therese burst out laughing. Carol only smiled, but she looked suddenly like herself, as she had been in Colorado Springs, before anything had happened. All at once, Therese remembered the candlestick in her handbag. \"I brought you this,\" she said, handing it to her. \"I found it in Sioux Falls.\" Therese had only twisted some white tissue around it. Carol opened it on the table. \"I think it's charming,\" Carol said. \"It looks just like you.\" \"Thank you. I thought it looked like you.\" Therese looked at Carol's hand, the thumb and the tip of the middle finger resting on the thin rim of the candlestick, as she had seen Carol's fingers on the saucers of coffee cups in Colorado, in Chicago, and places forgotten. Therese closed her eyes. \"I love you,\" Carol said. Therese opened her eyes, but she did not look up. \"I know you don't feel the same about me. Do you?\" Therese had an impulse to deny it, but could she? She didn't feel the same. \"I don't know, Carol.\" \"That's the same thing.\" Carol's voice was soft, expectant, expecting affirmation or denial. Therese stared at the triangles of toast on the plate between them. She thought of Rindy. She had put off asking about her. \"Have you seen Rindy?\" Carol sighed. Therese saw her hand draw back from the candlestick. \"Yes, last Sunday for an hour or so. I suppose she can come and visit me a couple of afternoons a year. Once in a blue moon. I've lost completely.\" \"I thought you said a few weeks of the year.\" \"Well, a little more happened--privately between Harge and me. I refused to make a lot of promises he asked me to make. And the family came into it, too. I refused to live by a list of silly promises they'd made up like a list of misdemeanors--even if it did mean that they'd lock Rindy away from me as if I were an ogre. And it did mean that. Harge told the lawyers everything-- whatever they didn't know already.\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "\"God,\" Therese whispered. She could imagine what it meant, Rindy visiting one afternoon, accompanied by a staring governess who had been forewarned against Carol, told not to let the child out of her sight, probably, and Rindy would soon understand all that. What would be the pleasure in a visit at all? Harge--Therese did not want to say his name. \"Even the court was kinder,\" she said. \"As a matter of fact, I didn't promise very much in court. I refused there, too.\" Therese smiled a little in spite of herself, because she was glad Carol had refused, that Carol had still been that proud. \"But it wasn't a court, you know, just a round-table discussion. Do you know how they made that recording in Waterloo? They drove a spike into the wall, probably just about as soon as we got there.\" \"A spike?\" \"I remember hearing somebody hammering something. I think it was when we'd just finished in the shower. Do you remember?\" \"No.\" Carol smiled. \"A spike that picks up sound like a dictaphone. He had the room next to us.\" Therese didn't remember the hammering, but the violence of all of it came back, shattering, destroying-- \"It's all over,\" Carol said. \"You know, I'd almost prefer not to see Rindy at all any more. I'm never going to demand to see her if she stops wanting to see me. I'll just leave that up to her.\" \"I can't imagine her ever not wanting to see you.\" Carol's eyebrows lifted. \"Is there any way of predicting what Harge can do to her?\" Therese was silent. She looked away from Carol, and saw a clock. It was five thirty-five. She should be at the cocktail party before six, she thought, if she went at all. She had dressed for it, in the new black dress with a white scarf, in her new shoes, with her new black gloves. And how unimportant the clothes seemed now. She thought suddenly of the green woolen gloves that Sister Alicia had given her. Were they still in the ancient tissue at the bottom of her trunk? She wanted to throw them away. \"One gets over things,\" Carol said. \"Yes.\" \"Harge and I are selling the house, and I've taken an apartment up on Madison Avenue. And a job, believe it or not. I'm going to work for a furniture house on Fourth Avenue as a buyer. Some of my ancestors must have been carpenters.\" She looked at Therese. \"Anyway, it's a living and I'll like it. The apartment's a nice big one--big enough for two. I was hoping you might like to come and live with me, but I guess you won't.\" Therese's heart took a jump, exactly as it had when Carol had telephoned her that day in the store. Something responded in her against her will, made her feel happy all at once, and proud."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "She was proud that Carol had the courage to do such things, to say such things, that Carol always would have the courage. She remembered Carol's courage, facing the detective on the country road. Therese swallowed, trying to swallow the beating of her heart. Carol had not even looked at her. Carol was rubbing her cigarette end back and forth in the ash tray. To live with Carol? Once that had been impossible, and had been what she wanted most in the world. To live with her and share everything with her, summer and winter, to walk and read together, to travel together. And she remembered the days of resenting Carol, when she had imagined Carol asking her this, and herself answering no. \"Would you?\" Carol looked at her. Therese felt she balanced on a thin edge. The resentment was gone now. Nothing but the decision remained now, a thin line suspended in the air, with nothing on either side to push her or pull her. But on the one side, Carol, and on the other an empty question mark. On the one side, Carol, and it would be different now, because they were both different. It would be a world as unknown as the world just past had been when she first entered it. Only now, there were no obstacles. Therese thought of Carol's perfume that today meant nothing. A blank to be filled in, Carol would say. \"Well,\" Carol said smiling, impatient. \"No,\" Therese said. \"No, I don't think so.\" Because you would betray me again. That was what she had thought in Sioux Falls, what she had intended to write or say. But Carol had not betrayed her. Carol loved her more than she loved her child. That was part of the reason why she had not promised. She was gambling now as she had gambled on getting everything from the detective that day on the road, and she lost then, too. And now she saw Carol's face changing, saw the little signs of astonishment and shock so subtle that perhaps only she in the world could have noticed them, and Therese could not think for a moment. \"That's your decision,\" Carol said. \"Yes.\" Carol stared at her cigarette lighter on the table. \"That's that.\" Therese looked at her, wanting still to put out her hands, to touch Carol's hair and to hold it tight in all her fingers. Hadn't Carol heard the indecision in her voice? Therese wanted suddenly to run away, to rush quickly out the door and down the sidewalk. It was a quarter to six. \"I've got to go to a cocktail party this afternoon. It's important because of a possible job. Harkevy's going to be there.\" Harkevy would give her some kind of a job, she was sure. She had called him at noon today about the models she had left at his studio. Harkevy had liked them all. \"I got a television assignment yesterday, too.\" Carol lifted her head, smiling."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "\"My little big shot. Now you look like you might do something good. Do you know, even your voice is different?\" \"Is it?\" Therese hesitated, finding it harder and harder to sit there. \"Carol, you could come to the party if you want to. It's a big party in a couple of rooms at a hotel--welcoming the woman who's going to do the lead in Harkevy's play. I know they wouldn't mind if I brought someone.\" And she didn't know quite why she was asking her, why Carol would possibly want to go to a cocktail party now any more than she did. Carol shook her head. \"No, thanks, darling. You'd better run along by yourself. I've got a date at the Elysee in a minute as a matter of fact.\" Therese gathered her gloves and her handbag in her lap. She looked at Carol's hands, the pale freckles sprinkled on their backs--the wedding ring was gone now--and at Carol's eyes. She felt she would never see Carol again. In two minutes, less, they would part on the sidewalk. \"The car's outside. Out in front to the left. And here's the keys.\" \"I know, I saw it.\" \"Are you going to stay on?\" Therese asked her. \"I'll take care of the check.\" \"I'll take care of the check,\" Carol said. \"Go on, if you have to.\" Therese stood up. She couldn't leave Carol sitting here at he table where their two teacups were, with the ashes of their cigarettes in front of her. \"Don't stay. Come out with me.\" Carol glanced up with a kind of questioning surprise in her face. \"All right,\" she said. \"There are a couple of things of yours out at the house. Shall I--\" \"It doesn't matter,\" Therese interrupted her. \"And your flowers. Your plants.\" Carol was paying the check the waiter had brought over. \"What happened to the flowers I gave you?\" \"The flowers you gave me--they died.\" Carol's eyes met hers for a second, and Therese looked away. They parted on the sidewalk, at the corner of Park Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. Therese ran across the avenue, just making it ahead of the green lights that released a pack of cars behind her, that blurred her view of Carol when she turned on the other sidewalk. Carol was walking slowly away, past the Ritz Tower doorway, and on. And that was the way it should be, Therese thought, not with a lingering handclasp, not with backward glances. Then as she saw Carol touch the handle of the car door, she remembered the beer can still under the front seat, remembered its clink as she had driven up the ramp from the Lincoln Tunnel coming into New York. She had thought then, she must get it out before she gave the car back to Carol, but she had forgotten. Therese hurried on to the hotel."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "People were already spilling out of the two doorways into the hall, and a waiter was having difficulty pushing his rolling table of ice buckets into the room. The rooms were noisy, and Therese did not see Bernstein or Harkevy anywhere. She didn't know anyone, not a soul. Except one face, a man she had talked to months ago, somewhere, about a job that didn't materialize. Therese turned around. A man poked a tall glass into her hand. \"Mademoiselle,\" he said with a flourish. \"Are you looking for one of these?\" \"Thank you.\" She didn't stay with him. She thought she saw Mr. Bernstein over in the corner. There were several women with big hats in the way. \"Are you an actress?\" the same man asked her, thrusting with her through the crowd. \"No. A stage designer.\" It was Mr. Bernstein, and Therese sidled between a couple of groups of people and reached him. Mr. Bernstein held out a plump, cordial hand to her, and got up from his radiator seat. \"Miss Belivet!\" he shouted. \"Mrs. Crawford, the make-up consultant--\" \"Let's not talk business!\" Mrs. Crawford shrieked. \"Mr. Stevens, Mr. Fenelon,\" Mr. Bernstein went on, and on and on, until she was nodding to a dozen people and saying \"How do you do?\" to about half of them. \"And Ivor--Ivor!\" Mr. Bernstein called. There was Harkevy, a slim figure with a slim face and a small mustache, smiling at her, reaching a hand over for her to shake. \"Hello,\" he said, \"I'm glad to see you again. Yes, I liked your work. I see your anxiety.\" He laughed a little. \"Enough to let me squeeze in?\" she asked. \"You want to know,\" he said, smiling. \"Yes, you can squeeze in. Come up to my studio tomorrow at about eleven. Can you make that?\" \"Yes.\" \"Come and join me later. I must say good-by to these people who are leaving.\" And he went away. Therese set her drink down on the edge of a table, and reached for a cigarette in her handbag. It was done. She glanced at the door. A woman with upswept blond hair, with bright, intense blue eyes had just come into the room and was causing a small furor of excitement around her. She had quick, positive movements as she turned to greet people, to shake hands, and suddenly Therese realized she was Genevieve Cranell, the English actress who was to play the lead. She looked different from the few stills Therese had seen of her. She had the kind of face that must be seen in action to be attractive. \"Hello, hello!\""}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "she called to everyone finally as she glanced around the room, and Therese saw the glance linger on her for an instant, while in Therese there took place a shock a little like that she had known when she had seen Carol for the first time, and there was the same flash of interest in the woman's blue eyes that had been in her own, she knew, when she saw Carol. And now it was Therese who-continued to look, and the other woman who glanced away, and turned around. Therese looked down at the glass in her hand, and felt a sudden heat in her face and her finger tips, the rush inside her that was neither quite her blood nor her thoughts alone. She knew before they were introduced that this woman was like Carol. And she was beautiful. And she did not look like the picture in the library. Therese smiled as she sipped her drink. She took a long pull at the drink to steady herself. \"A flower, madame?\" A waiter was extending a tray full of white orchids. \"Thank you very much.\" Therese took one. She had trouble with the pin, and someone--Mr. Fenelon or Mr. Stevens it was--came up and helped. \"Thanks,\" she said. Genevieve Cranell was coming toward her, with Mr. Bernstein behind her. The actress greeted the man with Therese as if she knew him very well. \"Did you meet Miss Cranell?\" Mr. Bernstein asked Therese. Therese looked at the woman. \"My name is Therese Belivet.\" She took the hand the woman extended. \"How do you do? So you're the set department?\" \"No. Only part of it.\" She could still feel the handclasp when the woman released her hand. She felt excited, wildly and stupidly excited. \"Isn't anybody going to bring me a drink?\" Miss Cranell asked anybody. Mr. Bernstein obliged. Mr. Bernstein finished introducing Miss Cranell to the people around him who hadn't met her. Therese heard her tell someone that she had just gotten off a plane and that her luggage was piled in the lobby, and while she spoke, Therese saw her glance at her a couple of times past the men's shoulders. Therese felt an exciting attraction in the neat back of her head, in the funny, careless lift of her nose at the end, the only careless feature of her narrow, classic face. Her lips were rather thin. She looked extremely alert, and imperturbably poised. Yet Therese sensed that Genevieve Cranell might not talk to her again at the party for the simple reason that she probably wanted to. Therese made her way to a wall mirror, and glanced to see if her hair and her lipstick were still all right. \"Therese,\" said a voice near her. \"Do you like champagne?\" Therese turned and saw Genevieve Cranell. \"Of course.\" \"Of course. Well, toddle up to six-nineteen in a few minutes. That's my suite. We're having an inner circle party later.\" \"I feel very honored,\" Therese said."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "\"So don't waste your thirst on highballs. Where did you get that lovely dress?\" \"Bonwit's--it's a wild extravagance.\" Genevieve Cranell laughed. She wore a blue woolen suit that actually looked like a wild extravagance. \"You look so young, I don't suppose you'll mind if I ask how old you are.\" \"I'm twenty-one.\" She rolled her eyes. \"Incredible. Can anyone still be only twenty-one?\" People were watching the actress. Therese was flattered, terribly flattered, and the flattery got in the way of what she felt, or might feel, about Genevieve Cranell. Miss Cranell offered her cigarette case. \"For a while, I thought you might be a minor.\" \"Is that a crime?\" The actress only looked at her, her blue eyes smiling, over the flame of her lighter. Then as the woman turned her head to light her own cigarette, Therese knew suddenly that Genevieve Cranell would never mean anything to her, nothing apart from this half hour at the cocktail party, that the excitement she felt now would not continue, and not be evoked again at any other time or place. What was it that told her? Therese stared at the taut line of her blond eyebrow as the first smoke rose from her cigarette, but the answer was not there. And suddenly a feeling of tragedy, almost of regret, filled Therese. \"Are you a New Yorker?\" Miss Cranell asked her. \"Vivy!\" The new people who had just come in the door surrounded Genevieve Cranell and bore her away. Therese smiled again, and finished her drink, felt the first soothing warmth of the Scotch spreading through her. She talked with a man she had met briefly in Mr. Bernstein's office yesterday, and with another man she didn't know at all, and she looked at the doorway across the room, the doorway that was an empty rectangle at that moment, and she thought of Carol. It would be like Carol to come after all, to ask her once more. Or rather, like the old Carol, but not like this one. Carol would be keeping her appointment now at the Elysee bar. With Abby? With Stanley McVeigh? Therese looked away from the door, as if she were afraid Carol might appear, and she would have to say again, \"No.\" Therese accepted another highball, and felt the emptiness inside her slowly filling with the realization she might see Genevieve Cranell very often, if she chose, and though she would never become entangled, might be loved herself. One of the men beside her asked, \"Who did the sets for The Lost Messiah, Therese? Do you remember?\" \"Blanchard?\" she answered out of nowhere, because she was still thinking of Genevieve Cranell, with a feeling of revulsion, of shame, for what had just occurred to her, and she knew she would never be. She listened to the conversation about Blanchard and someone else, even joined in, but her consciousness had stopped in a tangle where a dozen threads crossed and knotted. One was Dannie. One was Carol."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "One was Genevieve Cranell. One went on and on out of it, but her mind was caught at the intersection. She bent to take a light for her cigarette, and felt herself fall a little deeper into the network, and she clutched at Dannie. But the strong black thread did not lead anywhere. She knew as if some prognostic voice were speaking now that she would not go further with Dannie. And loneliness swept over her again like a rushing wind, mysterious as the thin tears that covered her eyes suddenly, too thin to be noticed, she knew, as she lifted her head and glanced at the doorway again. \"Don't forget.\" Genevieve Cranell was beside her, patting her arm, saying quickly, \"Six-nineteen. We're adjourning.\" She started to turn away and came back. \"You are coming up? Harkevy's coming up, too.\" Therese shook her head. \"Thanks, I--I thought I could, but I remember I've got to be somewhere else.\" The woman looked at her quizzically. \"What's the matter, Therese? Did anything go wrong?\" \"No.\" She smiled, moving toward the door. \"Thanks for asking me. No doubt I'll see you again.\" \"No doubt,\" the actress said. Therese went into the room beside the big one and got her coat from the pile on the bed. She hurried down the corridor toward the stairs, past the people who were waiting for the elevator, among them Genevieve Cranell, and Therese didn't care if she saw her or not as she plunged down the wide stairs as if she were running away from something. Therese smiled to herself. The air was cool and sweet on her forehead, made a feathery sound like wings past her ears, and she felt she flew across the streets and up the curbs. Toward Carol. And perhaps Carol knew at this moment, because Carol had known such things before. She crossed another street, and there was the Elysee awning. The headwaiter said something to her in the foyer, and she told him, \"I'm looking for somebody,\" and went on to the doorway. She stood in the doorway, looking over the people at the tables in the room where a piano played. The lights were not bright, and she did not see her at first, half hidden in the shadow against the far wall, facing her. Nor did Carol see her. A man sat opposite her, Therese did not know who. Carol raised her hand slowly and brushed her hair back, once on either side, and Therese smiled because the gesture was Carol, and it was Carol she loved and would always love. Oh, in a different way now, because she was a different person, and it was like meeting Carol all over again, but it was still Carol and no one else. It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell. Therese waited."}
{"ID": "The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "index_split_021.txt", "text": "Then as she was about to go to her Carol saw her, seemed to stare at her incredulously a moment while Therese watched the slow smile growing, before her arm lifted suddenly, her hand waved a quick, eager greeting that Therese had never seen before. Therese walked toward her."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs 1 The Dawn of the Dinosaurs Prorotodactylus Chapter Title art by Todd Marshall “BINGO,” MY FRIEND GRZEGORZ NIEDŹWIEDZKI shouted, pointing at a knife-thin separation between a slim strip of mudstone and a thicker layer of coarser rock right above it. The quarry we were exploring, near the tiny Polish village of Zachełmie, was once a source of sought-after limestone but had long been abandoned. The surrounding landscape was littered with decaying smokestacks and other remnants of central Poland’s industrial past. The maps deceitfully told us we were in the Holy Cross Mountains, a sad patch of hills once grand but now nearly flattened by hundreds of millions of years of erosion. The sky was gray, the mosquitoes were biting, heat was bouncing off the quarry floor, and the only other people we saw were a couple of wayward hikers who must have made a tragically wrong turn. “This is the extinction,” Grzegorz said, a big smile creasing the unshaven stubble of many days of fieldwork. “Many footprints of big reptiles and mammal cousins below, but then they disappear. And above, we see nothing for awhile, and then dinosaurs.” We may have been peering at some rocks in an overgrown quarry, but what we were really looking at was a revolution. Rocks record history; they tell stories of deep ancient pasts long before humans walked the Earth. And the narrative in front of us, written in stone, was a shocker. That switch in the rocks, detectable perhaps only to the overtrained eyes of a scientist, documents one of the most dramatic moments in Earth history. A brief instance when the world changed, a turning point that happened some 252 million years ago, before us, before woolly mammoths, before the dinosaurs, but one that still reverberates today. If things had unfolded a little differently back then, who knows what the modern world would be like? It’s like wondering what might have happened if the archduke was never shot. IF WE’D BEEN standing in this same spot 252 million years ago, during a slice of time geologists call the Permian Period, our surroundings would have been barely recognizable. No ruined factories or other signs of people. No birds in the sky or mice scurrying at our feet, no flowery shrubs to scratch us up or mosquitoes to feed on our cuts. All of those things would evolve later. We still would have been sweating, though, because it was hot and unbearably humid, probably more insufferable than Miami in the middle of the summer. Raging rivers would’ve been draining the Holy Cross Mountains, which were actually proper mountains back then, with sharp snowy peaks jutting tens of thousands of feet into the clouds. The rivers wound their way through vast forests of conifer trees—early relatives of today’s pines and junipers—emptying into a big basin flanking the hills, dotted with lakes that swelled in the rainy season but dried out when the monsoons ended."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "These lakes were the lifeblood of the local ecosystem, watering holes that provided an oasis from the harsh heat and wind. All sorts of animals flocked to them, but they weren’t animals we would know. There were slimy salamanders bigger than dogs, loitering near the water’s edge and occasionally snapping at a passing fish. Stocky beasts called pareiasaurs waddled around on all fours, their knobby skin, front-heavy build, and general brutish appearance making them seem like a mad reptilian offensive lineman. Fat little things called dicynodonts rummaged around in the muck like pigs, using their sharp tusks to pry up tasty roots. Lording over it all were the gorgonopsians, bear-size monsters who reigned at the top of the food chain, slicing into pareiasaur guts and dicynodont flesh with their saberlike canines. This cast of oddballs ruled the world right before the dinosaurs. Then, deep inside, the Earth began to rumble. You wouldn’t have been able to feel it on the surface, at least when it kicked off, right around 252 million years ago. It was happening fifty, maybe even a hundred, miles underground, in the mantle, the middle layer of the crust-mantle-core sandwich of Earth’s structure. The mantle is solid rock that is so hot and under such intense pressure that, over long stretches of geological time, it can flow like extra-viscous Silly Putty. In fact, the mantle has currents just like a river. These currents are what drive the conveyor-belt system of plate tectonics, the forces that break the thin outer crust into plates that move relative to each other over time. We wouldn’t have mountains or oceans or a habitable surface without the mantle currents. However, every once in a while, one of the currents goes rogue. Hot plumes of liquid rock break free and start snaking their way upward to the surface, eventually bursting out through volcanoes. These are called hot spots. They’re rare, but Yellowstone is an example of an active one today. The constant supply of heat from the deep Earth is what powers Old Faithful and the other geysers. This same thing was happening at the end of the Permian Period, but on a continent-wide scale. A massive hot spot began to form under Siberia. The streams of liquid rock rushed through the mantle into the crust and flooded out from volcanoes. These weren’t ordinary volcanoes like the ones we’re most used to, the cone-shaped mounds that sit dormant for decades and then occasionally explode with a bunch of ash and lava, like Mount Saint Helens or Pinatubo. They wouldn’t have erupted with the vigor of those vinegar-and-baking-soda contraptions so many of us made as science fair experiments. No, these volcanoes were nothing more than big cracks in the ground, often miles long, that continuously belched out lava, year after year, decade after decade, century after century. The eruptions at the end of the Permian lasted for a few hundred thousand years, perhaps even a few million."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "There were a few bigger eruptive bursts and quieter periods of slower flow. All in all, they expelled enough lava to drown several million square miles of northern and central Asia. Even today, more than a quarter billion years later, the black basalt rocks that hardened out of this lava cover nearly a million square miles of Siberia, about the same land area as Western Europe. Imagine a continent scorched with lava. It’s the apocalyptic disaster of a bad B movie. Suffice it to say, all of the pareiasaurs, dicynodonts, and gorgonopsians living anywhere near the Siberian area code were finished. But it was worse than that. When volcanoes erupt, they don’t expel only lava, but also heat, dust, and noxious gases. Unlike lava, these can affect the entire planet. At the end of the Permian, these were the real agents of doom, and they started a cascade of destruction that would last for millions of years and irrevocably change the world in the process. Dust shot into the atmosphere, contaminating the high-altitude air currents and spreading around the world, blocking out the sun and preventing plants from photosynthesizing. The once lush conifer forests died out; then the pareiasaurs and dicynodonts had no plants to eat, and then the gorgonopsians had no meat. Food chains started to collapse. Some of the dust fell back through the atmosphere and combined with water droplets to form acid rain, which exacerbated the worsening situation on the ground. As more plants died, the landscape became barren and unstable, leading to massive erosion as mudslides wiped out entire tracts of rotting forest. This is why the fine mudstones in the Zachełmie quarry, a rock type indicative of calm and peaceful environments, suddenly gave way to the coarser boulder-strewn rocks so characteristic of fast-moving currents and corrosive storms. Wildfires raged across the scarred land, making it even more difficult for plants and animals to survive. But those were just the short-term effects, the things that happened within the days, weeks, and months after a particularly large burst of lava spilled through the Siberian fissures. The longer-term effects were even more deadly. Stifling clouds of carbon dioxide were released with the lava. As we know all too well today, carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas, which absorbs radiation in the atmosphere and beams it back down to the surface, warming up the Earth. The CO2 spewed out by the Siberian eruptions didn’t raise the thermostat by just a few degrees; it caused a runaway greenhouse effect that boiled the planet. But there were other consequences as well. Although a lot of the carbon dioxide went into the atmosphere, much of it also dissolved into the ocean. This causes a chain of chemical reactions that makes the ocean water more acidic, a bad thing, particularly for those sea creatures with easily dissolvable shells. It’s why we don’t bathe in vinegar."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "This chain reaction also draws much of the oxygen out of the oceans, another serious problem for anything living in or around water. Descriptions of the doom and gloom could go on for pages, but the point is, the end of the Permian was a very bad time to be alive. It was the biggest episode of mass death in the history of our planet. Somewhere around 90 percent of all species disappeared. Paleontologists have a special term for an event like this, when huge numbers of plants and animals die out all around the world in a short time: a mass extinction. There have been five particu larly severe mass extinctions over the past 500 million years. The one 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period, which wiped out the dinosaurs, is surely the most famous. We’ll get to that one later. As horrible as the end-Cretaceous extinction was, it had nothing on the one at the end of the Permian. That moment of time 252 million years ago, chronicled in the swift change from mudstone to pebbly rock in the Polish quarry, was the closest that life ever came to being completely obliterated. Then things got better. They always do. Life is resilient, and some species are always able to make it through even the worst catastrophes. The volcanoes erupted for a few million years, and then they stopped as the hot spot lost steam. No longer blighted by lava, dust, and carbon dioxide, ecosystems were gradually able to stabilize. Plants began to grow again, and they diversified. They provided new food for herbivores, which provided meat for carnivores. Food webs reestablished themselves. It took at least five million years for this recovery to unfold, and when it did, things were better but now very different. The previously dominant gorgonopsians, pareiasaurs, and their kin were never to stalk the lakesides of Poland or anywhere else while the plucky survivors had the whole Earth to themselves. A largely empty world, an uncolonized frontier. The Permian had transitioned into the next interval of geological time, the Triassic, and things would never be the same. Dinosaurs were about to make their entrance. AS A YOUNG paleontologist, I yearned to understand exactly how the world changed as a result of the end-Permian extinction. What died and what survived, and why? How quickly did ecosystems recover? What new types of never-before-imagined creatures emerged from the post-apocalyptic blackness? What aspects of our modern world were first forged in the Permian lavas? There’s only one way to start answering these questions. You need to go out and find fossils. If a murder has been committed, a detective begins by studying the body and the crime scene, looking for fingerprints, hair, clothing fibers, or other clues that might tell the story of what unfolded, and lead to the culprit. For paleontologists, our clues are fossils. They are the currency of our field, the only records of how long-extinct organisms lived and evolved."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "Fossils are any sign of ancient life, and they come in many forms. The most familiar are bones, teeth, and shells—the hard parts that form the skeleton of an animal. After being buried in sand or mud, these hard bits are gradually replaced by minerals and turned to rock, leaving a fossil. Sometimes soft things like leaves and bacteria can fossilize as well, often by making impressions in the rock. The same is sometimes true of the soft parts of animals, like skin, feathers, or even muscles and internal organs. But to end up with these as fossils, we need to be very lucky: the animal needs to be buried so quickly that these fragile tissues don’t have time to decay or get eaten by predators. Everything I describe above is what we call a body fossil, an actual part of a plant or animal that turns into stone. But there is another type: a trace fossil, which records the presence or behavior of an organism or preserves something that an organism produced. The best example is a footprint; others are burrows, bite marks, coprolites (fossilized dung), and eggs and nests. These can be particularly valuable, because they can tell us how extinct animals interacted with each other and their environment—how they moved, what they ate, where they lived, and how they reproduced. The fossils that I’m particularly interested in belong to dinosaurs and the animals that came immediately before them. Dinosaurs lived during three periods of geological history: the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous (which collectively form the Mesozoic Era). The Permian Period—when that weird and wonderful cast of creatures was frolicking alongside the Polish lakes—came right before the Triassic. We often think of the dinosaurs as ancient, but in fact, they’re relative newcomers in the history of life. The Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, and the first microscopic bacteria evolved a few hundred million years later. For some 2 billion years, it was a bacterial world. There were no plants or animals, nothing that could easily be seen by the naked eye, had we been around. Then, some time around 1.8 billion years ago, these simple cells developed the ability to group together into larger, more complex organisms. A global ice age—which covered nearly the entire planet in glaciers, down to the tropics—came and went, and in its aftermath the first animals got their start. They were simple at first—soft sacs of goo like sponges and jellyfish, until they invented shells and skeletons. Around 540 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period, these skeletonized forms exploded in diversity, became extremely abundant, started eating one another, and began forming complex ecosystems in the oceans. Some of these animals formed a skeleton made of bones—these were the first vertebrates, and they looked like flimsy little minnows. But they, too, continued to diversify and eventually some of them turned their fins into arms, grew fingers and toes, and emerged onto the land, about 390 million years ago."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "These were the first tetrapods, and their descendants include all vertebrates that live on land today: frogs and salamanders, crocodiles and snakes, and then later, dinosaurs and us. We know this story because of fossils—thousands of skeletons and teeth and footprints and eggs found all over the world by generations of paleontologists. We’re obsessed with finding fossils and notorious for going to great (and sometimes stupid) lengths to discover new ones. It could be a limestone pit in Poland or maybe a bluff behind a Walmart, a dump pile of boulders at a construction site, or the rocky walls of a ripe landfill. If there are fossils to be found, then at least some swashbuckling (or stupid) paleontologist will brave whatever heat, cold, rain, snow, humidity, dust, wind, bug, stench, or war zone stands in the way. That’s why I started going to Poland. I first visited in the summer of 2008, a twenty-four-year-old in between finishing my master’s and starting my PhD; I went to study some intriguing new reptile fossils that had been found a few years earlier in Silesia, the sliver of southwestern Poland that for years was fought over by Poles, Germans, and Czechs. The fossils were kept in a museum in Warsaw, treasures of the Polish state. I remember the buzz as I approached the capital’s central station on a delayed train from Berlin, night shadows covering the hideous Stalin-era architecture of a city rebuilt from ruins after the war. As I stepped off the train, I scanned the crowd. Somebody was supposed to be there holding a sign with my name. I arranged my visit through a series of formal e-mails with a very senior Polish professor, who badgered one of his graduate students into meeting me at the station and guiding me to the small guestroom where I would stay at the Polish Institute of Paleobiology, just a few stories above where the fossils were kept. I had no idea whom I was looking for, and because the train had been more than an hour late, I figured the student had escaped back to the lab, leaving me on my own to navigate a foreign city in the twilight, with the few words of Polish on the glossary page of my guidebook. Just as I was starting to panic, I saw a sheet of white paper flapping in the wind, my name hastily scrawled across it. The man holding it was young, with a close-cropped military hairstyle, his hairline just starting to recede like mine. His eyes were dark, and he was squinting. A thin veneer of stubble covered his face, and he seemed to be a little darker than most of the Poles I knew. Tanned, almost. There was something vaguely sinister about him, but that changed in an instant when he recognized me coming toward him. He broke into a huge smile, grabbed my bag, and gripped my hand firmly. “Welcome to Poland. My name is Grzegorz."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "How about some dinner?” We were both tired, I from the long train journey, Grzegorz from working the whole day describing a new batch of fossil bones that he and his crew of undergraduate assistants had just found in southeastern Poland a few weeks before, hence the field tan he was sporting. But we ended up knocking back several beers and talking for hours about fossils. This guy had the same raw enthusiasm for dinosaurs that I had, and he was full of iconoclastic ideas about what happened after the end-Permian extinction. Grzegorz and I became fast friends. For the rest of that week, we studied Polish fossils together, and then during the following four summers, I came back to Poland to do fieldwork with Grzegorz, often joined by the third musketeer in our band, the young British paleontologist Richard Butler. During that time we found a lot of fossils and came up with some new ideas about how dinosaurs got their evolutionary start in those heady days after the end-Permian extinction. Over the course of those years, I saw Grzegorz transition from an eager, but still somewhat meek, graduate student into one of Poland’s leading paleontologists. A few years before turning thirty, he discovered, in a different corner of the Zachełmie quarry, a trackway left by one of those first fishy creatures to walk out of the water and onto land, some 390 million years ago. His discovery was published on the cover of Nature, one of the world’s leading scientific journals. He was invited to a special audience with Poland’s prime minister and gave a TED talk. His steely face—not his fossil discoveries, him—graced the cover of the Polish version of National Geographic. He had become something of a scientific celebrity, but more than anything else Grzegorz enjoyed heading out into nature and looking for fossils. He called himself a “field animal,” explaining that he loved camping and hacking through brush much more than the genteel ways of Warsaw. He couldn’t help it. He grew up around Kielce, the main city of the Holy Cross Mountains region, and started collecting fossils as a child. He developed a particular talent for finding a type that many paleontologists ignore: trace fossils. Footprints, hand impressions, tail drags: the marks dinosaurs and other animals left when they moved across mud or sand, going about their daily business of hunting, hiding, mating, socializing, feeding, and loitering. He was absolutely enamored of tracks. An animal has only one skeleton, but it can leave millions of footprints, he would often remind me. Like an intelligence operative, he knew all the best places to find them. This was his backyard, after all. It was quite the backyard to grow up in, too, because it turned out that those animal-infested seasonal lakes that covered the area during the Permian and Triassic were perfect environments for preserving tracks. For four summers we indulged Grzegorz’s love of tracks."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "Richard and I tagged along as he led us to many of his secret sites, which were mostly abandoned quarries, bits of rock poking out of streams, and rubbish piles along the ditches of the many new roads that were being built in the area, where workmen would dump the slabs of stone they cut through when laying asphalt. We found a lot. Or rather, Grzegorz did. Both Richard and I developed an eye for the often small hand- and footprints left by lizards, amphibians, and early dinosaur and crocodile relatives, but we could never compete with the master. The thousands of tracks that Grzegorz found over his two decades of collecting, plus the pittance of new ones that Richard and I stumbled upon, ended up telling quite a story. There were many types of tracks, belonging to a whole slew of different creatures. And they didn’t come from just one moment in time, but from a sequence of tens of millions of years, beginning in the Permian, continuing across the great extinction into the Triassic, and even reaching the next stage of geological time, the Jurassic Period, which began about 200 million years ago. When the seasonal lakes dried up, they left vast mud flats that animals walked across, leaving their marks. The rivers would continuously bring in new sediment to cover up the mud flats, burying them and turning them to stone. The cycle repeated year after year after year, so there is now layer upon layer upon layer of tracks in the Holy Cross Mountains. For paleontologists this is a bonanza: an opportunity to see how animals and ecosystems were changing over time, particularly after the cataclysmic end-Permian extinction. Identifying what animals made which particular track is relatively straightforward. You compare the shape of the track to the shape of hands and feet. How many fingers or toes are there? Which ones are longest? Which way do they face? Do only the fingers and toes make an impression, or does the palm of the hand and arch of the foot also leave a mark? Are the left and right tracks really close together, as the trackmaker was walking with its limbs right under its body, or are they far apart, made by a creature with limbs sprawled out to the side? By following this checklist, you can usually figure out which general group of animals left the tracks in question. Pinpointing an exact species is almost impossible, but distinguishing the tracks of reptiles from amphibians, or dinosaurs from crocodiles, is easy enough. The Permian tracks from the Holy Cross Mountains are a diverse lot, and most were made by amphibians, small reptiles, and early synapsids, progenitors of mammals that are often annoyingly, and incorrectly, described as mammal-like reptiles (although they are not actually reptiles) in kids’ books and museum exhibits. Gorgonopsians and dicynodonts are two types of these primitive synapsids."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "By all accounts these latest Permian ecosystems were strong—there were many varieties of animals, some small and others more than ten feet long and weighing over a ton, living together, thriving in the arid climate along the seasonal lakes. There are, however, no signs of dinosaur or crocodile tracks in the Permian layers, or even any tracks that look like precursors to these animals. Everything changes at the Permian-Triassic boundary. Following the tracks across the extinction is like reading an arcane book in which a chapter of English follows one written in Sanskrit. The latest Permian and earliest Triassic seem to be two different worlds, which is remarkable because the tracks were all left in the identical place, in the same exact environment and climate. Southern Poland didn’t stop being a humid lakeland fed by raging mountain streams as the Permian ticked over into the Triassic. No, it was the animals themselves that changed. I get the creeps when looking at the earliest Triassic tracks. I can sense the long-distant specter of death. There are hardly any tracks at all, just a few small prints here and there, but a lot of burrows jutting deep into the rock. It seems the surface world was annihilated and whatever creatures inhabited this haunted landscape were hiding underground. Almost all of the tracks belong to small lizards and mammal relatives, probably not much larger than a groundhog. Many of the diverse tracks of the Permian are gone, particularly those made by the larger proto-mammal synapsids, and they never reappear. Things gradually start to improve as you follow the tracks up through time. More track types appear, some of the prints get larger, and burrows become rarer. The world was clearly recovering from the shock of end-Permian volcanoes. Then, about 250 million years ago, just a couple of million years after the extinction, a new type of track starts showing up. They’re small, just a few centimeters long, about the size of a cat’s paw. They are arranged in narrow trackways, the five-fingered handprints positioned in front of the slightly larger footprints, which have three long central toes flanked by a tiny toe on each side. The best place to find them is near a tiny Polish village called Stryczowice, where you can park your car at a bridge, scramble your way through thorns and bramble, and poke around the banks of a narrow stream littered with track-covered rock slabs. Grzegorz discovered the site when he was young and proudly took me there once, on a miserable July day of obscene humidity, bugs, rain, and thunder. After a few minutes of hacking through the weeds, we were soaked, my field notebook warping as ink started to run off the pages. The tracks found here go by the scientific name of Prorotodactylus. Grzegorz wasn’t quite sure what to make of them. They were certainly different from the other tracks found alongside them, and all of the tracks from the Permian."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "But what kind of animal made them? Grzegorz had a hunch they could have something to do with dinosaurs, because an elderly paleontologist named Hartmut Haubold had reported similar tracks from Germany in the 1960s and had argued that they were made by early dinosaurs or close cousins. But Grzegorz wasn’t sold on the idea. He had spent most of his young career studying tracks and hadn’t spent much time with actual dinosaur skeletons, so it was difficult for him to match the prints to a trackmaker. That’s where I came in. For my master’s degree, I constructed a family tree of Triassic reptiles, a genealogy showing how the first dinosaurs were related to the other animals of the time. I spent months in museum collections studying fossil bones, so I knew the anatomy of the first dinosaurs quite well. As did Richard, who wrote a PhD thesis on early dinosaur evolution. The three of us put our heads together to figure out what culprit was responsible for the Prorotodactylus tracks, and we did indeed conclude that it was a very dinosaurlike animal. We announced our interpretation in a scientific paper we published in 2010. The clues, of course, are in the details of the tracks. When I look at the Prorotodactylus trackways, the first thing that jumps out at me is that they are very narrow. There is only a little bit of space between the left and right tracks in the sequence, just a few centimeters. There’s only one way for an animal to make tracks like this: by walking upright, with the arms and legs right underneath the body. We walk upright, so when we leave footprints on the beach, the left and right ones are very close together. Same with a horse—take a look at the pattern of horseshoe impressions left by a galloping horse next time you’re on a farm (or wagering a few bucks at the track), and you’ll see what I mean. But this style of walking is actually quite rare in the animal kingdom. Salamanders, frogs, and lizards move in a different way. Their arms and legs stick out sideways from the body. They sprawl. That means their trackways are much wider, with big separation between the left and right tracks made by their spread-eagle limbs. The Permian world was dominated by sprawlers. After the extinction, however, one new group of reptiles evolved from these sprawlers but developed an upright posture—the archosaurs. This was a landmark evolutionary event. Sprawling is all well and good for cold-blooded critters that don’t need to move very fast. Tucking your limbs under your body, however, opens up a new world of possibilities. You can run faster, cover greater distances, track down prey with greater ease, and do it all more efficiently, wasting less energy as your columnar limbs move back and forth in an orderly fashion rather than twisting around like those of a sprawler."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki examines a life-size model of the Prorotodactylus trackmaker: a proto-dinosaur very similar to the ancestor that gave rise to dinosaurs. Courtesy of Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki. A handprint overlapping a footprint of Prorotodactylus, from Poland. For scale, the handprint is about 1 inch long. Photo courtesy of the author We may never know exactly why some of these sprawlers started walking upright, but it probably was a consequence of the end-Permian extinction. It’s easy to imagine how this new getup gave archosaurs an advantage in the postextinction chaos, when ecosystems were struggling to recover from the volcanic haze, temperatures were unbearably hot, and empty niches abounded, waiting to be filled by whatever mavericks could evolve ways to endure the hellscape. Walking upright, it seems, was one of the ways in which animals recovered—and indeed, improved—after the planet was shocked by the volcanic eruptions. Not only did the new upright-walking archosaurs endure, but they thrived. From their humble origins in the traumatic world of the Early Triassic, they later diversified into a staggering variety of species. Very early, they split into two major lineages, which would grapple with each other in an evolutionary arms race over the remainder of the Triassic. Remarkably, both of these lineages survive today. The first, the pseudosuchians, later gave rise to crocodiles. As shorthand, they are usually referred to as the crocodile-line archosaurs. The second, the avemetatarsalians, developed into pterosaurs (the flying reptiles often called pterodactyls), dinosaurs, and by extension the birds that, as we shall see, descended from the dinosaurs. This group is called the bird-line archosaurs. The Prorotodactylus tracks from Stryczowice are some of the first signs of archosaurs in the fossil record, traces of the great-great-great-grandmother of this whole menagerie. Exactly what kind of archosaur was Prorotodactylus? Some peculiarities in the footprints hold important clues. Only the toes make an impression, not the metatarsal bones that form the arch of the foot. The three central toes are bunched very close together, the two other toes are reduced to nubbins, and the back end of the print is straight and razor-sharp. These may seem like anatomical minutiae, and in many ways they are. But as a doctor is able to diagnose a disease from its symptoms, I can recognize these features as hallmarks of dinosaurs and their very closest cousins. They link to unique features of the dinosaur foot skeleton: the digitigrade setup, in which only the toes make contact with the ground when walking, the very narrow foot in which the metatarsals and toes are bunched together, the pathetically atrophied outer toes, the hinge-like joint between the toes and the metatarsals, which reflects the characteristic ankle of dinosaurs and birds, which can move only in a back-and-forth direction, without even the slightest possibility of twisting. The Prorotodactylus tracks were made by a bird-line archosaur very closely related to the dinosaurs."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "In scientific parlance, this makes Prorotodactylus a dinosauromorph, a member of that group that includes dinosaurs and the handful of their very closest cousins, those few branches just below the bloom of dinosaurs on the family tree of life. After the evolution of the upright-walking archosaurs from the sprawlers, the origin of dinosauromorphs was the next big evolutionary event. Not only did these dinosauromorphs stand proudly on their erect limbs, but also they had long tails, big leg muscles, and hips with extra bones connecting the legs to the trunk, all of which allowed them to move even faster and more efficiently than other upright-walking archosaurs. As one of the first dinosauromorphs, Prorotodactylus is something of a dinosaur version of Lucy, the famous fossil from Africa that belongs to a very humanlike creature but is not quite a true human, a member of our species, Homo sapiens. In the same way that Lucy looks like us, Prorotodactylus would have appeared and behaved very much like a dinosaur, but it’s simply not considered a true dinosaur by convention. That’s because scientists decided long ago that a dinosaur should be defined as any members belonging to that group including the plant-eating Iguanodon and the meat-eating Megalosaurus (two of the first dinosaurs found by scientists in the 1820s) and all descendants of their common ancestor. Because Prorotodactylus did not evolve from this common ancestor, but slightly before it, it is not a true dinosaur by definition. But that’s just semantics. In Prorotodactylus we’re looking at traces left behind by the type of animal that evolved into dinosaurs. It was about the size of a house cat and would have been lucky to tip the scales at ten pounds. It walked on all fours, leaving handprints and footprints. Its limbs must have been quite long, judging from the big gaps between successive prints of the same hands and feet. The legs must have been particularly long and skinny, because the footprints often are positioned in front of the handprints, a sign that its feet were overstepping its hands. The hands were small and would have been good at grabbing things, whereas the long, compressed feet were perfect for running. The Prorotodactylus animal would have been gangly looking, with the speed of a cheetah but the awkward proportions of a sloth, perhaps not the type of animal you would expect the great Tyrannosaurus and Brontosaurus to ultimately evolve from. And it wasn’t very common either: less than 5 percent of all the tracks found at Stryczowice belong to Prorotodactylus, an indication that these proto-dinosaurs were not especially abundant or successful when they first arose. Instead, they were far outnumbered by small reptiles, amphibians, and even other types of primitive archosaurs. These rare, weird, not-quite-true-dinosaur dinosauromorphs continued to evolve as the world healed in the Early and Middle Triassic. The Polish track sites, stacked orderly in time sequence like the pages of a novel, document it all."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "Sites like Wióry, Pałęgi, and Baranów yield an equally unfamiliar array of dinosauromorph tracks—Rotodactylus, Sphingopus, Parachirotherium, Atreipus—which diversify over time. More and more track types show up; they get larger; they develop a greater diversity of shape, some even losing their outer toes entirely so that the center toes are all that remain. Some of the trackways stop showing impressions of the hand—these dinosauromorphs were walking on only their hind legs. By about 246 million years ago, dinosauromorphs the size of wolves were racing around on two legs, grabbing prey with their clawed hands, acting a whole lot like a pint-size version of a T. rex. They weren’t living only in Poland; their footprints are also found in France and Germany and the southwestern United States, and their bones start showing up in eastern Africa and later Argentina and Brazil. Most of them ate meat, but some of them turned vegetarian. They moved quickly, grew fast, had high metabolisms, and were active, dynamic animals compared to the lethargic amphibians and reptiles they were cohabitating with. At some point, one of these primitive dinosauromorphs evolved into true dinosaurs. It was a radical change in name only. The boundary between nondinosaurs and dinosaurs is fuzzy, even artificial, a by-product of scientific convention. The same way that nothing really changes as you cross the border from Illinois into Indiana, there was no profound evolutionary leap as one of these dog-size dinosauromorphs changed into another dog-size dinosauromorph that was just over that dividing line on the family tree that denotes dinosaurs. This transition involved the development of only a few new features of the skeleton: a long scar on the upper arm that anchored muscles to move the arms in and out, some tablike flanges on the neck vertebrae that supported stronger muscles and ligaments, and an open-window-like joint where the thighbone meets the pelvis. These were minor changes, and to be honest, we don’t really know what was driving them, but we know that the dinosauromorph-dinosaur transition wasn’t a major evolutionary jump. A far bigger evolutionary event was the origin of the swift-running, strong-legged, fast-growing dinosauromorphs themselves. The first true dinosaurs arose some time between 240 and 230 million years ago. The uncertainty reflects two problems that continue to cause me headaches but are ripe to be solved by the next generation of paleontologists. First, the earliest dinosaurs are so similar to their dinosauromorph cousins that it is hard to tell their skeletons apart, never mind their footprints. For instance, the puzzling Nyasasaurus, known from part of an arm and a few vertebrae from approximately 240-million-year-old rocks in Tanzania, may be the world’s oldest dinosaur. Or it may be just another dinosauromorph on the wrong side of the genealogical divide. The same is true of some of the Polish footprints, particularly the larger ones made by animals walking on their hind legs. Maybe some of these were made by real, true, honest-to-goodness dinosaurs."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "We just don’t have a good way of telling apart the tracks of the earliest dinosaurs and their closest nondinosaur relatives, because their foot skeletons are so similar. But maybe it doesn’t matter too much, as the origin of true dinosaurs was much less important than the origin of dinosauromorphs. The other, much more glaring issue is that many of the fossil-bearing rocks of the Triassic are very poorly dated, particularly those from the early to middle parts of the period. The best way to figure out the age of rocks is to use a process called radiometric dating, which compares the percentages of two different types of elements in the rock—say, potassium and argon. It works like this. When a rock cools from a liquid into a solid, minerals form. These minerals are made up of certain elements, in our case including potassium. One isotope (atomic form) of potassium (potassium-40) is not stable, but slowly undergoes a process called radioactive decay, in which it changes into argon-40 and expels a small amount of radiation, causing the beeps you’d hear on a Geiger counter. Beginning the moment a rock solidifies, its unstable potassium starts changing into argon. As this process continues, the accumulating argon gas becomes trapped inside the rock where it can be measured. We know from lab experiments the rate at which potassium-40 changes into argon-40. Knowing this rate, we can take a rock, measure the percentages of the two isotopes, and calculate how old the rock is. Radiometric dating revolutionized the field of geology in the middle of the twentieth century; it was pioneered by a Brit named Arthur Holmes, who once occupied an office a few doors down from mine at the University of Edinburgh. Today’s labs, like the ones run by my colleagues at New Mexico Tech and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre near Glasgow, are high-tech, ultramodern facilities where scientists in white lab coats use multi million-dollar machines bigger than my old Manhattan apartment to date microscopic rock crystals. The techniques are so refined that rocks hundreds of millions of years old can be precisely dated to a small window of time, within a few tens or hundreds of thousands of years. These methods are so fine-tuned that independent labs routinely calculate the same dates for samples of the same rocks analyzed blindly. Good scientists check their work this way, to make sure their methodology is sound, and test after test has shown that radiometric dating is accurate. But there is one major caveat: radiometric dating works only on rocks that cool from a liquid melt, like basalts or granites that solidify from lava. The rocks that contain dinosaur fossils, like mudstone and sandstone, were not formed this way, but rather from wind and water currents that dumped sediment. Dating these types of rocks is much more difficult."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "Sometimes a paleontologist is lucky and finds a dinosaur bone sandwiched between two layers of datable volcanic rocks that provide a time envelope for when that dinosaur must have lived. There are other methods that can date individual crystals found in sandstones and mudstones, but these are expensive and time-consuming. This means that it’s often difficult to date dinosaurs accurately. Some parts of the dinosaur fossil record have been well dated—when there are enough interspersed volcanic rocks to give a timeline or the individual-crystal technique has been successful—but not the Triassic. There are just a handful of well-dated fossils, so we are not entirely confident of what order certain dinosauromorphs appeared in (especially when trying to compare the ages of species found in distant parts of the world) or when true dinosaurs emerged out of the dinosauromorph stock. ALL UNCERTAINTIES ASIDE, we do know that by 230 million years ago, true dinosaurs had entered the picture. The fossils of several species with unquestionable signature features of dinosaurs are found in well-dated rocks of that age. They’re found in a place far from where the earliest dinosauromorphs were cavorting in Poland—the mountainous canyons of Argentina. Ischigualasto Provincial Park, in the northeastern part of Argentina’s San Juan Province, is the type of place that just looks as though it should be bursting with dinosaurs. It’s also called Valle de la Luna—the Valley of the Moon—and you could easily imagine its being on some other planet, full of wind-sculpted hoodoos, narrow gullies, rust-covered cliffs, and dusty badlands. To the northwest are the towering peaks of the Andes, and far to the south are the dry plains that cover most of the country, where cows graze on the grass that makes Argentine beef so delicious. For centuries Ischigualasto has been an important crossing for livestock making their way from Chile to Argentina, and today many of the few people who live in the area are ranchers. This stunning landscape also happens to be the best place in the world for finding the oldest dinosaurs. That’s because the red, brown, and green rocks that have been carved and eroded into such magical shapes were formed in the Triassic, in an environment both full of life and perfect for preserving fossils. In many ways, this landscape was similar to the Polish lakelands that preserved the tracks of Prorotodactylus and other dinosauromorphs. The climate was hot and humid, although perhaps a little more arid and not pounded by such strong seasonal monsoons. Rivers snaked their way into a deep basin, occasionally bursting their banks during rare storms. Over a period of 6 million years, the rivers built up repeating sequences of sandstone, formed in the river channels, and mudstone, formed from the finer particles that escaped the river and settled out on the surrounding floodplains."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "Many dinosaurs frolicked on these plains, along with a wealth of other animals—big amphibians, piglike dicynodonts whose ancestors managed to make it through the end-Permian extinction, beaked plant-eating reptiles called rhynchosaurs (primitive cousins of the archosaurs) and furry little cynodonts that looked like a cross between a rat and an iguana. Floods would occasionally interrupt this paradise, killing the dinosaurs and their friends and burying their bones. The area is so heavily eroded today, and so little disturbed by buildings and roads and other human nuisances that cover up fossils, that the dinosaurs are relatively easy to find, at least compared to so many other parts of the world where we hike around for days just praying to find anything, even just a tooth. The very first discoveries here were made by cowpokes or other locals, and it wasn’t until the 1940s that scientists began to collect, study, and describe fossils from Ischigualasto, then still another few decades until intensive expeditions were launched. The first major collecting trips were led by one of the giants of twentieth-century paleontology, the Harvard professor Alfred Sherwood Romer, the man who wrote the textbook that I still use to teach my graduate students in Edinburgh. During his first trip, in 1958, Romer was already sixty-four years old and regarded as a living legend, yet there he was driving a rickety car through the badlands because he had a hunch that Ischigualasto would be the next big frontier. On that trip he found part of a skull and skeleton of a “moderately large” animal, as he so modestly put it in his field notebook. He brushed away as much rock as he could, coated the bones in newspaper, applied a coat of plaster that would harden and protect the bones, and chiseled them out of the ground. He sent the bones back to Buenos Aires, where they would be loaded on a ship to the United States, so he could carefully clean and study them in his lab. But the fossils took a detour. They were impounded for two years at the port in Buenos Aires before customs officials finally gave the go-ahead. By the time the fossils arrived at Harvard, Romer had occupied himself with other things, and it was only years later that other paleontologists recognized that the master had found the very first good dinosaur from Ischigualasto. Some Argentines weren’t so happy that a Norteamericano had come down to their neighborhood to collect fossils, which were being removed from Argentina and studied in the United States. That spurred a pair of up-and-coming homegrown scientists, Osvaldo Reig and José Bonaparte, to organize their own expeditions. They assembled a team and set out for Ischigualasto in 1959, and then again three times during the early 1960s. It was during the 1961 field season that Reig and Bonaparte’s crew met a local rancher and artist named Victorino Herrera, who knew the hills and crevasses of Ischigualasto the way an Inuit knows snow."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "He recalled seeing some bones crumbling out of the sandstone and led the young scientists to the spot. Herrera had found bones all right, lots of them, and clearly they were part of the back end of a dinosaur skeleton. After a few years of study, Reig described the fossils as a new species of dinosaur that he called Herrerasaurus in the rancher’s honor, a mule-size creature that could sprint on its hind legs. Later detective work showed that Romer’s impounded fossils belonged to the same animal, and future discoveries revealed that Herrerasaurus was a fierce predator with an arsenal of sharp teeth and claws, a primitive version of T. rex or Velociraptor. Herrerasaurus was one of the very first theropod dinosaurs—a founding member of that dynasty of smart, agile predators that would later ascend to the top of the food chain and ultimately evolve into birds. You might think this discovery would have encouraged paleontologists from throughout Argentina to flock to Ischigualasto in some kind of mad dinosaur rush. But it didn’t happen. After Reig and Bonaparte’s expeditions ended, things got quiet. The late 1960s and 1970s were not a prime time for dinosaur research. There was little funding and, believe it or not, little public interest. Things picked up again in the late 1980s, when a thirty-something paleontologist from Chicago named Paul Sereno put together a joint Argentine-American team of other ambitious young guns, mostly graduate students and junior professors. They set out in the footsteps of Romer, Reig, and Bonaparte, the latter meeting with the group for a few days to guide them to some of his favorite sites. The trip was a rousing success: Sereno found another skeleton of Herrerasaurus and many other dinosaurs, proving that Ischigualasto still had plenty of fossils to give up. Three years later, Sereno was at it again, bringing much of the same crew back to Ischigualasto to explore new territory. One of his assistants was a wisecracking student named Ricardo Martínez. While out prospecting one day, Martínez picked up a fist-size hunk of rock covered in a gnarly frosting of iron minerals. Just another piece of junk, he thought, but as he reached back to toss it aside, Martínez noticed something pointy and shiny sticking out of the cobble. They were teeth. Glancing back at the ground, dumbfounded, he realized that he had plucked the head off the nearly complete skeleton of a dinosaur, a long-legged, lightly built speed demon about the size of a golden retriever. They named it Eoraptor. Those teeth poking out from the skull turned out to be highly unusual: the ones in the back of the jaw were sharp and serrated like a steak knife, surely to slice through flesh, but the ones at the tip of the snout were leaf-shaped with coarse projections called denticles, the same type of tooth that some long-necked, potbellied sauropod dinosaurs would later use to grind plants."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "This hinted that Eoraptor was an omnivore and possibly a very early member of the sauropod lineage, a primitive cousin of Brontosaurus and Diplodocus. I met Ricardo Martínez many years later, around the time that I first laid eyes on the gorgeous skeleton of Eoraptor. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago, training in Paul Sereno’s lab, when Ricardo came to work on a clandestine project, later announced as yet another new dinosaur from Ischigualasto, the terrier-size primitive theropod Eodromaeus. I took a liking to Ricardo right away. Paul was running an hour late, stuck in traffic on Lake Shore Drive, and Ricardo was literally twiddling his thumbs, hunched in the corner of the lab office. It was an incongruously disengaged posture from a man who very quickly revealed himself to be the very type of hot blooded, fast-talking, fossil-loving typhoon that I longed to be. He kind of looked like the Dude from The Big Lebowski: wild tangled hair, beard thick around the mouth, interesting fashion sense. He regaled me with stories of working in the wilds of Argentina, recounting with theatrical hand gestures how his hungry crew would sometimes hunt down stray cattle on their ATVs, delivering killing blows with the business end of their geological rock hammers. He could tell I was developing a romantic attraction to Argentina and told me to look him up if I ever came to visit. Five years later, I took him up on the offer when I attended the hardest-rocking scientific conference I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking at. Usually conferences are fairly stale affairs, held in Marriotts and Hyatts in cities like Dallas and Raleigh, where scientists gather to listen to each other speak in cavernous banquet halls that usually host weddings, drinking overpriced hotel beer while catching up on field stories. The conference that Ricardo and his colleagues hosted in the city of San Juan was anything but. The dinner on the last evening was legendary, like one of those hedonistic house parties in a rap video. A local politician adorned with a sash opened the proceedings, managing to make an outrageous quip about some of the foreigners in attendance. The main course was a phonebook-size slab of grass-fed beef, washed down with copious amounts of red wine. After dinner was dancing, for hours, fueled by an open bar with hundreds of bottles of vodka, whiskey, brandy, and a local firewater whose name I can’t remember. At about three a.m., there was a break in the proceedings while a make-your-own taco bar was assembled outside, a tasty change from the humidity of the dance floor. We staggered back to our hotels as dawn broke. Ricardo was right. I would love Argentina. Before the debauchery of that evening, I spent several days in the collections of Ricardo’s museum, the Instituto y Museo de Ciencias Naturales in the lovely city of San Juan."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.19", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_1.txt", "text": "Most of the riches of Ischigualasto are kept here, Herrerasaurus, Eoraptor, and Eodromaeus among them, but also many other dinosaurs. There’s Sanjuansaurus, a close cousin of Herrerasaurus that was also a fierce predator. In another drawer is Panphagia, similar to Eoraptor in being a primitive miniature cousin of the later colossal sauropods, and Chromogisaurus, a larger Brontosaurus relative that grew up to a couple of meters long and was something of a middle-of-the-food-chain plant-eater. There are also the scrappy fossils of a dinosaur called Pisanosaurus, a dog-size animal that shares some features of the teeth and jaws with the ornithischian dinosaurs—the group that would later diversify into a vast range of plant-eating species, from the horned Triceratops to the duck-billed hadrosaurs. And they’re still finding new dinosaurs in Ischigualasto, so who knows what new characters will be added if you are lucky enough to visit. As I was pulling open the specimen cabinet doors, carefully removing the fossils to measure and photograph them, I felt like something of an historian, one of those scholars who spends dark hours in the archives, scrutinizing ancient manuscripts. The analogy is deliberate, because the Ischigualasto fossils are indeed historical artifacts, primary-source objects that help us tell the story of deep prehistoric pasts, millions of years before monks started writing on parchment. The bones that Romer, Reig, and Bonaparte, and then later Paul, Ricardo, and their many colleagues, have pried from the lunar landscape of Ischigualasto are the very first records of true dinosaurs, living, evolving, and beginning their long march to dominance. These first dinosaurs weren’t quite dominant yet, overshadowed by the larger and more diverse amphibians, mammal cousins, and crocodile relatives that they lived alongside on those dry, occasionally flooded plains of the Triassic. Even Herrerasaurus probably wasn’t at the top of the food chain, ceding that title to the murderous twenty-five-foot-long crocodile-line archosaur Saurosuchus. But the dinosaurs had arrived on the scene. The three major groups—the meat-eating theropods, long-necked sauropods, and herbivorous ornithischians—had already diverged from each other on the family tree, siblings setting out to form their own broods. The skull of Eoraptor and the hand of Herrerasaurus, two of the oldest dinosaurs. Photo courtesy of the author The dinosaurs were on the march."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs 2 Dinosaurs Rise Up Coelophyis Chapter Title art by Todd Marshall IMAGINE A WORLD WITH NO BORDERS. I’m not channeling John Lennon. What I mean is, envision a version of Earth where all of the land is connected together—no patchwork of continents separated by oceans and seas, just a single expanse of dry ground stretching from pole to pole. Given enough time and a good pair of shoes, you could walk from the Arctic Circle across the equator to the South Pole. If you ventured too far inland, you would find yourself many thousands of miles—tens of thousands, even—from the closest beach. But if you fancied a swim, you could take a dip in the vast ocean surrounding the big slab of land you called home and, theoretically at least, paddle from one coast all the way around the planet to the other coast without having to dry off. It may sound fanciful, but this is the world the dinosaurs grew up in. When the very first dinosaurs, like Herrerasaurus and Eoraptor, evolved from their cat-size dinosauromorph ancestors some 240 to 230 million years ago, there were no individual continents—no Australia or Asia or North America. There was no Atlantic Ocean separating the Americas from Europe and Africa, no Pacific Ocean on the flip side of the globe. Instead, there was just one huge solid unbroken mass of land—what geologists refer to as a supercontinent. It was surrounded by a single global ocean. Geography class would have been easy in those days: the supercontinent we call Pangea, and the ocean we call Panthalassa. The dinosaurs were born into what we would see as a totally alien world. What was it like to live in such a place? First, let’s think about the physical geography. The supercontinent spanned an entire hemisphere of the Triassic Earth from North Pole to South. It looked something like a gigantic letter C, with a big indentation in the middle where an arm of Panthalassa cut into the land. Towering mountain ranges snaked across the landscape at odd angles, marking the sutures where smaller blocks of crust had once collided to build the giant continent, the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This puzzle wasn’t put together very easily or very quickly. For hundreds of millions of years, heat deep inside the planet pushed and tugged on the many smaller continents that were home to generations of animals long before the dinosaurs, until all of the land was globbed together into one sprawling kingdom. And what about the climate? No better way to put it: the earliest dinosaurs lived in a sauna. The Earth was a whole lot warmer back in the Triassic Period than it is today. In part, that’s because there was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so more of a greenhouse effect, more heat radiating across the land and sea. But the geography of Pangea exacerbated things."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "On one side of the globe, dry land extended from pole to pole, but on the other side, there was open ocean. That meant that currents could travel unimpeded from the equator to the poles, so there was a direct path for water baked in the low-latitude sun to heat up the high-latitude regions. This prevented ice caps from forming. Compared to today, the Arctic and Antarctic were balmy, with summer temperatures similar to those of London or San Francisco, and winter temperatures that barely inched below freezing. They were places that early dinosaurs and the other creatures with whom they shared the earth could easily inhabit. If the poles were that warm, then the rest of the world must have been a hothouse. But it’s not as though the entire planet was a desert. Once again the geography of Pangea made things much more complex. Because the supercontinent was basically centered on the equator, half the land was always scorching in the summer while the other half was cooling down in the winter. The marked temperature differences between north and south caused violent air currents to regularly stream across the equator. When the seasons changed, these currents shifted direction. That kind of thing happens today in some parts of the world, particularly India and Southeast Asia. It’s what drives the monsoons, the alternation of a dry season with a prolonged deluge of rain and nasty storms. You’ve probably seen images in the newspaper or on the nightly news: floods drowning homes, people fleeing from raging torrents, mudslides burying villages. The modern monsoons are localized, but the Triassic ones were global. They were so severe that geologists have invented a hyperbolic term to describe them: megamonsoons. Many a dinosaur was probably swept away by floodwaters or entombed by mud avalanches. But the megamonsoons also had another effect. They helped divide Pangea into environmental provinces, characterized by different amounts of precipitation, varying severity of the monsoonal winds, and different temperatures. The equatorial region was extremely hot and humid, a tropical hell that would make summer in today’s Amazon seem a trip to Santa’s workshop by comparison. Then there were vast stretches of desert, extending about 30 degrees of latitude on either side of the equator—like the Sahara, only covering a much broader swath of the planet. Temperatures here were well into the hundreds (over 35 degrees Celsius), probably all year long, and the monsoonal rains that pounded other parts of Pangea were absent here, offering little more than a trickle of precipitation. But the monsoons exerted a great impact in the midlatitudes. These areas were slightly cooler but much more wet and humid than the deserts, far more hospitable to life. Herrerasaurus, Eoraptor, and the other Ischigualasto dinosaurs lived in such a setting, smack in the middle of the midlatitude humid belt of southern Pangea. Pangea may have been a united landmass, but its treacherous weather and extreme climates gave it a dangerous unpredictability."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "It wouldn’t have been a particularly safe or pleasant place to call home. But the very first dinosaurs had no choice. They entered a world still recovering from the terrible mass extinction at the end of the Permian, a land subject to the violent whims of storms and the blight of blistering temperatures. So did many other new types of plants and animals that were getting their start after the mass extinction cleared the planet. All of these newbies were thrust onto an evolutionary battlefield. It was far from certain that dinosaurs were going to emerge triumphant. After all, they were small and meek creatures, nowhere near the top of the food chain during their earliest years. They were hanging around with lots of other species of small-to-midsize reptiles, early mammals, and amphibians in the middle of the food pyramid, fearful of the crocodile-line archosaurs, who held the throne. Nothing was handed to the dinosaurs. They were going to have to earn it. DURING MANY SUMMERS, I’ve journeyed deep into the subtropical arid belt of northern Pangea, on the hunt for fossils. Of course, the supercontinent itself is long gone, having gradually fractured into our modern continents during the more than 230 million years since the primeval dinosaurs started their evolutionary march. What I’ve been exploring is a remnant of old Pangea that can be found in the sunny Algarve region of Portugal, at the very southwestern corner of Europe. During those formative years when dinosaurs were navigating the megamonsoons and boiling heat waves of the Triassic, this part of Portugal was only 15 or 20 degrees north of the equator, about the same latitude as Central America today. As with so many adventures in paleontology, it was a random clue that put Portugal on my radar. After our first jaunt together in Poland, visiting Grzegorz and studying fossils of some of the dinosauromorph ancestors of dinosaurs, my British buddy Richard Butler and I developed something of an addiction. We became obsessed with the Triassic Period. We wanted to understand what the world was like when dinosaurs were still young and vulnerable. So we scoured the map of Europe looking for other places where there were accessible rocks of Triassic age, the type of sediments that could conceivably contain the fossils of dinosaurs and other animals living alongside them. Richard came across a short paper in an obscure scientific journal, describing some scraps of bone from southern Portugal that were collected by a German geology student in the 1970s. The student had been in Portugal to make a map of the rock formations, a rite of passage for all undergraduate geology majors. He had little interest in fossils, so he threw the specimens in his rucksack and hauled them back to Berlin, where they languished in a museum for nearly three decades until some paleontologists recognized them as skull pieces of ancient amphibians. Triassic amphibians. That was enough to get us excited."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "There were Triassic fossils in a beautiful part of Europe and nobody had been looking for them for decades. We had to go. That tip brought Richard and me to Portugal in the late summer of 2009, the hottest part of the year. We teamed up with another friend, Octávio Mateus, who wasn’t even thirty-five years old at the time but was already regarded as Portugal’s leading dinosaur hunter. Octavio grew up in a little town called Lourinhã, on the windy Atlantic coast north of Lisbon. His parents were amateur archaeologists and historians who spent weekends exploring the countryside, which just so happened to be strewn with Jurassic dinosaur fossils. The Mateus family and their ragtag band of local enthusiasts collected so many dinosaur bones, teeth, and eggs that they needed a place to put them, so when Octávio was nine years old, his parents started their own museum. Today, the Museu da Lourinhã houses one of the most important collections of dinosaurs in the world, many of which have been collected by Octávio—who went on to study paleontology and become a professor in Lisbon—and by his ever-expanding army of students, volunteers, and homegrown helpers. It was fitting that Octavio, Richard, and I set out in the August heat, because we were chasing the fossils of animals that lived in the very hottest and driest sector of Pangea. But it wasn’t very good strategy on our part. For several days, we hiked through the sun-baked hills of the Algarve, our sweat soaking the geological maps that we hoped would lead us to our treasure. We checked out nearly every speck of Triassic-age rock on the maps and relocated the site where the geology student had collected his amphibian bones, but all we saw were fossil crumbs. As our week in the field drew to a close, we were hot and exhausted, and staring down the barrel of failure. On the verge of defeat, we thought we should take one more hike in the area where the geology student made his discovery. It was a scorcher of a day, the thermometer on our handheld GPS units reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit (50 Celsius). After an hour or so of prospecting together, we decided to split up. I stayed near the base of the hills, scrutinizing the fragments of bone scattered across the ground in a desperate attempt to trace them to their source. I had no luck. But then I heard an excited voice scream from somewhere up on the ridge. I detected a hint of a lyrical Portuguese accent, so it must have been Octávio. I rushed toward where I thought the voice was coming from, but now there was nothing but silence. Maybe I was imagining things, the heat playing tricks on my brain. Eventually I saw Octávio in the distance, rubbing his eyes like someone woken up by a phone call in the middle of the night. He was stumbling, giving off a bit of a zombie vibe."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "It was weird. When Octávio saw me, he gathered himself and burst into song. “I found it, I found it, I found it,” he repeated over and over. He was holding a bone. What he didn’t have was a water bottle. And suddenly it made sense. He had forgotten his water in the car, a bad thing for such a hot day, but he had happened upon the layer where the amphibian bones were coming out. The combination of exhilaration and dehydration had caused him to pass out for a moment. But now he was back into consciousness, and a few moments later, Richard had scrambled his way through the brush to join us. After exchanging excited hugs and high fives, we celebrated further by rehydrating with beers at a small café down the road. What Octávio had found was a half-meter-thick layer of mudstone full of fossil bones. We returned several times over the next few years to meticulously excavate the site, which turned out to be a chore because the bone layer seemed to extend infinitely into the hillside. I had never seen so many fossils concentrated together in one area. It was a mass graveyard. Countless skeletons of amphibians called Metoposaurus—supersize versions of today’s salamanders that were the size of a small car—were jumbled together in a chaotic mess. There must have been hundreds of them. Some 230 million years ago, a flock of these slimy, ugly monsters suddenly died when the lake they were living in dried up, collateral damage of the capricious Pangean climate. Giant amphibians like Metoposaurus were leading actors in the story of Triassic Pangea. They prowled the shores of rivers and lakes over much of the supercontinent, particularly the subtropical arid regions and midlatitude humid belts. If you were a frail little primitive dinosaur like Eoraptor, you would want to avoid the shorelines at all costs. It was enemy territory. Metoposaurus was there waiting, lurking in the shallows, ready to ambush anything that ventured too close to the water. Its head was the size of a coffee table, and its jaws were studded with hundreds of piercing teeth. Its big, broad, almost flat upper and lower jaws were hinged together at the back and could snap shut like a toilet seat to gobble up whatever it wanted. It would only take a few bites to finish off a delicious dinosaur supper. Salamanders bigger than humans seem like a mad hallucination. As bizarre as they were, though, Metoposaurus and its kin were not aliens. These terrifying predators were the ancestors of today’s frogs, toads, newts, and salamanders. Their DNA flows through the veins of the frog hopping around your garden or the one you dissected in high school biology class. As a matter of fact, many of today’s most recognizable animals can be traced back to the Triassic. The very first turtles, lizards, crocodiles, and even mammals came into the world during this time."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "All of these animals—so much a fabric of the Earth we call home today—rose up alongside the dinosaurs in the harsh surroundings of prehistoric Pangea. The apocalypse of the end-Permian extinction left such an empty playing field that there was space for all sorts of new creatures to evolve, which they did unabated during the 50 million years of the Triassic. It was a time of grand biological experimentation that changed the planet forever and reverberates still today. It’s no wonder many paleontologists refer to the Triassic as the “dawn of the modern world.” Excavating the Metoposaurus bone bed in Algarve, Portugal, with Octávio Mateus, Richard Butler, and our team. Photo courtesy of the author If you could put yourself into the tiny feet of our furry, mouse-size Triassic mammalian ancestors, you would be looking up at a world that was starting to show whispers of today. Yes, the physical planet itself was completely different—a supercontinent, marked by intense heat and violent weather. Nevertheless, the parts of the land not engulfed by desert were covered in ferns and pine trees. There were lizards darting around in the forest canopy, turtles paddling in the rivers, amphibians running amok, many familiar types of insects buzzing around. And there were dinosaurs, mere bit characters in this ancient scene but destined for greater things to come. AFTER SEVERAL YEARS of excavating the supersalamander mass grave in Portugal, we’ve collected a lot of bones of Metoposaurus, enough to fill the workshop in Octávio’s museum. But we’ve also found other animals that died when the prehistoric lake evaporated. We dug up part of the skull of a phytosaur, a long-snouted relative of crocodiles that hunted on land and in the water. We’ve scooped up many teeth and bones of various fishes, which were probably the primary source of food for Metoposaurus. Other small bones hint at a badger-size reptile. What we haven’t found yet are any signs of dinosaurs. It’s strange. We know dinosaurs were living south of the equator, in the humid river valleys of Ischigualasto, at the same general time that Metoposaurus was terrorizing the lakes of Triassic Portugal. We also know that many different types of dinosaurs were commingling in Ischigualasto: all of those creatures that I studied in Ricardo Martínez’s museum in Argentina. Meat-eating theropods like Herrerasaurus and Eodromaeus, primitive long-necked sauropod precursors like Panphagia and Chromogisaurus, early ornithischians (cousins of the horned and duck-billed dinosaurs). No, they weren’t at the top of the food pyramid. Yes, they were outnumbered by the jumbo amphibians and crocodile relatives, but they were at least beginning to make their mark. So why don’t we see them in Portugal? It could be, of course, that we just haven’t found them yet. Absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence, as all good paleontologists must continually remind themselves. Next time we go back into the scrublands of the Algarve and carve out another section of the bone bed, maybe we’ll find ourselves a dinosaur."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "However, I’m willing to bet against that, because a pattern is starting to emerge as paleontologists discover more and more Triassic fossils from around the world. Dinosaurs seem to be present and starting to slowly diversify in the temperate humid parts of Pangea, particularly in the southern hemisphere, during a slice of time from about 230 to 220 million years ago. Not only do we find their fossils in Ischigualasto, but also in parts of Brazil and India that were once in the Pangean humid zone. Meanwhile, in the arid belts closer to the equator, dinosaurs were absent or extremely rare. Just as in Portugal, there are great fossil sites in Spain, Morocco, and along the eastern coast of North America where you can find plenty of amphibians and reptiles, but nary a dinosaur. All of these places were in the parched arid sector of Pangea during those 10 million years when dinosaurs were beginning to blossom in the more bearable humid regions. It seems these first dinosaurs couldn’t handle the desert heat. It’s an unexpected story line. Dinosaurs didn’t just sweep across Pangea the moment they originated, like some infectious virus. They were geographically localized, held in place not by physical barricades but by climates they couldn’t endure. For many millions of years, it looked as if they might remain provincial rubes, stuck in one zone in the south of the supercontinent, unable to break free—an aging high school football hero of faded dreams, who could have been something if only he’d been able to get out of his tiny hometown. Underdogs—that’s what these first humidity-loving dinosaurs were. They wouldn’t have been a very impressive bunch. Not only were they trapped by the deserts, but even where they were able to eke out a living, they were barely getting by, at least at first. True, there were several dinosaur species in Ischigualasto, but these made up only about 10 to 20 percent of the total ecosystem. They were vastly outnumbered by early mammal relatives, like the pig-mimic dicynodonts that ate roots and leaves, and by other types of reptiles, most notably rhynchosaurs, which chopped plants with their sharp beaks, and crocodile cousins like the mighty apex predator Saurosuchus. At the same time but slightly to the east, in what is now Brazil, the story was much the same. There were a few different types of dinosaurs closely related to species in Ischigualasto: the carnivorous Staurikosaurus was a cousin of Herrerasaurus, and the small long-necked creature Saturnalia was very similar to Panphagia. But they were quite rare, again overwhelmed by masses of proto-mammals and rhynchosaurs. Even farther to the east, where the humid zone continued into what is now India, there were a handful of primitive long-necked sauropod relatives, like Nambalia and Jaklapallisaurus, but once again they were role players in ecosystems ruled by other species. Then, when it appeared that dinosaurs were never going to escape their rut, two important things happened that gave them an opening."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "First, in the humid belt, the dominant large plant-eaters, the rhynchosaurs and dicynodonts, became less common. In some areas they disappeared entirely. We don’t yet fully understand why, but the consequences were unmistakable. The fall of these herbivores gave the plant-eating primitive sauropod cousins like Panphagia and Saturnalia an opportunity to seize a new niche in some ecosystems. Before long they were the main herbivores in the humid regions of both the southern and northern hemispheres. In the Los Colorados Formation of Argentina, a unit of rock laid down from about 225 to 215 million years ago that was formed directly after the Ischigualasto dinosaurs left their fossils, the sauropod antecedents are the most common vertebrates. There are more fossils of these cow-to-giraffe-size plant-guzzlers—among them Lessemsaurus, Riojasaurus, and Coloradisaurus—than any other type of animal. In all, dinosaurs comprise about 30 percent of the ecosystem, while the once dominant mammal relatives dip below 20 percent. It wasn’t only a southern Pangean story. Across the equator in primeval Europe, then part of the Northern Hemisphere humid sector, other long-necked dinosaurs were also thriving. As in Los Colorados, they were the most common large plant-eaters in their habitats. One of these species, Plateosaurus, has been found at over fifty sites throughout Germany, Switzerland, and France. There are even mass graves like the Metoposaurus bone bed in Portugal, where dozens (or more) of Plateosauruses died together when the weather turned rough, a sign of just how many of these dinosaurs were flocking across the landscape. The second major breakthrough, around 215 million years ago, was that the first dinosaurs began arriving in the subtropical arid environments of the Northern Hemisphere, then about 10 degrees above the equator, now part of the American Southwest. We don’t know exactly why dinosaurs were now able to migrate out of their safe humid homes and into the harsh deserts. It probably had something to do with climate change—shifts in the monsoons and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere made the differences between the humid and arid regions less stark, so dinosaurs could move more easily between them. Whatever the reason, at long last dinosaurs were making inroads into the tropics, expanding into parts of the world that had previously eluded them. The best records of desert-living Triassic dinosaurs come from areas that are once again deserts today. Across much of the postcard-pretty landscape of northern Arizona and New Mexico are hoodoos, badlands, and canyons carved out of colorful red and purple rocks. These are the sandstones and mudstones of the Chinle Formation, a third-of-a-mile-thick rock sequence formed from the ancient sand dunes and oases of tropical Pangea during the last half of the Triassic, from about 225 to 200 million years ago."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "Petrified Forest National Park, which should be on the itinerary of any dino-loving tourist visiting the southwestern states, has one of the best exposures of the Chinle Formation, full of thousands of enormous fossilized trees that were uprooted and buried in flash floods right around the time that dinosaurs were starting to settle in the area. Some of the most exciting paleontological fieldwork over the past decade has targeted the Chinle Formation. New discoveries have painted a striking new image of what the first desert-dwelling dinosaurs were like and how they fit into their broader ecosystems. Leading the charge is a remarkable group of young researchers, who were all graduate students when they began exploring the Chinle. The core of the group is the four-man band of Randy Irmis, Sterling Nesbitt, Nate Smith, and Alan Turner. Irmis is a bespectacled introvert but a beast of a field geologist; Nesbitt is an expert on fossil anatomy who’s always wearing a baseball cap and quoting television comedy shows; Smith is a smooth-dressing Chicagoan who likes to use statistics to study dinosaur evolution; and Turner, an expert on building family trees of extinct groups, is affectionately called Little Jesus because of his flowing locks, bushy beard, and moderate stature. The quartet is a half generation ahead of me on the career path. They were working on their PhDs when I was starting to do research as an undergraduate. As a young student, I was in awe of them, as if they were a paleontology Rat Pack. They traveled in a herd at research conferences, often with other friends of theirs who worked in the Chinle: Sarah Werning, a specialist on how dinosaurs and other reptiles grew; Jessica Whiteside, a brilliant geologist who studied mass extinctions and ecosystem changes in deep time; Bill Parker, the paleontologist at Petrified Forest National Park and an expert on some of the close crocodile relatives who lived with early dinosaurs; Michelle Stocker, who studied some of the other proto-crocodiles (and whom Sterling Nesbitt later convinced to marry him—proposing on a field trip, no less—forming a different sort of Triassic dream team). They were the hotshot young scientists whom I looked up to, the type of researchers I wanted to become. For many years, the Chinle Rat Pack has been spending summers in northern New Mexico, in the pastel drylands near the tiny hamlet of Abiquiú. In the mid-1800s, this outpost was an important stop on the Old Spanish Trail, a trade route that linked nearby Santa Fe with Los Angeles. Today only a few hundred people remain, making the area feel like a remote backwater within the world’s most industrialized country. Some people like that kind of seclusion, though. One of them was Georgia O’Keeffe, the modernist American artist famous for her paintings of flowers that were intimate to the point of abstraction. O’Keeffe was also drawn to sweeping landscapes, and she was moved by the striking beauty and incomparable hues of natural light in the Abiquiú area."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "She bought a house nearby, on the sprawling grounds of a desert retreat called Ghost Ranch. There she could explore nature and experiment with new painting styles without being bothered by anyone. The red cliffs and colorful candy-striped canyons of the ranch, bathed in sparkling sunbursts, are common motifs in the work she produced here. After O’Keeffe died, in the mid-1980s, Ghost Ranch became a pilgrimage site for art lovers hoping to catch some of that desert spark that so inspired the old master. Few of these cultured travelers probably realize that Ghost Ranch is also bursting with dinosaur bones. But the Rat Pack knew. They understood that in 1881 a scientific mercenary named David Baldwin had been sent to northern New Mexico by the Philadelphia paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope, with the singular mission to find fossils that Cope could stick in the face of his Yale rival, Othniel Charles Marsh. The two Easterners were engaged in a bitter feud known to history as the Bone Wars (of which, more later), but by this stage of their careers, neither of them particularly liked to brave the elements and Native American war parties—Geronimo would continue raiding New Mexico and Arizona until 1886. Rather than look for fossils themselves, they relied on a network of hired guns. Baldwin was the type of character they often employed: a mysterious loner who would jump on his mule and head deep into the badlands for months at a time, even during the bleak winter, and eventually emerge loaded up with dinosaur bones. In fact, Baldwin had worked for both of the pugnacious paleontologists: he was once a trusted confidant of Marsh’s, but now his loyalties were with Cope. Thus it was Cope who was the lucky recipient of the collection of small, hollow dinosaur bones that Baldwin pried out of the desert near Ghost Ranch. These bones belonged to a totally new type of dog-size, lightweight, fast-running, sharp-toothed, primitive Triassic dinosaur Cope later called Coelophysis. Like Herrerasaurus from Argentina, which would be found many decades later, it was one of the earliest members of the theropod dynasty that would eventually produce T. rex, Velociraptor, and birds. The Chinle Rat Pack also knew that a half century after Baldwin’s discovery, another East Coast paleontologist, Edwin Colbert, took a liking to the Ghost Ranch area. He was a much more pleasant individual than Cope or Marsh. When Colbert set out for Ghost Ranch in 1947, he was in his early forties, already ensconced in one of the top jobs in the field: curator of vertebrate paleontology at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. That summer, while O’Keeffe was painting mesas and rock sculptures only a few miles away, Colbert’s field assistant George Whitaker made an astounding discovery. He came across a Coelophysis graveyard, hundreds of skeletons in all, a pack of predators buried by a freak flood."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "I can imagine he must have felt something similar to our unbridled joy when we found our Metoposaurus bone bed in Portugal. Overnight Coelophysis became the quintessential Triassic dinosaur, the creature that immediately came to mind when people envisioned what the earliest dinosaurs looked like, how they behaved, and what environments they lived in. For years the American Museum crew kept digging and digging, hacking out blocks of the bone bed, which were distributed to museums around the world. Odds are, if you go see a big dinosaur exhibit today, you’ll see a Ghost Ranch Coelophysis. The Chinle Rat Pack also knew of one final, and perhaps most important, clue. Because so many Coelophysis skeletons were found together, excavating the mass grave site diverted everyone’s attention for decades. It sucked up most of the money for fieldwork, most of the time and energy of the field crews. But it was merely a single site in the expanse of Ghost Ranch, tens of thousands of acres covered by fossil-rich Chinle rocks. More must have been out there. So it was no surprise to them when, in 2002, a retired forest manager named John Hayden discovered some bones while hiking less than half a mile from the main gate of Ghost Ranch. A few years later, the team of Irmis, Nesbitt, Smith, and Turner returned to the spot, got out their tools, and started digging. It took a lot of time and a lot of sweat. Once, when I was catching up with the quartet in a New York City Irish pub, Nate Smith turned to me, cocked his head up toward the ceiling, and said with a hint of cheeky machismo, “The amount of rock we removed that summer, yeah, it would fill up this bar.” But the toil was worth it. The crew confirmed that there were indeed fossil bones at the site. Then they kept finding more and more of them, hundreds, thousands. It turned out to be a river channel deposit, where currents had dumped the skeletons of many unlucky creatures swept into the water some 212 million years ago. With the right cocktail of good detective work and a drive to make their own discoveries even though they were still students, the Rat Pack had unearthed a treasure trove of Triassic fossils. The site—nicknamed the Hayden Quarry after the sharp-eyed forester who noticed the first fossil eroding out of the ground—has become one of the world’s most important Triassic fossil localities. The skull of Coelophysis, the primitive theropod found in abundance at Ghost Ranch. Courtesy of Larry Witmer. The quarry provides a snapshot of an ancient ecosystem, one of the first deserts that dinosaurs were able to live in. It wasn’t the picture the Chinle Rat Pack was expecting. When the young mavericks started digging in the mid-2000s, the prevailing wisdom was that dinosaurs conquered the deserts soon after they arrived in the Late Triassic."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "Other scientists had collected a wealth of fossils from similar-age rock units in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas, which seemed to belong to more than a dozen species of dinosaurs, ranging from stocky apex predators and smaller meat-eaters to many different types of plant-munching ornithischians, the ancestors of Triceratops and the duckbills. It seemed that dinosaurs were everywhere. But that wasn’t the case in the Hayden Quarry. There were monster amphibians closely related to our Portuguese Metoposaurus, primitive crocodiles and some of their long-snouted and armored relatives, skinny reptiles with short legs called Vancleavea, which looked like scaly dachshunds, and even funny little reptiles that hung from the trees like chameleons, called drepanosaurs. Those are the common animals in the quarry. Dinosaurs were anything but. The Rat Pack found only three types of dinosaurs: a fleet-footed predator very similar to Baldwin’s Coelophysis, another swift carnivore called Tawa, and a somewhat larger and stockier meat-eater called Chindesaurus, which was closely related to the Argentine Herrerasaurus. Each is represented by only a few fossils. It was a great surprise to the team. Dinosaurs were rare in the tropical deserts of the Late Triassic, and it was only the meat-eaters that seemed to be hanging about. There were no plant-eating dinosaurs, none of the ancestral long-necked species that were so common in the humid zones, none of the ornithischian forebears of Triceratops. It’s a meager bunch of dinosaurs surrounded by all sorts of bigger, meaner, more common, more diverse animals. What, then, to make of the dozens of Triassic dinosaur species that other scientists had identified from all over the American Southwest? Irmis, Nesbitt, Smith, and Turner scrutinized all of the evidence they could find, traveling to every small-town museum where researchers had deposited their fossils. They saw that most of these specimens were isolated teeth and scraps of bone, not the best foundation for naming new species. But that wasn’t the shocker. The more they found at Hayden Quarry, the better search image the crew developed in their heads. They became able to tell a dinosaur from a crocodile from an amphibian almost by instinct. In a series of eureka moments, they realized that most of those supposed dinosaur fossils collected by others weren’t dinosaurs at all, but primitive dinosauromorph cousins of dinosaurs or, in some cases, early crocodiles and their kin that just so happened to look like dinosaurs. So not only were dinosaurs rare in the Late Triassic deserts, but they were still living alongside their archaic relatives, the same types of animals that were leaving their tiny footprints in Poland nearly 40 million years earlier. It was a jarring realization. Up until then, almost everyone thought that the primitive dinosauromorphs were an uninteresting ancestral stock whose only destiny was to give birth to the mighty dinosaurs. Once that job was done, they could quietly fade away to extinction."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "But here they were, all over Late Triassic North America, even a new poodle-size species called Dromomeron in the Hayden Quarry, living alongside proper dinosaurs for some 20 million years. Probably the only person not surprised by the findings was another student, an Argentine named Martín Ezcurra. Independently of the four American grad students, Martín was starting to doubt the identifications of some of the supposed North American “dinosaurs” collected by the older generation of paleontologists, but he didn’t have the resources to go study them, because he was from South America and still learning English. That, and he was a teenager. One thing he did have, however, was access to the tremendous collections of Ischigualasto dinosaurs from his home country, thanks to the generosity of Ricardo Martínez and other curators who responded positively to the unusual request of a high schooler wanting to visit their museums. Martín gathered photos of many of the mysterious North American specimens and carefully compared them to the Argentine dinosaurs, and recognized that there were key differences. One North American species in particular, a skinny carnivore called Eucoelophysis, which was supposed to be a theropod, was actually a primitive dinosauromorph. He published this result in a scientific journal in 2006, the year before Irmis, Nesbitt, Smith, and Turner published their first findings. Martín was seventeen years old when he wrote his paper. It’s hard to fathom why dinosaurs were doing so poorly in the deserts while so many other animals, including their dinosauromorph precursors, were having a better go at it. To get to the bottom of the question, Chinle’s Rat Pack collaborated with the skilled geologist Jessica Whiteside, who was also part of our excavation teams in Portugal. Jessica is a maestro at reading the rocks. Better than anyone I’ve ever known, she can look at a sequence of rocks and tell you how old they are, what the environments were like when they formed, how hot it was, even how much rain there was. Set her loose at a fossil site, and she’ll come back with a story from the distant past of changing climates, shifting weather, evolutionary explosions, and great extinctions. Jessica put her sixth sense to use at Ghost Ranch and determined that the animals of the Hayden Quarry did not have an easy life. They lived in an environment that wasn’t always a desert, but one in which seasonal climates dramatically fluctuated. It was bone-dry for much of the year, but wetter and cooler during other times—hyperseasonality, as Jessica and the Rat Pack call it. The culprit was carbon dioxide. Jessica’s measurements show that there were somewhere around 2,500 molecules of carbon dioxide per every million molecules of air in the tropical regions of Pangea back when the Hayden Quarry animals were alive. That’s more than six times the amount of carbon dioxide today."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "Let that sink in for a minute—just think about how quickly temperatures are rising now and how anxious we are about future climate change, even though there is much less carbon dioxide in today’s atmosphere. The high concentration of carbon dioxide in the Late Triassic started a chain reaction: huge fluctuations in temperature and precipitation, raging wildfires during parts of the year but humid spells in others. Stable plant communities had a difficult time establishing themselves. It was a chaotic, unpredictable, unstable part of Pangea. Some animals could deal with that better than others. Dinosaurs seem to have been able to cope a little bit, but not able to truly thrive. The smaller meat-eating theropods were able to manage, but the larger, fast-growing plant-eaters, which required a steadier diet, could not. Even some 20 million years after they had originated, even after they had taken over the large-herbivore niche in humid ecosystems and started to colonize the hotter tropics, dinosaurs were still having trouble with the weather. IF YOU WERE standing on safe ground during a Late Triassic flood, watching the animals eventually buried at Hayden Quarry get swept up by the seasonal river that drowned them, you might have had a hard time telling some of the corpses apart as they floated by. Sure, it would be easy to recognize one of the giant supersalamanders or some of those weird chameleon-mimic reptiles. But you might not be able to distinguish dinosaurs like Coelophysis and Chindesaurus from some of the crocodiles and their kin. Even if you were able to watch these animals alive, going about their business of eating and moving and interacting with each other, you still might have trouble. Why the confusion? It’s the same reason that the previous generation of paleontologists working in the American Southwest so often misidentified crocodile fossils as dinosaurs, and why other scientists in Europe and South America made the same mistakes. During the Late Triassic, there were many other animals that really, really looked and behaved like dinosaurs. In evolutionary biology speak, this is called convergence: different types of creatures resembling each other because of similarities in lifestyle and environment. It’s why birds and bats, which both fly, each have wings. It’s why snakes and worms, which both squirm through underground burrows, are both long, skinny, and legless. The convergence between dinosaurs and crocodiles is surprising, shocking even. The alligators that prowl the Mississippi delta and the crocodiles that lurk in the Nile may appear vaguely prehistoric, but they don’t look anything like a T. rex or a Brontosaurus. During the Late Triassic, however, crocodiles were very different. Recall that dinosaurs and crocodiles are both archosaurs—members of that large group of upright-walking reptiles that started to blossom after the end-Permian mass extinction, which proliferated because they could move much faster and more efficiently than the sprawling animals of the time."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "Early in the Triassic, archosaurs split into two major clans: the avemetatarsalians, which led to dinosauromorphs and dinosaurs, and the pseudosuchians, which gave rise to crocodiles. During the dizzying splurge of postextinction evolution, the pseudosuchian tribe also produced a number of other subgroups that diversified in the Triassic but then went extinct. Because they don’t survive today—unlike the crocodiles and dinosaurs (in the guise of birds) —these groups have largely been forgotten about, considered oddities from a distant past, evolutionary dead ends that never rose to the top. That stereotype is wrong, though, because for much of the Triassic these crocodile-line archosaurs were thriving. Most of the major types of Late Triassic pseudosuchians can be found at Hayden Quarry. There is a phytosaur called Machaeroprosopus, a member of that group of long-snouted, semiaquatic ambush predators whose bones we also found in Portugal. They were bigger than a motorboat and snatched fish—and the occasional passing dinosaur—with the hundreds of spiky teeth in their stretched jaws. It was neighbors with Typothorax, a plant-eater built like a tank with armor covering its body and spikes sticking out from its neck. It belongs to a group called the aetosaurs, a hugely successful family of mid-tier herbivores that closely resembled the armored ankylosaur dinosaurs that evolved millions of years later. They were good diggers and may have even cared for their young by building and guarding nests. Then there are proper crocodiles, but nothing like the ones we’re familiar with today. These primitive Triassic species—the ancestral breed that modern crocs evolved from—looked like greyhounds: they were about the same size, stood on four legs, had the emaciated build of a supermodel, and could sprint like champions. They fed on bugs and lizards and were most certainly not top predators. That title went to the rauisuchians, a ferocious bunch that grew up to twenty-five feet long, bigger than the largest saltwater crocodiles today. We met one of them previously, Saurosuchus, the top gun in the Ischigualasto ecosystem that would have haunted the nightmares of the very first dinosaurs. Imagine a slightly smaller version of a T. rex walking around on four legs, with a muscular skull and neck, railroad-spike teeth, and a bone-breaking bite. There’s also another type of crocodile-line archosaur found at Ghost Ranch—not in the Hayden Quarry itself, but in the nearby Coelophysis graveyard. It was found in 1947, not long after Whitaker discovered the bone bed, during those first few weeks of excavation. The American Museum team was digging up so many Coelophysis skeletons that, after a while, the excitement wore off and they got a little bored. Everything they saw started to look like Coelophysis. So they didn’t notice that one of the skeletons they collected was similar in size to Coelophysis, and had the same long legs and light build, but was a little different in other ways—notably, it had a beak instead of an arsenal of sharp teeth. The technicians back in New York didn’t notice either."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "They started to remove the specimen from the block of rock it was embedded in, but were all too keen to stop once they determined it was just another Coelophysis. It could go in the storehouse with the rest of them. The fossil stayed in the bowels of the museum, unconserved and unloved, until 2004. That’s when one of the Ghost Ranch quartet, Sterling Nesbitt, started his PhD at Columbia University in New York. Because he was planning a project on Triassic dinosaurs, he went back through all of the fossils collected by Colbert, Whitaker, and their teams in the 1940s. Many were still encased in plaster, so they would have to remain on the shelves. But that one block from 1947 had been opened and partially prepared by the conservators, so Sterling could study it. With an excited pair of eyes and an enthusiasm that escaped the weary field hands a half century earlier, Sterling recognized that he wasn’t looking at any old Coelophysis. He saw that it had a beak; he realized that its body proportions were different, that its arms were tiny. And then he noticed features of the ankle that were nearly identical to those of crocodiles. He wasn’t looking at a dinosaur at all; he was looking at a pseudosuchian that was heavily convergent on dinosaurs. The fierce predator Batrachotomus, one of the crocodile-line archosaurs (rauisuchians) that preyed on early dinosaurs. Photo courtesy of the author This was the sort of discovery that young scientists dream about when secluded, alone with their thoughts, trawling through the drawers of museum collections. Since Sterling discovered it, he got to name it, and he chose the evocative moniker Effigia okeeffeae: the first name being the Latin word for ghost, in reference to Ghost Ranch, and the second paying homage to the ranch’s most famous resident. Effigia made international headlines: the media loved this awkward-looking, toothless, stub-armed ancient crocodilian creature trying to pretend that it was a dinosaur. Stephen Colbert even devoted a segment of his show to the new discovery, complaining in jest that it should have been named after Edwin Colbert (who coincidentally shared a surname with the comedian) and not the feminist artist. I remember seeing that segment during the last year of my undergraduate studies, right around the time I was starting to plot out my own graduate-school future, and being in awe that a young grad student’s work could make such an impact. It also motivated me. Up until that point, I had been studying only dinosaurs, but I started to grasp that Effigia and the other dino-imitating pseudosuchians were critical in understanding how dinosaurs ascended to power. I started to read many of the classic studies in dinosaur paleontology, works by giants like Robert Bakker and Alan Charig, which were effusive in arguing that dinosaurs were special."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "They were so well endowed with superior speed, agility, metabolism, and intelligence that they outcompeted all of the other Triassic animals—the giant salamanders, the early mammal-like synapsids, and the crocodile-line pseudosuchians. Dinosaurs were the chosen ones. It was their manifest destiny to take on the weaker species, best them, and establish a global empire. There was almost a religious feel to some of these writings, perhaps not a surprise, given that Bakker also dabbles as an ecumenical Christian preacher and is renowned for his high-energy lectures, delivered in the style of an evangelist testifying to his congregation. Dinosaurs outmaneuvering their foes on the Late Triassic battlefield. It was a good story, but it didn’t sit well with me. New discoveries seemed to be upending the narrative, and a lot of that had to do with the pseudosuchians. So many of these crocodile-line archosaurs were dead ringers for dinosaurs. Or maybe it was the other way around: maybe Triassic dinosaurs were trying to be pseudosuchians. Regardless, if the two groups were similar in so many ways, then how could you argue that dinosaurs were a superior race? And it wasn’t only the convergence between dinosaurs and pseudosuchians that threw up a red flag. There were more pseudosuchians than dinosaurs in the Late Triassic: more species and a greater abundance of these species in individual ecosystems. The menagerie of croc cousins from Ghost Ranch—phytosaurs, aetosaurs, rauisuchians, Effigia-like animals, true crocodiles—was not a local phenomenon. These were diverse groups that prospered throughout much of the world. But, as scientists often like to say when trying to critique each other with subtlety, this all sounded a little arm-wavy. Could we somehow compare explicitly how dinosaurs and pseudosuchians were evolving in the Late Triassic? Was there a way to test whether one group was more successful than the other and whether that was changing over time? I buried myself in literature on statistics, unfamiliar territory for somebody who was consumed by dinosaurs but not yet very aware of other fields and techniques. I was a bit embarrassed to realize that invertebrate paleontologists—our redheaded stepsiblings, who study fossils like clams and corals, which don’t have bones—had come up with a method two decades earlier, one that had been ignored by dinosaur workers. It was something called morphological disparity. Morphological disparity sounds like a fancy term, but it is simply a measure of diversity. You can measure diversity in many ways. Counting up the number of species is one tack: you can say that South America is more diverse than Europe because there are more animal species there. Or you can compute diversity based on abundance: insects are more diverse than mammals because there are more insects in any given ecosystem. What morphological disparity does is measure diversity based on features of the anatomy. Thinking this way, you can consider birds to be more diverse than jellyfish, because birds have a much more complex body with lots of different parts, whereas jellyfish are just sacs of goo."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "This type of diversity measure can give great insight into evolution, because so many aspects of animal biology, behavior, diet, growth, and metabolism are controlled by anatomy. If you really want to know how a group is changing over time or how two groups compare in diversity, I would argue that morphological disparity is the most powerful way to do so. Counting the number of species or the abundance of individuals is easy. All you need are a good set of eyes and a calculator. But how to measure morphological disparity? How to take all the complexity of the animal body and turn it into a statistic? I followed the approach pioneered by the invertebrate paleontologists. It went something like this. I first came up with a list of all of the Triassic dinosaurs and pseudosuchians, as these were the animals that I wanted to compare. I then spent months studying the fossils of these species and made a list of hundreds of features of the skeleton in which they vary. Some have five toes, others have three. Some walk on four legs, others on two. Some have teeth, others do not. I encoded these features in a spreadsheet as zeros and ones, just as a computer programmer would. Herrerasaurus walks on two legs, state 0. Saurosuchus walks on four legs, state 1. At the end of nearly a year of work, I had a database with seventy-six Triassic species, each assessed for 470 features of the skeleton. With the long slog of data collection done, it was time for the math. The next step was to make what is called a distance matrix. It quantifies how different each species is from every other species, based on the database of anatomical characteristics. If two species share all features, then their distance score is 0. They are identical. If two other species share no characteristics, then their distance score is 1. They are completely different. For the in-between cases, let’s say that Herrerasaurus and Saurosuchus share 100 characteristics but differ in the 370 others. Their distance score would be 0.79: the 370 features they differ in divided by the 470 total features in the data set. The best way to envision this is to think of those tables in a road atlas, which give distances between different cities. Chicago is 180 miles from Indianapolis. Indianapolis is 1,700 miles from Phoenix. Phoenix is 1,800 miles from Chicago. That table is a distance matrix. Here’s the neat trick about a distance matrix in an atlas. You can take that table of road distances between cities, stick it into a statistics software program, run what is called a multivariate analysis, and the program will spit out a plot. Each city will be a point on that plot, and the points will be separated by distance, in perfect proportion. In other words, the plot is a map—a geographically correct map with all of the cities in the right places and distances relative to each other."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.19", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "So what happens if we instead input the distance matrix that encapsulates the skeletal differences of Triassic dinosaurs and pseudosuchians? The statistics program will also produce a plot in which each species is represented by a point, a plot that scientists call a morphospace. But really it is just a map. It visually shows the spread of anatomical diversity among the animals in question. Two species close together have very similar skeletons, just as Chicago and Indianapolis are comparatively near geographically. Two species at far corners of the graph have very different anatomies, like the longer distance between Chicago and Phoenix. This map of Triassic dinosaurs and pseudosuchians allows us to measure morphological disparity. We can group the animals in the plot by which great tribe they belong to—dinosaurs or pseudosuchians—and calculate which is occupying a larger swath of that map and therefore more anatomically diverse. In the same vein, we can further group the animals by time—Middle Triassic versus Late Triassic, let’s say—and see if dinosaurs or pseudosuchians were becoming more or less anatomically diverse as the Triassic progressed. We did that and came up with a startling result that we published in 2008 in a study that helped launch my career. All throughout the Triassic, the pseudosuchians were significantly more morphologically diverse than dinosaurs. They filled a larger spread of that map, meaning they had a greater range of anatomical features, which indicated that they were experimenting with more diets, more behaviors, more ways of making a living. Both groups were becoming more diverse as the Triassic unfolded, but the pseudosuchians were always outpacing the dinosaurs. Far from being superior warriors slaying their competitors, dinosaurs were being overshadowed by their crocodile-line rivals during the 30 million years they coexisted in the Triassic. PUT YOURSELF BACK in the tiny furry feet of our Triassic mammalian ancestors, surveying the Pangean scene as the Triassic was drawing to a close 201 million years ago. You would be seeing dinosaurs, but you wouldn’t be surrounded by them. Depending on where you were, you might not have noticed them at all. They were relatively diverse in the humid regions, where protosauropods got as large as giraffes and were the most abundant plant-eaters, but there carnivorous theropods and herbivorous to omnivorous ornithischians were considerably smaller and less common. In the more arid zones, there were only small meat-eaters, the herbivores and larger species being unable to tolerate the hyperseasonal weather and megamonsoons. There were no dinosaurs remotely approaching a Brontosaurus or T. rex in size, and all across the supercontinent they were living under the thumb of their much more diverse, much more successful pseudosuchian adversaries. You would probably consider the dinosaurs a fairly marginal group. They were doing OK, but so were many other newly evolved types of animals."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.20", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_2.txt", "text": "If you were of a gambling persuasion, you would probably have bet on one of these other groups, most likely those pesky crocodile-line archosaurs, as the ones that would eventually become dominant, grow to massive sizes, and conquer the world. Some 30 million years after they originated, the dinosaurs had yet to mount a global revolution."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs 3 Dinosaurs Become Dominant Scottish sauropod Chapter Title art by Todd Marshall SOME TIME AROUND 240 MILLION YEARS ago, the Earth began to crack. True dinosaurs hadn’t quite evolved yet, but their cat-size dinosauromorph ancestors would have been there to experience the cracking—except there wasn’t much to experience, at least not yet. There may have been some minor earthquakes, but these probably wouldn’t have even registered with the dinosauromorphs, who were busy with more important things like fending off the supersalamanders and surviving the megamonsoons. As these dinosauromorphs gave rise to dinosaurs, the fracturing continued, many thousands of feet underground. Imperceptible on the surface, these fissures were slowly moving, growing, merging together, a hidden danger lurking under the feet of Herrerasaurus, Eoraptor, and the other first dinosaurs. The very foundation of Pangea was splitting, and with the blissful ignorance of homeowners who don’t realize there’s a creeping crack in their basement until their house comes tumbling down, the dinosaurs had no inkling that their world was going to dramatically change. As these earliest dinosaurs were evolving in fits and starts during the final 30 million years of the Triassic, great geological forces were tugging on Pangea from both the east and west. These forces—a planet-scale cocktail of gravity, heat, and pressure—are strong enough to make continents move over time. Because the pull was coming from two opposite directions, Pangea began to stretch and gradually become thinner, each small earthquake causing another tear. Imagine Pangea as a giant pizza, being torn apart by two hungry friends at opposite ends of the table: the crust becomes thinner until there is a rupture and it breaks into two. The same thing happened with the supercontinent. After a few tens of millions of years of slow and steady tug-of-war, east versus west, the cracks reached the surface, and the giant landmass began to unzip down its middle. It’s because of that ancient divorce between east and west Pangea that the seaboard of North America is separated from western Europe and South America sits apart from Africa. It’s why there is now an Atlantic Ocean, which didn’t exist until seawater rushed in to fill the gap between the separating tracts of land. Those forces and fractures over 200 million years ago shaped our modern geography. But there was more to it than that, because continents don’t just split up and call it a day. As with human relationships, things can get really nasty when a continent breaks up. And the dinosaurs and other animals growing up on Pangea were about to be changed forever by the aftereffects of their home being ripped in two. The problem boils down to this: as a continent tears, it bleeds lava. It’s nothing more than basic physics. The Earth’s outer crust is pulled apart and thins, decreasing pressure on the deeper parts of the Earth. As pressure lessens, magma from the deeper Earth rises to the surface and erupts through volcanoes."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "If there is only a little rip in the crust—two small bits of a continent separating from each other, let’s say—then the effects aren’t too bad. You might get a few volcanoes, some lava and ash, some local destruction, and then eventually it stops. That kind of thing is happening in eastern Africa today, and it’s far from catastrophic. But if you’re slashing apart an entire supercontinent, then you approach the realm of apocalypse. At the very end of the Triassic, 201 million years ago, the world was violently remade. For 40 million years, Pangea had been gradually splintering apart, and magma had been welling underground. Now that the supercontinent had finally cracked, the magma had somewhere to go. Like a hot-air balloon rising through the sky, the liquid-rock reservoir rushed upward, broke through the shattered surface of Pangea, and gushed out onto the land. As with the volcanoes that had erupted at the end of the Permian Period some 50 million years earlier, causing the extinction that allowed dinosaurs and their archosaur cousins to get their start, these end-Triassic eruptions were different from any that humans have ever witnessed. We’re not talking Pinatubo here, with hot clouds of ash bursting into the sky. Instead, over a period of some six hundred thousand years, there were four big pulses of drama, when enormous amounts of lava would surge out of the Pangean rift zone like tsunamis from hell. I’m hardly exaggerating: some of the flows were, added up together, up to three thousand feet thick; they could have buried the Empire State Building twice over. In all, some three million square miles of central Pangea were drowned in lava. It goes without saying that this was a bad time to be a dinosaur, or for that matter, any other type of animal. These were some of the largest volcanic eruptions in Earth history. Not only did lava smother the land, but noxious gases that rode up with the lava poisoned the atmosphere and caused runaway global warming. These things triggered one of the biggest mass extinctions in the history of life, a mass die-off that claimed over 30 percent of all species and maybe much more. Paradoxically, however, it was also a mass extinction that helped dinosaurs break out of their early-life slump and become the enormous, dominant animals that stoke our imaginations. IF YOU’RE WALKING down Broadway in New York City and happen to catch a gap between the skyscrapers, you can see straight across the Hudson River to New Jersey. You’ll notice that the Jersey side of the river is defined by a steep cliff of drab brown rock, about a hundred feet high, studded with vertical cracks. Locals refer to it as the Palisades. During the summer it can be almost unrecognizable, engulfed by a dense forest of trees and bushes that somehow cling to the sheer slopes."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "Commuter towns like Jersey City and Fort Lee are perched on top of the cliff, and the western end of the George Washington Bridge is built deep into it, an ideal anchor for the world’s busiest overwater crossing. If you wanted to, you could walk along the Palisades for about fifty miles, from where it begins in Staten Island and extends along the Hudson to where it juts into upstate New York. Millions of people look at this cliff every week. Hundreds of thousands of people live on it. Few realize that it is a remnant of those ancient volcanic eruptions that tore apart Pangea and ushered in the Age of Dinosaurs. The Palisades is what geologists refer to as a sill—an intrusion of magma that pokes its way in between two layers of rock far underground, but then hardens into stone before it can erupt as lava. Sills are part of the internal plumbing system of volcanoes. Before they harden into rock, they are pipes, which transport magma underground. Sometimes they are conduits that bring magma to the surface; other times they are dead-end extensions of the volcanic system, cul-de-sacs that magma can’t escape from. The Palisades sill formed at the end of the Triassic, as Pangea was rupturing along what would become the eastern coast of North America, just a few miles from what is now New York City. It formed from those very magmas that were coursing up from the deep earth as the supercontinent broke into two. The magma that became the Palisades sill never made it to the surface. It never got to be part of those three-thousand-foot-thick lava sheets flushed out of the Pangean rift, the ones that engulfed ecosystems and belched out the carbon dioxide that would doom much of the planet. About twenty miles to the west the magmas did erupt, however, and the basalt rocks that formed from them can be seen in a low range of hills called the Watchung Mountains in northern New Jersey. Calling them mountains is generous—they’re just a few hundred feet high, and they cover a tiny area about forty miles north to south—but they are a beloved oasis of natural beauty within one of the most urbanized parts of the world. In the middle of the mountains is Livingston, a bedroom community of about thirty thousand people. In 1968 some folks discovered dinosaur footprints a couple of miles north of the town, in an abandoned quarry where red shales, formed in rivers and lakes near the ancient volcanoes, were being mined. There was a blurb in the local newspaper, which caught the eye of a mother, who told her fourteen-year-old-son, Paul Olsen, who was gobsmacked to learn that dinosaurs once lived so close to his home. He rounded up his friend, Tony Lessa, and they hopped on their bicycles and sped to the old quarry."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "It was no more than an overgrown, rock-strewn hole in the ground, but the discovery had caused a local sensation and several amateur collectors were already there, on the hunt for more tracks. Olsen and Lessa befriended some of the amateurs, who taught them the basics of fossil collecting: how to identify dinosaur footprints, how to remove them from the rock, and how to study them. The two teenagers became obsessed. They kept coming back to the quarry, and before long they were working late into the night, removing slabs of dinosaur footprints by firelight, even in the dead of winter. They had to go to school during the day, so the night was their only option. For over a year they toiled, outlasting the other rockhounds, who began to trickle away once the excitement of the discovery died down. The boys collected hundreds of tracks left by all kinds of creatures, including meat-eating dinosaurs similar to Coelophysis from Ghost Ranch, plant-eating dinosaurs, and some of the scaly and furry creatures that lived alongside. But the more they collected, the more they became dismayed: during their nighttime excavations, they were constantly interrupted by trucks illegally dumping trash, and while they were at school, unscrupulous collectors would often sneak into the quarry and poach footprints the boys hadn’t yet been able to remove. So what’s a 1960s teenager to do when his favorite fossil site is being destroyed? Paul Olsen skipped the middlemen and went right to the top. He began writing letters to Richard Nixon, the newly elected president who had yet to disgrace himself. Lots of letters. He begged Nixon to use his presidential powers to get the quarry preserved as a protected park, and even sent a fiberglass cast of a theropod track to the White House. Olsen led a media campaign, too, and was profiled in an article in Life magazine. His brazen persistence paid off: in 1970 the company that owned the quarry donated the land to the county, which made it into a dinosaur park called the Riker Hill Fossil Site. The next year, the site was granted official national landmark status and Olsen received a presidential commendation for his work. Little did he know it, but he was also an inch away from a White House visit. Some of Nixon’s image-conscious aides thought a photo op with a young science enthusiast would be great PR for the jowly president, but it was killed at the last minute by Nixon’s advisor John Ehrlichman, later one of the key villains of Watergate. It was a great accomplishment for a kid—collecting a haul of dinosaur tracks, getting his site preserved for posterity, becoming pen pals with the president. But Paul Olsen didn’t stop. He went to college to study geology and paleontology, completed a PhD at Yale, and was hired as a professor at Columbia University, across the Hudson from Riker Hill."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "He became one of the leading academic paleontologists in the world and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the greatest honors for any American scientist. He also had the burden of being a member of my PhD committee, a far lesser honor, when I did my doctorate, in New York. During that time, he became one of my most trusted mentors, a brilliant sounding board for whatever crazy research ideas I had. For two years, I assisted him as he taught his popular undergraduate course on dinosaurs at Columbia, always oversubscribed by nonmajor students, who were seduced by the eminent scientist with a white Geraldo moustache prancing around with the enthusiasm that comes from several preclass energy drinks. Much of my ebullient, wildly animated lecturing style comes from watching Paul. Paul Olsen made his career by continuing what he started as a teenager. Much of his work has focused on those events that were occurring around the time dinosaurs were leaving footprints in New Jersey: the breakup of Pangea at the very end of the Triassic, the unimaginable volcanic eruptions, the mass extinction, and the rise of dinosaurs to global dominance as the Triassic transitioned into the subsequent Jurassic Period. Although he had no idea when he first cycled up to that quarry as a kid, Paul grew up in the best place in the world for studying the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. His boyhood stomping grounds are within a geological structure called the Newark Basin, a bowl-like depression filled with Triassic and Jurassic rocks. It is one of many such structures—called rift basins, because they formed as Pangea rifted apart—extending for over a thousand miles down the eastern coast of North America. The Bay of Fundy, up north in Canada, laps onto one of these basins. Farther south is the Hartford Basin, which cuts through much of central Connecticut and Massachusetts. Then the Newark Basin, followed by the Gettysburg Basin, site of the famous Civil War battle, the topography of the rocks so instrumental in shaping military strategy that depended on securing bits of high ground. South of Gettysburg are many smaller basins that pepper the backcountry of Virginia and North Carolina, finally culminating in the huge Deep River Basin of the Carolina interior. These rift basins follow the fracture between east and west Pangea. They are the dividing line, the frontier, the place where the supercontinent tore up. As those east-west tugging forces started to pull Pangea apart, faults formed deep within the crust, cutting through what used to be solid rock. Each bit of tugging would cause an earthquake, which would cause the rocks on either side of the fault to move a little bit relative to each other. Over millions of years the faults reached the surface, and as one side continued to fall, a basin was formed: a depression on the downward side of the fault rimmed by a high mountain range on the upward side."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "Each of the eastern North American rift basins formed this way, the result of more than 30 million years of pressure, tension, and tremors. This is exactly what is occurring in eastern Africa today, as Africa is pulling away from the Middle East at the rate of about one centimeter per year. The two landmasses used to be connected about 35 million years ago, but now they are separated by the long and skinny Red Sea, which continues to get wider year by year and will one day turn into an ocean. To the south, on the African mainland, there is a north-south band of basins, each growing wider and deeper with every earthquake that is yanking Africa and Arabia farther apart. Some of the deepest lakes in the world, like the nearly mile-deep Lake Tanganyika, fill some of these basins. Others are crisscrossed by raging rivers, which rush down from the mountains above, irrigating great tropical ecosystems lush with some of Africa’s most familiar plants and animals. Sprinkled throughout, poking up in random places, are volcanoes like Mount Kilimanjaro, escape valves for the magma building up underground as the land fractures. Occasionally one of these goes off and buries the basins, and their inhabitants, in lava and ash. Paul Olsen’s Newark Basin, and the many others lining the eastern coast of North America, underwent a similar process of evolution. They were formed gradually by earthquakes, were flushed with rivers that supported diverse ecosystems, eventually became so deep and full of water that the rivers turned into lakes, and then, depending on the quirks of climate, the lakes would dry up, rivers would form again, and the whole process would start over. Cycle after cycle after cycle. Dinosaurs, pseudosuchian cousins of crocodiles, supersalamanders, and early relatives of mammals thrived along the rivers’ edges, and blooms of fish choked the lakes. These animals left their fossils—the footprints Paul Olsen started to collect as a teenager, as well as bones—in the thousands of feet of sandstones, mudstones, and other rocks deposited by the rivers and lakes. And then, when Pangea had been stretched to its limit, the crust burst and volcanoes started to erupt, burying the basins and the creatures that lived within them. The first eruptions didn’t occur in the Newark Basin area. They happened in what is now Morocco, which at that time was nudged up against what would become eastern North America, just a few hundred miles or so from modern New York City. Then lava began pouring out in other places where Pangea was splitting: in the Newark Basin, in what is now Brazil, in those same lake environments where we found the supersalamander graveyard in Portugal—all along that zipper line, which, many millions of years later, would transform into the Atlantic Ocean. The lava came in four waves, each scorching the once verdant rift basins, each spreading toxic fumes all over the planet, each making a bad situation worse and worse."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "In only about half a million years—a blink of an eye in geological terms—the eruptions stopped, but they transformed the Earth forever. The dinosaurs, pseudosuchian crocodile-line archosaurs, big amphibians, and early mammal relatives living in the rift basins were blissfully unaware of what was about to happen. Things went sour quickly. The initial eruptions in Morocco released clouds of carbon dioxide, a powerful greenhouse gas, which rapidly warmed the planet. It got so hot that strange ice formations buried within the seafloor, called clathrates, melted in unison all throughout the world’s oceans. Clathrates are unlike the solid blocks of ice we’re used to, the ones we put in our drinks or carve into fancy sculptures at parties. They are a more porous substance, a latticework of frozen water molecules that can trap other substances inside it. One of those substances is methane, a gas that seeps up constantly from the deep Earth and infiltrates the oceans but is caged in the clathrates before it can leak into the atmosphere. Methane is nasty: it’s an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, packing an earth-warming punch over thirty-five times as great. So when that first torrent of volcanic carbon dioxide increased global temperatures and melted the clathrates, all of that once-trapped methane was suddenly released. This initiated a runaway train of global warming. The amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere approximately tripled within a few tens of thousands of years, and temperatures increased by 3 or 4 degrees Celsius. Ecosystems on land and in the oceans couldn’t cope with such rapid change. The much hotter temperatures made it impossible for many plants to grow, and indeed upwards of 95 percent of them went extinct. Animals that fed on the plants found themselves without food, and many reptiles, amphibians, and early mammal relatives died out, like dominoes falling up the food chain. Chemical chain reactions made the ocean more acidic, decimating the shelly organisms and collapsing food webs. Climate became dangerously variable, with episodes of intense heat followed by cooler periods. This enhanced the temperature differences between northern and southern Pangea, causing the megamonsoons to become more severe, the coastal regions to become even wetter, and the continental interiors to grow much drier. Pangea had never been a particularly hospitable place, but those early dinosaurs that already were constrained by the monsoons, the deserts, and their pseudosuchian rivals were now in even worse shape. So how did these dinosaurs, still at such a relatively young stage in their evolution, deal with a world that was changing so quickly? The clues are in the footprints that Paul Olsen has been studying now for nearly fifty years. The quarry that Paul explored in New Jersey is one of more than seventy places where dinosaur footprints have been found along the eastern seaboard of the US and Canada."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "These sites are positioned one on top of the other, in geological sequence, stretching over 30 million years, from around the time the first dinosaurs were originating in what is now South America (but still absent in modern-day North America), through the Late Triassic, across the volcanic extinction, and into the ensuing Jurassic Period. Generations of dinosaurs and other animals left their traces in those cyclical beds of sandstones and mudstones deposited in the rift basins, and by studying them in succession, you can see how these creatures were evolving. The rocks tell a remarkable story. During the Late Triassic, beginning about 225 million years ago, when the rift basins were just beginning to form, dinosaurs started to leave their marks in the form of rare footprints. There are three-toed tracks called Grallator, ranging from about two to six inches (five to fifteen centimeters) long, made by small, fast-running, meat-eating dinosaurs that stood on two legs like the Ghost Ranch Coelophysis. There’s a second type of track called Atreipus, which are about the same size as Grallator but include small handprints next to the three-toed footprints, a sign that the trackmaker was walking on all fours. They were probably made by primitive ornithischian dinosaurs—the oldest cousins of Triceratops and the duck-billed dinosaurs—or perhaps by close dinosauromorph cousins to dinosaurs. These dinosaur tracks are vastly outnumbered by the prints left by pseudosuchians, large amphibians, proto-mammals, and small lizards. Dinosaurs were there, but they still remained role players in the rift basin ecosystems, right up until the end of the Triassic. But then the volcanoes kicked into gear. Suddenly the diversity of non-dinosaur tracks drops dramatically in those first Jurassic rocks above the lava flows. Many non-dinosaur tracks abruptly disappear, including some of the most conspicuous prints left by crocodile-cousin pseudosuchians, which had previously been more abundant and diverse than the dinosaurs. Whereas dinosaurs made up only about 20 percent of all tracks before the volcanoes, right afterward half of all footprints belong to dinosaurs. A variety of totally new dinosaur tracks enter the record: a handprint-footprint duo called Anomoepus probably made by an ornithischian, a large four-toed print called Otozoum made by the very first long-necked proto-sauropods to live in the rift valleys, and a three-toed track called Eubrontes that belonged to another type of swift predator. These Eubrontes tracks are a little over a foot long (about thirty-five centimeters), a big size increase over the Grallator prints left by similar but much smaller carnivores during the prevolcano days of the Triassic. It’s probably not what you were expecting. After some of the largest volcanic eruptions in Earth history desecrated ecosystems, dinosaurs became more diverse, more abundant, and larger. Completely new dinosaur species were evolving and spreading into new environments, while other groups of animals went extinct. As the world was going to hell, dinosaurs were thriving, somehow taking advantage of the chaos around them."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "When the volcanoes ran out of lava and their six-hundred-thousand-year reign of terror was over, the world was a very different place than it had been in the Late Triassic. It was much warmer, storms were more intense, and wildfires ignited with ease; new types of ferns and ginkgos had replaced the once abundant broadleaf conifers; and many of the most charismatic Triassic animals were gone. The piglike mammal-relative dicynodonts and the beaked plant-munching rhynchosaurs were both extinct; the supersalamander amphibians, almost completely knocked out. What about the pseudosuchians, those crocodile-line archosaurs that were overshadowing, outmuscling, and seemingly outcompeting the dinosaurs during the final 30 million years of the Triassic? Nearly every species bit the dust. The long-snouted phytosaurs, the tanklike aetosaurs, the apex-predator rauisuchians, and the weird Effigia-like critters that resembled dinosaurs—none of them were ever to be heard from again. The only pseudosuchians that made it through the great Pangean breakup were a few types of primitive crocodiles, a handful of battle-worn stragglers that would eventually evolve into the modern alligators and crocodiles but would never enjoy the same success they had in the Late Triassic, when they seemed primed to take over the world. Somehow dinosaurs were the victors. They endured the Pangean split, the volcanism, and the wild climate swings and fires that vanquished their rivals. I wish I had a good answer for why. It’s a mystery that quite literally has kept me up at night. Was there something special about dinosaurs that gave them an edge over the pseudosuchians and other animals that went extinct? Did they grow faster, reproduce quicker, have a higher metabolism, or move more efficiently? Did they have better ways of breathing, hiding, or insulating their bodies during extreme heat and cold snaps? Maybe, but the fact that so many dinosaurs and pseudosuchians looked and behaved so similarly makes such ideas tenuous at best. Maybe dinosaurs were just lucky. Perhaps the normal rules of evolution are ripped up when such a sudden, devastating, global catastrophe happens. It could be that the dinosaurs simply were the ones that walked away from the plane crash unscathed, saved by good fortune, when so many others died. Whatever the answer, it’s a riddle waiting for the next generation of paleontologists to figure out. THE JURASSIC PERIOD marks the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs proper. Yes, the first true dinosaurs entered the scene at least 30 million years before the Jurassic began. But as we’ve seen, these earlier Triassic dinosaurs had not even a remote claim to being dominant. Then Pangea began to split, and the dinosaurs emerged from the ashes and found themselves with a new, much emptier world, which they proceeded to conquer. Over the first few tens of millions of years of the Jurassic, dinosaurs diversified into a dizzying array of new species. Entirely new subgroups originated, some of which would persist for another 130-plus million years."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "They got larger and spread around the globe, colonizing humid areas, deserts, and everything in between. By the middle part of the Jurassic, the major types of dinosaurs could be found all over the world. That quintessential image, so often repeated in museum exhibits and kids’ books, was real life: dinosaurs thundering across the land, at the top of the food chain, ferocious meat-eaters comingling with long-necked giants and armored and plated plant-eaters, the little mammals and lizards and frogs and other non-dinosaurs cowering in fear. Here are some of the familiar dinosaurs that start to show up after the Pangean rift volcanoes ushered in the Jurassic. There were meat-eating theropods like Dilophosaurus, with a weird double-mohawk crest on its skull; at around twenty feet long, it was much larger than the mule-size Coelophysis and most other Triassic carnivores. Plant-eating ornithischians covered in armor plates, like Scelidosaurus and Scutellosaurus, would soon after give rise to the familiar tanklike ankylosaurs and back-plated stegosaurs. Small, fast-moving, probably omnivorous ornithischians like Heterodontosaurus and Lesothosaurus, were early members of that lineage that would eventually produce the horned and duck-billed dinosaurs. Other familiar dinosaurs that had been around in the Triassic but restricted to only a few environments, like the long-necked proto-sauropods and the most primitive ornithischians, finally began to migrate around the planet. Nothing in this inventory of growing diversity encapsulates the newfound dominance of dinosaurs quite like the sauropods. They are those unmistakable long-necked, column-limbed, potbellied, plant-devouring, small-brained behemoths. Some of the most famous dinosaurs of all are sauropods: Brontosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus. They show up in almost all museum exhibits and are stars of Jurassic Park; Fred Flintstone used one to mine slate, and a green cartoon sauropod has been the logo of Standard Oil for decades. Along with T. rex, they are the iconic dinosaurs. Sauropods evolved from an ancestral stock, what I’ve been calling the proto-sauropods, in the latest Triassic. These protospecies were the dog-to-giraffe-size plant-eaters with fairly long necks that were among that first wave of dinosaurs to appear in Ischigualasto about 230 million years ago. They then became the main herbivores in the humid parts of Triassic Pangea but were kept from achieving their full potential by their inability to settle the deserts. That changed in the early part of the Jurassic, when sauropods were able to break free of their environmental restrictions and move about the globe, evolving their characteristic noodle-necked bodies and growing to monstrous sizes in the process. The skull of Plateosaurus, one of the proto-sauropods, the ancestral stock that gave rise to the sauropods. Photo courtesy of the author Fossils of some of the first truly gigantic sauropods—ones that weighed over ten tons, were over fifty feet long, and had necks that could stretch several stories into the sky—have started turning up in Scotland over the past few decades, on a beautiful island off the west coast called the Isle of Skye."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "The clues have been meager—a stocky limb bone here, a tooth or a tail vertebra there—but they hint at an animal of enormous size living about 170 million years ago, far enough into the Jurassic that the Pangean split and volcanic apocalypse were distant memories but still during that time when dinosaurs were putting the final flourishes on their rise to dominance. The sauropod fossils from Skye piqued my interest when I moved to Scotland in 2013 to take up my new position at the University of Edinburgh, fresh out of my PhD in New York and bounding with the excitement of starting my own research lab. During my first few weeks on the job, I began to hang out with two scientists in my department: Mark Wilkinson, a hardened field geologist whose ponytail and scruffy beard give him the look of a hippie, and Tom Challands, a redheaded packhorse of man who also had a doctorate in paleontology, albeit on microscopic fossils from over 400 million years ago. Tom had recently finished a stint in the real world, putting his geological skills to use working for an energy company on the search for oil. For part of that time, he lived in a custom-made camper van, fitted with a bed and small kitchen, which he would park near whatever sites he was surveying. His new bride put the kibosh on that lifestyle after their wedding, but the van still came in handy for fieldwork travel, and Tom would often spend his weekends driving along the misty coasts of Scotland looking for whatever fossils he could find. Both Tom and Mark had done some geological work on Skye and knew the terrain well, so we made a pact to hunt for better fossils of the mysterious giant sauropods. The more we read about Skye, the more one name kept popping up: Dugald Ross. It was a name I wasn’t familiar with. He wasn’t a paleontologist or a geologist or a scientist of any kind. Yet he had discovered and described many of the dinosaur fossils found on Skye. Dugald was a local boy who grew up in the tiny hamlet of Ellishadder on the far northeastern arm of the island, a rugged landscape of craggy peaks, green hills, peat-colored streams, and windswept shores that looks like something out of a fantasy novel—very Tolkienesque. He was raised in a household that spoke Gaelic, the native language of the Scottish Highlands, which is spoken by only about fifty thousand people today but which still has a presence on the road signs and in the schools on remote islands like Skye. When Dugald was fifteen years old, he found a cache of arrow points and Bronze Age artifacts near his family’s home, and this sparked an obsession with the history of his native island that continued into adulthood, as he carved out a career as a builder and crofter (a Scottish Highlands term for a small-scale farmer and sheepherder)."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "I got in touch with Dugald and told him about our dreams of finding huge dinosaurs on his island. It was one of the most fortunate e-mails I’ve ever sent, because it struck up a friendship and a remarkable scientific collaboration. Dugald—or Dugie, as he prefers to be called—invited us to visit him when we came up to his island a few months later. He instructed us to drive up the main two-lane road that snakes along the coast of northeastern Skye and meet him at a long ranch-style building, made up of a collage of different-size gray stones and a black tile roof, with antique farming instruments strewn across the lawn outside. There was a sign out front that said TAIGH-TASGAIDH—the Gaelic word for museum. Dugie emerged from his big red work van with a set of oversize skeleton keys, made his introductions, and proudly led us inside. In his soft-spoken lyrical accent—a charming combination of Sean Connery–style Scots and an Irish brogue—he explained how he had taken the ruins of a one-room schoolhouse and built the structure we were standing in, the Staffin Museum. He founded the museum when he was nineteen. Today, this single room—without a café, a big gift shop, or other expensive trappings of big-city museums, or even electricity—contains many of the dinosaurs he’s found on Skye, along with artifacts that trace the history of the island’s human inhabitants. It’s a surreal experience: big dinosaur bones and footprints displayed next to old mill wheels, iron rods for picking turnips, and antique mole traps once used by Highland farmers. The enchanting landscape of the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Photo courtesy of the author For the rest of that week, Dugie led us to many of his favorite hunting spots. We found a lot of Jurassic fossils—the jaw of a dog-size crocodile, the teeth and backbones of reptiles called ichthyosaurs, which resembled dolphins and lived in the oceans when dinosaurs started to dominate the land—but no giant sauropods. Over the next few years, we kept coming back. Dugie Ross removing a dinosaur bone from a boulder on the Isle of Skye. Photo courtesy of the author The dinosaur dance floor of sauropod tracks that I discovered with Tom Challands on the Isle of Skye. Photo courtesy of the author Finally, in the spring of 2015, we found what we set out for, although we didn’t even realize it at first. We spent most of the day on our hands and knees, looking for tiny fish teeth and scales embedded in a platform of Jurassic rocks that stretched into the icy waters of the North Atlantic, right below the ruins of a fourteenth-century castle. This was Tom’s idea: he now studies fossil fish, and in exchange for his help finding dinosaurs, I promised to assist him in collecting fishy bits. We had been squinting at the rocks for hours, bundled up in three layers of waterproof clothing but still freezing."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "The tide was coming in, the late afternoon light was going down, and dinner was beckoning. So Tom and I packed up our gear and our bags of fish teeth and started to stroll back to his tricked-out van parked on the other side of the beach. That’s when something caught our eyes. It was a malformed depression in the rock, about the size of a car tire. We had missed it earlier because our eyes were focused on the much smaller fish bones, our search image totally unsuitable for noticing something so big. As we continued to walk, we started to notice many other similar depressions, now visible in the low-angle afternoon light. They were all about the same size, and the closer we looked, the more we saw that they stretched in every direction around us. They seemed to show a pattern. Individual holes were lined up in two long rows, in something of a zigzag arrangement: left-right, left-right, left-right. Ribbons of them were crisscrossing much of the rock platform that we had been working on all day. Tom and I looked at each other. It was the kind of knowing glance between brothers, a nonverbal connection based on years of shared experience. We had seen these types of things before, not in Scotland, but in places like Spain and western North America. We knew what they were. The holes in front of us were fossilized tracks, huge ones. Dinosaur tracks, no doubt. As we looked closer, we could see that there were both handprints and footprints, and some of them had finger and toe marks. They had the telltale shape of tracks left by sauropods. We had found a 170-million-year-old dinosaur dance floor, records left by colossal sauropods that were about fifty feet long and weighed as much as three elephants. The tracks were made in an ancient lagoon, an environment not commonly associated with sauropods. We usually envision these monstrous dinosaurs stampeding across the land, causing a small earthquake with each step. And they did. But by the middle part of the Jurassic, the sauropods had become so diverse that they started branching out into other ecosystems, always searching for the vast quantities of leafy food needed to fuel their giant bodies. Our trackway site in Skye has at least three different layers of footprints, made by different generations of sauropods wading through a salty lagoon, living with smaller plant-eating dinosaurs, the occasional pickup-truck-size carnivore, and many types of crocodiles, lizards, and swimming mammals with flat tails like beavers. Scotland was much warmer back then, a land of swamps and sandy beaches and rolling rivers on an island in the middle of the growing Atlantic Ocean, perched between North American and European landmasses that moved farther and farther apart as Pangea continued to split. Thoroughly ruling this land were the sauropods and other dinosaurs, which had now—finally—become a global phenomenon."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "THERE’S REALLY NO better way to say it: the sauropods that made their marks in that ancient Scottish lagoon were awesome creatures. Awesome in the literal sense of the word—impressive, daunting, inspiring awe. If I was handed a blank sheet of paper and a pen and told to create a mythical beast, my imagination could never match what evolution created in sauropods. But they were real: they were born, they grew, they moved and ate and breathed, they hid from predators, they slept, they left footprints, they died. And there’s absolutely nothing like sauropods around today—no animals with a similar long-necked and swollen-gut body type, no creatures on land that even remotely approach them in size. Sauropods are so mind-twistingly big that, when their first fossil bones were discovered in the 1820s, scientists found themselves in a bind. Some of the first dinosaurs were being found around the same time, like the meat-eating Megalosaurus and the beaked herbivore Iguanodon. These were big animals, no doubt, but nowhere near the size of the creatures that left the gigantic sauropod bones. So scientists didn’t make the connection with dinosaurs. Instead, they considered the sauropod bones to belong to the one type of thing they knew could get so huge: whales. It was a few decades before that mistake was corrected. Amazingly, later discoveries would show that many sauropods got even bigger than most whales. They were the largest animals that ever walked the land, and they push the limit for what evolution can achieve. This raises a question that has fascinated paleontologists for over a century: how did sauropods become so large? It’s one of the great puzzles of paleontology. But before trying to solve it, we first need to come to grips with a more fundamental issue: how big did sauropods get? How long were they, how high could they stretch their necks, and most important, how much did they weigh? These turn out to be difficult questions to answer, particularly when it comes to weight, because you can’t just stick a dinosaur on a scale and weigh it. A trade secret among paleontologists is that many of the fantastical numbers you see in books and museum exhibits—Brontosaurus weighed a hundred tons and was bigger than a plane!—are pretty much just made up. Educated guesses or, in some cases, barely that. Recently, however, paleontologists have come up with two different approaches to more accurately predict the weight of a dinosaur based on its fossil bones. The first is really quite simple and relies on basic physics: heavier animals require stronger limb bones to support their weight. This logical principle is reflected in how animals are built."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "Scientists have measured the limb bones of many living animals, and it turns out that the thickness of the main bone in each limb that supports the animal—the femur (thighbone) for those that walk on two legs only or the femur plus the humerus (upper arm bone) for those that stand on all fours—is strongly statistically correlated with the weight of the animal. In other words, there is a basic equation that works for almost all living animals: if you can measure limb-bone thickness, you can then calculate body weight with a small but recognized margin of error—simple algebra you can do with a basic calculator. The second method is more intensive but a lot more interesting. Scientists are starting to build three-dimensional digital models of dinosaur skeletons, add on the skin and muscles and internal organs in animation software, and use computer programs to calculate body weight. It’s a method pioneered by a number of young British paleontologists—Karl Bates, Charlotte Brassey, Peter Falkingham, and Susie Maidment—and their network of collaborators, who include everyone from biologists specializing in living animals to computer scientists and programmers. A few years ago, when I was finishing my PhD, Karl and Peter invited me to take part in a study of sauropod body size and proportions using digital models. It was an ambitious goal: make detailed computer animations of all sauropods with complete enough skeletons and figure out how big these animals were and how their bodies changed as they grew into truly titanic sizes. I was invited for purely practical reasons: some of the best sauropod skeletons in the world are on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where I was based at the time, and they needed data for one of them in particular, a Late Jurassic species called Barosaurus. They instructed me how to gather the information to build the model, and I was surprised that all it required was a normal digital camera, a tripod, and a scale bar. I took about a hundred photos of the Barosaurus skeletal mount from all possible angles, keeping my camera steady on the tripod and making sure to include a ruler in most of the images. Then Karl and Peter input the images into a computer program that matches equivalent points on the photographs, works out the distances between them based on the scale, and does this continuously until a three-dimensional model is built from the original 2-D images. Brontosaurus at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, with a human skeleton for scale. American Museum of Natural History Library A digital computer model of the skeleton of the sauropod Giraffatitan, which helps scientists calculate the weight of the animal. Courtesy of Peter Falkingham and Karl Bates. The technique is called photogrammetry, and it’s revolutionizing how we study dinosaurs. The super-accurate models it creates can be measured in precise detail."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "Or they can be loaded into animation software and made to run and jump, in order to determine what kinds of motions and behaviors dinosaurs were capable of. They can even be used to animate movies or television documentaries, ensuring that the most realistic dinosaurs appear on screen. These models are bringing dinosaurs to life. Our computer modeling study and more traditional studies based on limb-bone measurements come to the same conclusion: sauropod dinosaurs were really, really big. The primitive proto-sauropods like Plateosaurus began to experiment with relatively large sizes in the Triassic, as some of them got up to about two or three tons in weight. That’s roughly equivalent to a giraffe or two. But after Pangea started to split, the volcanoes erupted, and the Triassic turned into the Jurassic, the true sauropods got much larger. The ones that left tracks in the Scottish lagoon weighed about ten to twenty tons, and later in the Jurassic, famous beasties like Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus expanded to more than thirty tons. But that was nothing compared to some supersize Cretaceous species like Dreadnoughtus, Patagotitan, Argentinosaurus—members of an aptly named subgroup called the titanosaurs—which weighed in excess of fifty tons, more than a Boeing 737. The biggest and heaviest land animals today are elephants. Their sizes vary, depending on where they live and which species they belong to, but most weigh about five or six tons. Apparently the largest one ever recorded was around eleven tons. They have nothing on sauropods. Which circles back to the money question: how were these dinosaurs able to attain sizes so completely out of scale with anything else evolution has ever produced? The first thing to consider is what animals require to become really big. Perhaps most obvious, they need to eat a lot of food. Based on their sizes and the nutritional quality of the most common Jurassic foodstuffs, it’s estimated that a big sauropod like Brontosaurus probably needed to eat around a hundred pounds of leaves, stems, and twigs every day, maybe more. So they needed a way to gather and digest such vast quantities of grub. Secondly, they need to grow fast. Growing bit by bit, year by year is all well and good, but if it takes you over a century to get big, that’s many opportunities for a predator to eat you, or a tree to fall on you during a storm, or a disease to take you out long before you grow into your full-size adult body. Third, they must be able to breathe very efficiently, so they can take in enough oxygen to power all of the metabolic reactions in their immense bodies. Fourth, they need to be constructed in a way that their skeleton is strong and sturdy, but also not so bulky that it can’t move. Finally, they need to shed excess body heat, because in hot weather it is very easy for a big creature to overheat and die."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "Sauropods must have been able to do all of these things. But how? Many scientists who started to ponder this riddle decades ago went for the easiest answer: maybe there was something different in the physical environment back in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. Perhaps gravity was weaker, so heftier animals could move and grow more easily back then. Or maybe there was more oxygen in the atmosphere, so the hulking sauropods could breathe, and therefore grow and metabolize, more efficiently. These speculations might sound convincing, but on closer scrutiny they don’t check out. There is no evidence gravity was substantially different during the Age of Dinosaurs, and oxygen levels back then were about the same as today, or maybe even slightly lower. That leaves only one plausible explanation: there was something intrinsic about sauropods that allowed them to break the shackles that constrained all other land animals—mammals, reptiles, amphibians, even other dinosaurs—to much smaller sizes. The key seems to be their unique body plan, which is a mixture of features that evolved piecemeal during the Triassic and earliest Jurassic, culminating in an animal perfectly adapted for thriving at large size. It all starts with the neck. The long, spindly, slinky-shaped neck is probably the single most distinctive feature of sauropods. A longer-than-normal neck started to evolve in the very oldest Triassic proto-sauropods, and it got proportionally longer over time, as sauropods both added more vertebrae—the individual bones in the neck—and stretched each individual vertebra ever further. Like Iron Man’s armor, the long necks conferred a kind of superpower: they allowed sauropods to reach higher in the trees than other plant-eating animals, giving them access to a whole new source of food. They could also park themselves in one area for several hours and extend their necks up and down and all around like a cherry picker, gobbling up plants while expending very little energy. That meant they were able to eat more food, and thus take in energy more efficiently, than their competitors. That’s adaptive advantage number one: their necks permitted them to eat the huge meals necessary to put on excessive weight. Then there’s the way that they grew. Recall that the dinosauromorph ancestors of dinosaurs developed higher metabolisms, faster growth rates, and a more active lifestyle than many of the amphibians and reptiles that were also diversifying in the earliest Triassic. They weren’t lethargic, and it didn’t take them aeons to grow into adults like an iguana or a crocodile. This was also true of all of their dinosaur descendants. Studies of bone growth indicate that most sauropods matured from guinea-pig-size hatchlings to airplane-size adults in only about thirty or forty years, an incredibly short period of time for such a remarkable metamorphosis. That’s advantage two: sauropods obtained the fast growth essential to reach large size from their distant, cat-size ancestors. Sauropods also retained something else from their Triassic ancestors: a highly efficient lung."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "The lungs of sauropods were very similar to those of birds and very different from ours. While mammals have a simple lung that breathes in oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide in a cycle, birds have what is called a unidirectional lung: air flows across it in one direction only, and oxygen is extracted during both inhalation and exhalation. The bird-style lung is extra efficient, sucking up oxygen with each breath in and each exhalation. It’s an astounding feature of biological engineering, made possible by a series of balloonlike air sacs connected to the lung, which store some of the oxygen-rich air taken in during inhalation, so that it can be passed across the lung during exhalation. Don’t worry if it sounds confusing: it is such a strange lung that it took biologists many decades to figure out how it works. We know that sauropods had such a birdlike lung because many bones of the chest cavity have big openings, called pneumatic fenestrae, where the air sacs extended deep inside. They are exactly the same structures in modern birds, and they can only be made by air sacs. So that’s adaptation three: sauropods had ultra-efficient lungs that could take in enough oxygen to stoke their metabolism at huge size. Theropod dinosaurs had the same bird-style lungs, which could have been one factor that allowed tyrannosaurs and other giant hunters to get so large, but the ornithischian dinosaurs did not. This is why duck-billed dinosaurs, stegosaurs, horned species, and armored dinosaurs were never able to grow as huge as sauropods. It turns out that air sacs also have another function. Aside from storing air in the breathing cycle, they also lighten the skeleton when they invade bone. In effect, they hollow out the bone, so that it still has a strong outer shell but is much more lightweight, the way an air-filled basketball is lighter than a rock of similar size. Want to know how sauropods could hold up their long necks without toppling over like an unbalanced seesaw? It’s because all of the vertebrae were so engulfed by air sacs that they were little more than honeycombs, featherweight but still strong. And that’s advantage four: the air sacs allowed sauropods to have a skeleton that was both sturdy and light enough to move around. Without air sacs, mammals, lizards, and ornithischian dinosaurs had no such luck. And what about the fifth special adaptation, being able to expel excess body heat? The lungs and air sacs helped with this too. There were so many air sacs, and they extended throughout so much of the body, snaking their way into bones and between internal organs, that they provided a large surface area for dissipating heat. Each hot breath would be cooled by this central air conditioning system. Putting it all together, that’s how you can build a supergiant dinosaur."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.19", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_3.txt", "text": "If sauropods had lacked any one of these features—the long neck, the fast growth rates, the efficient lung, the system of skeleton-lightening and body-cooling air sacs—then they probably would not have been capable of becoming such behemoths. It wouldn’t have been biologically possible. But evolution assembled all of the pieces, put them together in the right order, and when the kit was finally assembled in the post-volcanic world of the Jurassic, sauropods suddenly found themselves able to do something no other animals, before or since, have been able to do. They became biblically huge and swept around the world; they became dominant in the most magnificent way—and they would remain so for another hundred million years."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs 4 Dinosaurs and Drifting Continents Stegosaurus Chapter Title art by Todd Marshall NESTLED WITHIN THE LEAFY STREETS of New Haven, Connecticut, on the northern fringes of the Yale University campus, there is a shrine. The Great Hall of Dinosaurs at Yale’s Peabody Museum may not bill itself as a place of spiritual pilgrimage, but that’s sure what it feels like to me. I get a shiver, as when I walked into Catholic mass as a child. It’s not a normal shrine—no statues of deities, flickering candles, or the hint of incense. It’s also not particularly magnificent, at least from the outside, tucked away inside a fairly nondescript brick building that blends in with the rest of the university’s lecture halls. But it houses relics that, to me, are as sacred as those you’ll find in most any religious shrine: dinosaurs. To me, there is nowhere better, anywhere on the planet, to go and immerse yourself in the wonder of the prehistoric world. The Great Hall was originally built in the 1920s to house Yale’s incomparable dinosaur collection, assembled over many decades by roughnecks who fanned across the American West and, for the right fee, sent fossil treasures eastward to be studied by the Ivy League elite. Coming up on its centennial, the gallery retains all of its original charm. This isn’t some New Age exhibit space with flashing computer screens and dinosaur holograms and a roaring soundtrack in the background. It’s a temple of science, where skeletons of some of the most iconic dinosaurs stand in solemn vigil, lights down low, in the sort of silence you really do expect in a church. Covering the entire east wall is a mural that stretches more than a hundred feet long and sixteen feet high. Taking four and a half years to complete, it was painted by a man named Rudolph Zallinger, who was born in Siberia, moved to the United States, and took up illustration professionally during the Great Depression. If he were around today, Zallinger would probably be working for an animation studio as a storyboard artist. He was a master at setting scenes and incorporating diverse sets of characters, telling grandiose stories with the stroke of his brush. His most famous work is undoubtedly The March of Progress—that often satirized timeline of human evolution in which a knuckle-walking ape gradually morphs into a spear-carrying man. More people have probably come to understand, or misunderstand, the theory of evolution through that one image than through all of the textbooks, school lectures, and museum exhibits the world over. But before he was painting humans, Zallinger was obsessed with dinosaurs. His mural inside the Great Hall—called The Age of Reptiles—is the crowning achievement of that stage of his career. It’s been on US postage stamps, was featured in a Life magazine series, and is either reproduced or plagiarized on all sorts of dinosaur paraphernalia."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "It’s the Mona Lisa of paleontology, surely the single most talked-about piece of dinosaur artwork that has ever been created. But really, it’s more akin to the Bayeux Tapestry, because it tells an epic tale of conquest. It’s the saga of how fishy creatures first emerged onto land, colonized a new environment, and diversified into reptiles and amphibians; then, of how these reptiles split off into the mammal and lizard lines, the proto-mammals having their day and the lizards following, eventually producing the dinosaurs. As the mural nears its end, some sixty feet and 240 million years from where it started, after a long journey through alien landscapes of primeval scaly beasts, the painting finally becomes engulfed in dinosaurs. It kind of sneaks up on you, as the transition from the lizards and proto-mammals to the dinosaurs unfolds incrementally across the canvas. Now it’s dinosaurs everywhere, of all shapes and sizes, some enormous and others blending into the background. Suddenly, the mural has taken on the feel of something quite different—of a Soviet propaganda poster with Stalin gesticulating before a crowd of peasants, or one of those hilariously self-aggrandizing frescoes in Saddam’s palaces. One glance at the dinosaurs and I feel the power. Strength, control, dominance. The dinosaurs were in command, and this was their world. The theropod Deinonychus stands guard over the Zallinger mural at the Peabody Museum, Yale University. Photo courtesy of the author This part of Zallinger’s mural beautifully encapsulates what it was like when dinosaurs had ascended to the peak of their evolutionary success. A monstrous Brontosaurus lounges in a swamp in the foreground, munching away on the ferns and evergreen trees surrounding the water. Off to the side, a bus-size Allosaurus rips into a bloodied carcass with its teeth and claws, its massive feet stomping on its prey for a little extra insult. Keeping a safe distance is a peaceful grazing Stegosaurus, which displays its full arsenal of bony plates and spikes just in case the carnivore has other ideas. Far in the background, where the swamp disappears into a wall of snowcapped mountains, another sauropod uses its long neck to vacuum shrubs off of the ground. Meanwhile, two pterosaurs—those flying reptiles closely related to dinosaurs, often called pterodactyls—chase each other overhead, dipping and diving through the tranquil blue sky. Odds are, this is the type of image that many of us think of when we think of dinosaurs. These are dinosaurs at their pinnacle. ZALLINGER’S MURAL IS not fiction. Like any good art, it takes a few liberties here and there, but it is largely rooted in fact. It’s based on those very same dinosaurs that stand in front of it in the Great Hall: familiar names like Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Allosaurus. These dinosaurs lived during the Late Jurassic Period, about 150 million years ago. By this time, dinosaurs had already become the dominant force on land."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "Their victory over the pseudosuchians was 50 million years in the rearview mirror, and it had been a good 20 million years since some of the first giant long-necked species were splashing through the lagoons of Scotland. Nothing was holding back the dinosaurs anymore. We know a lot about the dinosaurs of the Late Jurassic. That’s because there are abundant fossils from this time, in many parts of the world. It’s just one of those quirks of geology: some time periods are better represented in the fossil record than others. It’s usually because more rocks were being formed during that time, or rocks of that age have better survived the rigors of erosion, flooding, volcanic eruptions, and all of the other forces that conspire to make fossils difficult to find. When it comes to the Late Jurassic, we enjoy two lucky breaks. First, there were hugely diverse communities of dinosaurs living alongside rivers, lakes, and seas all around the world—the perfect places to bury fossils in sediments that later turned to rock. Second, these rocks are today exposed in places convenient for paleontologists—in sparsely populated and dry regions of the United States, China, Portugal, and Tanzania, where annoyances like buildings, highways, forests, lakes, rivers, and oceans don’t cover up the fossil booty. The most famous Late Jurassic dinosaurs—those in Zallinger’s mural—come from a thick rock deposit that pokes out all across the western United States. Its technical term is the Morrison Formation, named for a small town in Colorado where there are some beautiful exposures of its colorful mudstones and beige-tinged sandstones. The Morrison Formation is a monster: it can be found in thirteen states today, covering nearly four hundred thousand square miles (a million square kilometers) of the American scrublands. It is easily sculpted into low hills and undulating badlands, the sort of classic backdrop you see in Western films. It’s also the source rock for some of the country’s most important uranium ore deposits. And, yes, it’s a hotbed of dinosaurs, ones whose uranium-infused bones make Geiger counters sing. Paul Sereno in Wyoming. Photo courtesy of the author Excavating sauropod bones in the Morrison Formation near Shell, Wyoming. At the center back is Sara Burch, who later became an expert on T. rex arms (see Chapter 6). I worked in the Morrison Formation for two summers as an undergraduate. It’s where I cut my teeth excavating dinosaur skeletons. I was apprenticing in the lab of the University of Chicago’s Paul Sereno, whom we last met leading the expeditions to Argentina that turned up some of the world’s very oldest dinosaurs, the Triassic-age Herrerasaurus, Eoraptor, and Eodromaeus. But Paul seemed to study everything and do fieldwork everywhere: he had also found bizarre fish-eating and long-necked dinosaurs in Africa, he’d explored China and Australia, and he’d even described important fossils of crocodiles, mammals, and birds. In addition, like any academic paleontologist, Paul also had to spend time in the classroom."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "Each year he taught a popular undergraduate class called Dinosaur Science, which combined theory with practice. Because you can’t find dinosaurs anywhere near Chicago, the class would take a ten-day field trip each summer to Wyoming, where the students had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dig dinosaurs with a celebrity scientist. Although at the time I had little prior experience, I was brought on as a teaching assistant, Paul’s right-hand man as we herded the students—a diverse lot, from premeds to philosophy majors—across the high desert. Paul’s field sites were located near the tiny town of Shell, secluded between the Bighorn Mountains to the east, and Yellowstone National Park a hundred miles to the west. Only eighty-three people were counted during the last census. When we were there in 2005 and 2006, the road signs boasted of merely fifty residents. But that’s a good thing for paleontologists. The fewer people in the way of the fossils, the better. And although Shell is a forgettable dot on the map, it can rightly stake its claim as one of the world’s dinosaur capitals. It is built on the Morrison Formation, surrounded by beautiful hills carved out of muted green, red, and gray rocks bursting with dinosaurs. So many dinosaurs have been found here that it’s hard to keep track, but the count is probably well over a hundred skeletons by now. As we drove west from Sheridan, on a surprisingly treacherous road across the rugged Bighorns, I felt I was on the trail of giants. Some of the biggest dinosaurs of all have been found in the Shell area: long-necked sauropods like Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus, and the huge carnivores, like Allosaurus, that ate them. But I also felt I was walking in the footsteps of another type of giant: the explorers who found the first bones in this area in the late nineteenth century, the railwaymen and laborers who started a dinosaur rush and seized the moment to reinvent themselves as mercenary fossil collectors on the payrolls of gilded institutions like Yale University. They were a ragtag bunch, Wild West ruffians with cowboy hats, mustaches, and unkempt hair, who hacked giant bones out of the ground for months on end, and spent their free time raiding one another’s sites, constantly feuding and sabotaging and drinking and shooting. But these unlikely characters revealed a prehistoric world that nobody knew existed. The first Morrison fossils were surely noticed by the many Native American tribes scattered across the West, but the first recorded bones were collected by a surveying expedition in 1859. In March 1877 the real fun started. A railroad worker named William Reed was returning home from a successful hunt, rifle and pronghorn antelope carcass in tow, when he noticed some huge bones protruding out of a long ridge called Como Bluff, not too far from the railroad tracks in an anonymous expanse of southeastern Wyoming."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "He didn’t know it, but at the same time a college student, Oramel Lucas, was finding similar bones a few hundred miles to the south, in Garden Park, Colorado. That same month, a schoolteacher named Arthur Lakes had just found a cache of fossils near Denver. By the end of that March, the fever of discovery was spreading throughout the American West, to even the most remote villages and railway outposts. Like any prospecting rush, the dinosaur frenzy attracted a horde of questionable characters to the Wyoming and Colorado backcountry. Many of these men were grizzled opportunists on one mission: to convert dinosaur bones into cash. It didn’t take long for them to realize who was paying top dollar: two dapper East Coast academics, Edward Drinker Cope of Philadelphia and Othniel Charles Marsh of Yale University, the same men we briefly met two chapters ago, who studied some of the first Triassic dinosaurs found in western North America. Once chummy, these two scientists had let ego and pride metastasize into a full-on feud, which was so radioactive that they would do anything to one-up each other in an insane battle to see who could name the most new dinosaurs. Cope and Marsh were opportunists, too, and with each letter from a ranch hand or railway porter reporting more new dinosaur bones from the Morrison badlands, they saw the opportunity they had been craving but had been unable to yet fulfill: a chance to beat the other guy once and for all. And they both went for it. Cope and Marsh treated the West like a battlefield, employing rival teams that often acted more like armies, scooping up fossils wherever they went and sabotaging the other side whenever they could. Loyalties were fluid. Lucas worked for Cope, and Lakes teamed up with Marsh. Reed worked for Marsh, but members of his team defected to Cope. Pillaging, poaching, and bribing were the rules of the game. The madness continued for over a decade, and when it was over, it was hard to separate the winners from the losers. On the plus side, the so-called Bone Wars led to the discovery of some of the most celebrated dinosaurs, the ones that roll off the tongue of every schoolchild: Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, just to name a few. On the other hand, the mentality of constant warfare caused a lot of sloppiness: fossils haphazardly excavated and hastily studied, scraps of bone mistakenly christened as new species, different bits of the skeleton of the same dinosaur regarded as belonging to totally different animals. Edward Drinker Cope, the Bone Wars protagonist. AMNH Library. A page from Cope’s 1874 field notebook, depicting the fossil-rich rocks of New Mexico. AMNH Library. Cope’s sketch of a horned dinosaur (ceratopsian), from 1889, an insight into how he envisioned dinosaurs as living animals. (He was much better as a scientist than as an artist.) AMNH Library."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "Cope’s Bone Wars rival, Othniel Charles Marsh (center in the back row), and his team of student volunteers on their 1872 expedition to the American West. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University. Stegosaurus, one of the most famous dinosaurs discovered in the Morrison Formation during the Bone Wars period. Skeleton on display at the Natural History Museum in London. PLoS ONE. Wars can’t last forever, and as the nineteenth century turned over to the twentieth, sanity began to set in. New dinosaurs were still being found throughout the western United States, and most of the country’s leading natural history museums and many top universities had crews working somewhere in the Morrison Formation, but the chaos of the dinosaur rush was over. With less turbulence came several major discoveries: A graveyard of over 120 dinosaurs near the Colorado-Utah border, which later became Dinosaur National Monument. A pit with over ten thousand bones, mostly belonging to the superpredator Allosaurus, south of Price, Utah, called the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. A bone bed in the Oklahoma Panhandle discovered by a road crew and excavated by a team of laborers who lost their jobs during the Great Depression and were put back to work digging up dinosaurs with money from Roosevelt’s New Deal. And the site near Shell that Paul Sereno was now working, with the assistance of me and a phalanx of undergraduate laborers paying hefty tuition for the privilege. Paul has discovered his fair share of dinosaur sites around the world, but the quarry near Shell is not one of them. Instead, it was a local rock collector who reported the first bones in the area. In 1932 she mentioned them to Barnum Brown, a New York paleontologist passing through town. We’ll meet Brown again in the next chapter, because much earlier in his career he discovered Tyrannosaurus rex. Brown was intrigued by the rock collector’s story and followed her to the lonely ranch of an octogenarian named Barker Howe, surrounded by sage-scented hills stalked by mountain lions and abuzz with grazing pronghorns. Brown liked what he saw and stayed the week. What he found was promising enough to convince Sinclair Oil to fund a full-scale expedition in the summer of 1934, to dig up what is now called the Howe Quarry. It turned out to be one of the most fantastic dinosaur excavations of all time. Once Brown’s crew starting digging, they kept finding skeletons everywhere, piled on top of each other and extending in all directions. More than twenty skeletons and four thousand bones in all, covering some 3,000 square feet (280 square meters), approaching the size of a basketball court. There was so much raw fossil material that it took about six months of daily work to excavate; the team broke camp only in mid-November, after enduring two months of heavy snow."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "The diggers found an entire ecosystem preserved in stone: there were giant long-necked plant-eaters like Diplodocus and Barosaurus, entangled with sharp-toothed Allosauruses and smaller herbivores that walked on two legs, called Camptosaurus. Something horrible had happened here some 155 million years ago. Judging from the contorted angles of their skeletons, the deaths of these animals were neither quick nor painless. Some of the sauropods were found upright, their heavy legs standing tall like columns, stuck in the ancient mud. It seems that these dinosaurs survived a flood, but then were mired in the muck when they tried to run away after the waters receded. Brown was delighted. He called the site an “an absolute, knockout dinosaur treasure trove!” and gleefully took his haul of dinosaurs back to New York, where they became crown jewels in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History. And then for many decades the Howe Quarry lay dormant, until a fossil collector from Switzerland named Kirby Siber rolled into Wyoming in the late 1980s. Siber is a commercial paleontologist: he digs up dinosaurs and sells them. It’s a thorny issue for many academic paleontologists like me, who see fossils as irreplaceable natural heritage that should be protected in museums, where they can be studied by researchers and enjoyed by the public, not sold off to the highest bidder. But there is a whole spectrum of commercial paleontologists, ranging from gun-toting criminals who illegally export fossils to diligent, conscientious, well-trained collectors whose knowledge and experience rival that of academics. Siber is in this latter category. In fact, he’s the archetype of this kind of collector. He is well respected by researchers and even founded his own dinosaur museum east of Zurich, called the Saurier Museum, which has some of the most remarkable dinosaur exhibits in Europe. Siber arranged access to the old Howe Quarry but didn’t find many dinosaurs. Brown’s team had pretty much cleared them all out. So the Swiss collector began prospecting in the surrounding gullies and hills, looking for new sites. It wasn’t long before he found a good one, about a thousand feet north of the original quarry. His backhoe first revealed some sauropod bones, and then a string of vertebrae from the backbone of a big, meat-eating theropod. Siber followed the spool-shaped bones, one by one, and before long it was clear that he had something special: the nearly complete skeleton of an Allosaurus, the top predator of the Morrison Formation ecosystem. It looked to be the single best fossil of this well-known dinosaur that had ever been found, more than 120 years after Marsh first named it during the heat of the Bone Wars. Allosaurus was the Butcher of the Jurassic, both figuratively and literally. This fierce predator stalked the Morrison floodplains and riverbanks—think T. rex but a little smaller and lighter, about two to two and a half tons in weight and thirty feet (nine meters) long as an adult, and better equipped for running."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "But it truly earned the title of Butcher, because paleontologists think it used its head like a hatchet to hack its prey to death. Computer models find that the thin teeth of Allosaurus couldn’t bite very strongly on their own, but the skull could withstand massive amounts of impact force. We also know that Allosaurus could open its jaws obscenely wide, so we think a hungry Allosaurus would attack with mouth agape and slash down at its prey, slicing through the skin and muscle with its thin but sharp teeth, which were lined up along its jaws like the blades of scissors. Many a Stegosaurus and Brontosaurus probably breathed its last this way. If for some reason the blood-lusting Allosaurus couldn’t quite knock off its victim using only its jaws of death, it could always finish the job with a couple of swipes of its clawed, three-fingered arms, which were longer and more versatile than the stubby little forelimbs of T. rex. Finding such a complete and well-preserved Allosaurus was one of the highlights of Siber’s career, but emotions were about to turn. After the summer’s excavation had ended, while Siber was at a fossil show peddling his wares and the Allosaurus skeleton remained in the ground, an agent from the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) happened to be flying over that dusty stretch of northern Wyoming near the Howe Quarry. The agent was checking for signs of fire, part of his job monitoring public lands administered by the US government. But as he glided high above the badlands, he noticed that the dirt roads around the Howe Quarry had been shredded by tire marks. Somebody had been doing some heavy work that summer. That’s no problem around the Howe Quarry itself—it’s on private land, and Siber had the permission of the landowner. But the BLM agent wasn’t quite sure what was private ground and what was public, which could only be worked on by accredited scientists with BLM permission. So he doubled-checked and found that Siber had strayed a few hundred feet into BLM territory. Because Siber had no right to work there, he could no longer excavate the Allosaurus skeleton. It was probably an honest mistake, but a costly one. The BLM now had a problem. A gorgeous dinosaur skeleton was sitting in the ground, and the people who had found it and begun to excavate it couldn’t finish the job. So the agency assembled a crack team led by legendary paleontologist Jack Horner’s crew at Montana’s Museum of the Rockies (Horner is best known for two things: discovering the first dinosaur nesting sites in the 1970s and being the science advisor for the Jurassic Park films). Under the eye of television cameras and a throng of newspaper reporters, the academics took out the skeleton and trucked it up to Montana to be carefully conserved in the safety of the laboratory. The dinosaur turned out to be more spectacular than Siber could even have imagined."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "About 95 percent of the bones were there, an almost unheard of number for a large predatory dinosaur. At about twenty-five feet (eight meters) long, this Allosaurus was only about 60 to 70 percent grown. It was still a teenager, but it had already lived a tough life. Its body was covered with all types of maladies: broken, infected, and deformed bones that testify to the rough-and-tumble world of the Late Jurassic, when even the biggest predators didn’t have an easy time hunting behemoths like Diplodocus and Brontosaurus, when the sharpest teeth and claws were no guarantee of surviving a whack from the spiky tail of a Stegosaurus. The Allosaurus was nicknamed Big Al, and it became a celebrity dinosaur. It even had its own television special broadcast internationally by the BBC. But once the buzz died down, there remained a huge hole in the ground that was still full of all kinds of fossils that were buried underneath Big Al. Paul Sereno received permission from the BLM to use the site as a field laboratory to teach excavation techniques to his students, and that’s why we were taking three big SUVs full of undergraduates there. During that first season in Wyoming, in the summer of 2005, I spent many days parked out on the high desert, carefully removing globs of popcorn-textured mudstone to help the team uncover the skeleton of a Camarasaurus. It may not be one of the brand-name dinosaurs, but Camarasaurus is one of the more common species in the Morrison Formation. It is yet another type of sauropod, a close cousin of Brontosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Diplodocus. Camarasaurus had the usual sauropod body: long neck that could reach several stories into the trees, small head with chisel-shaped teeth for stripping leaves, a massive frame that was about fifty feet (fifteen meters) long and weighed around twenty tons. It was probably the type of tasty plant-guzzler that Big Al and the other Allosauruses liked to eat, although its freakish size would have afforded it quite a lot of protection from even the scariest flesh-eaters. Maybe it was a Camarasaurus like this one that gave Big Al some of those nasty injuries. Camarasaurus is one of many enormous sauropods that have been found in the Morrison Formation. It’s joined by its famous cousins, the big three of Brontosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Diplodocus. Then there are the under-the-radar players known only to the cognoscenti (or, perhaps, your average dinosaur-obsessed kindergartner): Apatosaurus, Barosaurus, and further on down the roster, Galeamopus, Kaatedocus, Dyslocosaurus, Haplocanthosaurus, and Suuwassea. There are various other sauropods that have been named based on scrappy bones, which may belong to even more species. Now, the Morrison Formation covers a wide swath of time, and was deposited across a huge geographic area. Not all of these sauropods lived together. But many of them did—they have been found at the same sites, their skeletons mingled together."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "The normal situation in the Morrison world was numerous varieties of sauropods cohabiting in the river valleys, their heavy footsteps thundering as they trawled the land in search of the daily hundreds of pounds of leaves and stems that sustained them. The skulls of Diplodocus (left) and Camarasaurus (right), two sauropods that used their differently shaped skulls and teeth to feed on different types of plants. Courtesy of Larry Witmer. What a weird scene to conjure up! It’s akin to imaging five or six different species of elephants crowded onto the African savannahs, all trying to find enough food to survive while lions and hyenas lurk in the background. The Morrison world was no less dangerous. If a sauropod was staggering around with an empty belly, then you could confidently bet an Allosaurus was hiding in the brush, ready to pounce at the long-neck’s moment of weakness. In addition to Allosaurus, there were many other predators below it on the food chain. There was Ceratosaurus, a twenty-foot-long mid-tier hunter with a frightening horn on its snout, a horse-size carnivore named Marshosaurus after the Bone Wars pugilist, and a donkey-size primitive cousin of T. rex called Stokesosaurus. Then you had the slashers: a number of lightly built, fast-running pests like Coelurus, Ornitholestes, and Tanycolagreus, the Morrison version of cheetahs. And all of these meat-gobblers, even Allosaurus, probably lived in fear of another monster that reigned near the top of the food chain. It’s called Torvosaurus, and we don’t know much about it, because its fossils are very rare. But the bones we have paint a terrifying picture: a knife-toothed apex predator that was thirty feet (ten meters) long and weighed about two and a half tons or perhaps more, not too far off from the proportions of some of the big tyrannosaurs that would evolve much later. It’s easy to understand why so many predators stalked the Morrison ecosystem: there were a lot of sauropods to eat. It’s much more difficult to explain how so many of these giant sauropods lived together. It’s an even greater puzzle because there were also plenty of other, smaller plant-eaters that feasted on shrubs closer to the ground: the plate-backed Stegosaurus and Hesperosaurus, the tanklike ankylosaurs Mymoorapelta and Gargoyleosaurus, the ornithischian Camptosaurus, and a whole zoo of small, fast-running fern-chewers like Drinker, Othnielia, Othnielosaurus, and Dryosaurus. The sauropods were also sharing space with all of these herbivores. So how did the sauropods do it? It turns out that their diversity was their key to success. There were many species of sauropods, yes, but they were all slightly different. Some were absolute colossuses: Brachiosaurus was around fifty-five tons, and Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus tipped the scales in the thirty-to-forty-ton range. But others were smaller: Diplodocus and Barosaurus were skinny little things, at least as far as sauropods go, weighing a mere ten to fifteen tons. So it goes without saying that some species would need more food than others."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "These sauropods also had different types of necks: that of Brachiosaurus arched proudly into the heavens with the erect profile of a giraffe, perfect for reaching the highest leaves, but Diplodocus may not have been able to lift its neck much past its shoulders and may have acted more like a vacuum cleaner sucking up shorter trees and shrubs. Finally, the heads and teeth of these sauropods differed as well. Brachiosaurus and Camarasaurus had deep, muscle-wrapped skulls and jaws lined with spatula-shaped teeth, so they could eat harder foods like thick stems and waxy leaves. But Diplodocus had a long head made up of delicate bones, with a row of tiny pencil-shaped teeth at the front of its snout. It would break its teeth if it tried to eat anything too hard. Instead, it spent its time stripping smaller leaves from the branches, its head rocking back and forth like a rake. Different species of sauropods were specialized for eating many different kinds of foods—and they had a lot to choose from, as the lush Jurassic forests were cluttered with towering conifers, with thickets of ferns, cycads, and other shrubs down below. The sauropods weren’t competing for the same plants, but dividing the resources among themselves. The scientific term for this is niche partitioning—when coexisting species avoid competing with each other by behaving or feeding in slightly different ways. The Morrison world was highly partitioned, which is a sign of just how successful these dinosaurs were. They were carving up almost every square inch of the ecosystem, a dizzying array of species flourishing alongside each other in the hot, humid, waterlogged forests and coastal plains of ancient North America. But what about Late Jurassic dinosaurs in other parts of the world? The story seems to be the same nearly everywhere we look. We also see a similar cast of diverse sauropods, smaller plant-eating stegosaurs, and small to large carnivores of the Ceratosaurus and Allosaurus mold in those other places with rich records of Late Jurassic fossils, like China, eastern Africa, and Portugal. It all comes down to geography. Pangea had started to break up many tens of millions of years before, but it takes a long time for a supercontinent to split. Landmasses can move apart from each other by only a few centimeters each year, about the same pace that our fingernails grow. Thus, there were still big land connections between most parts of the world persisting into the latest Jurassic. Europe and Asia were still globbed together, and they were linked to North America by a series of islands that could easily be traversed by a wayfaring dinosaur. These northern lands—called Laurasia—were beginning to split from southern Pangea, called Gondwana, which was a stuck-together mess of Australia, Antarctica, Africa, South America, India, and Madagascar. Laurasia and Gondwana were intermittently connected by land bridges when sea level was low, and even during times of higher water, other islands provided a convenient migratory route between north and south."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "The Late Jurassic, then, was a time of global uniformity. The same suite of dinosaurs ruled every corner of the globe. Majestic sauropods divided food among them, reaching a peak of diversity unmatched by any other large plant-eaters in Earth history. Smaller plant-chewers prospered in their shadows, and a motley crew of meat-eaters took advantage of all of that herbivore flesh. Some, like Allosaurus and Torvosaurus, were the first truly giant theropods. Others, like Ornitholestes, were the founding members of that dynasty that would eventually produce Velociraptor and birds. The planet was sweltering and the dinosaurs were able to move around wherever they wanted. This was the real Jurassic Park. 145 MILLION YEARS ago, the Jurassic Period transitioned into the final stage of dinosaur evolution, the Cretaceous Period. Sometimes the switch between geological periods happens with a flourish, as when the megavolcanoes closed out the Triassic. Other times, it’s barely noticeable, and more a matter of scientific bookkeeping, a way for geologists to break up long stretches of time without any major changes or catastrophes. The changeover between the Jurassic and Cretaceous is that type of boundary. There was no calamity like an asteroid impact or a big eruption that ended the Jurassic, no sudden die-off of plants and animals, no brave new world as the Cretaceous dawned. Rather, the clock just ticked over, and the diverse Jurassic ecosystems of giant sauropods, plate-backed dinosaurs, and small to monstrous meat-eaters continued into the Cretaceous. That’s not to say, however, that nothing changed, for plenty was happening to the Earth around the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary—no apocalyptic disasters but slower changes to the continents, oceans, and climate occurring over some 25 million years. The hothouse world of the Late Jurassic was interrupted by a cold snap, followed by a turn to more arid conditions, before things swung back to normal in the Early Cretaceous. Sea levels started to fall during the latest Jurassic and stayed low across the boundary, until the waters started to rise again some 10 million years into the Cretaceous. With low sea levels came a lot more exposed land, which allowed dinosaurs and other animals to move around even more easily than during the Late Jurassic. Pangea continued to rupture, the fragments of the supercontinent moving farther and farther apart from one another as time marched on. Gondwana, that huge expanse of southern lands, finally began to split, the cracks starting to define the shapes of today’s southern hemisphere continents. First the conjoined mass of Africa and South America detached from the section of Gondwana containing Antarctica and Australia, and then this latter chunk also began to fracture. Volcanoes welled up through the fissures, and although none were on the scale of the monster eruptions at the end of the Permian or Triassic, they would have brought with them the same nasty stew of environment-poisoning lava and gases. None of these changes were particularly deadly on their own, but together they were an insidious cocktail of dangers."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "The long-term shifts in temperature and sea level were probably unrecognizable to dinosaurs, the sort of thing that neither they nor any of us, had we been around, would ever have noticed in one lifetime. Plus, in the dinosaur-eat-dinosaur world of the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, the Brontosauruses and Allosauruses had more important things to stress over than little changes in the tide line or slightly cooler winters. Given enough time, however, these changes built up and became silent killers. By about 125 million years ago, some 20 million years after the Jurassic ended, a new Cretaceous world had emerged, ruled by a very different suite of dinosaurs. The most obvious change had to do with the most prominent dinosaurs—the gargantuan sauropods. Once so diverse in the Late Jurassic Morrison ecosystems, the long-necks suffered a crash in the Early Cretaceous. Almost all of the familiar species like Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, and Brachiosaurus went extinct, while a new subgroup called the titanosaurs began to proliferate, eventually evolving into supergiants like the middle Cretaceous Argentinosaurus, which at more than a hundred feet (thirty meters) long and fifty tons in mass was the largest animal known to have ever lived on land. But despite the outlandish sizes of the new Cretaceous species, never again would sauropods be as dominant as they were in the Late Jurassic; never again would they boast such a variety of necks and skulls and teeth that allowed them to exploit so many ecological niches. As sauropods suffered, smaller plant-eating ornithischians blossomed, becoming ubiquitous midsize herbivores in ecosystems around the world. Most famous of these is surely Iguanodon, one of the very first fossils to be called a dinosaur, after it was discovered in the 1820s in England. Iguanodon was about thirty feet (ten meters) long and weighed a few tons. It had a spike on its thumb for defense and a beak at the front of its mouth for snipping plants, and it could switch between walking on all fours and sprinting on its hind legs. Its line would eventually go on to produce the hadrosaurs, or duck-billed dinosaurs, the group of amazingly successful herbivores that thrived at the very end of the Cretaceous, alongside their nemesis, T. rex. That was still many tens of millions of years in the future, but those seeds were planted in the Early Cretaceous. While the iguanodons were stepping in for the smaller sauropods, there were also changes afoot among ground-feeding herbivores. The plate-backed stegosaurs went into long-term decline, gradually wasting away until the last surviving species succumbed to extinction sometime in the Early Cretaceous, snuffing out this iconic group once and for all. Replacing them were the ankylosaurs, freakish creatures whose skeletons were covered in armor plates, like a reptilian Panzer. They had originated back in the Jurassic and remained marginal understudies in most ecosystems, but they exploded in diversity as stegosaurs regressed."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "Ankylosaurs were some of the slowest, stupidest dinosaurs of all, but they made a living happily chomping ferns and other low-lying vegetation, their body armor making them impervious to attack. Not even the sharpest-toothed predator could get in a good chomp when it had to bite through several inches of solid bone. Then there were the meat-eaters. With so much going on with their herbivore prey, it’s no surprise that theropods experienced their own drama as the Jurassic turned into the Cretaceous. A much greater diversity of small carnivores appeared, and some of them started to experiment with weird diets, trading in meat for nuts, seeds, bugs, and shellfish. One group, the scythe-clawed therizinosaurs, even went full vegetarian. On the other end of the size spectrum, a weird clan of large theropods called spinosaurids evolved sails on their backs and long snouts full of cone-shaped teeth, and moved into the water, where they started behaving like crocodiles and eating fish. However, as is usually the case when it comes to theropods, the most gripping story line concerns the apex predators. Like their smaller brethren, the top-of-the-food-chain supercarnivores also experienced massive upheaval across the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary. These species are some of my favorites, because the very first dinosaurs that I studied—as an undergraduate working with Paul Sereno, during those same summers we dug up Late Jurassic sauropods in Wyoming—were giant theropods from the Early Cretaceous of Africa. WHEN I WAS a teenager, I watched movies and listened to music and went to baseball games—the normal stuff—but my hero wasn’t some athlete or actor. He was a paleontologist. Paul Sereno, the National Geographic Explorer in Residence, dinosaur hunter extraordinaire, leader of expeditions all over the world, and one of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People, in the issue with Tom Cruise on the cover. I was a dinosaur-obsessed high schooler, and I followed Sereno’s work like a rock star’s groupie. He taught at the University of Chicago, not too far from where I lived, and he grew up in Naperville, Illinois, a suburb where some of my cousins were from. He was a local kid who did good, who became a celebrity scientist and adventurer, and I wanted to be like him. I met my hero when I was fifteen years old, when he was lecturing at a local museum. I’m sure Paul was used to meeting fanboys, but I upped the weird factor when I shoved a manila envelope in his face, so full of photocopied magazine pages that it couldn’t be sealed shut. You see, I was also a budding journalist at the time, or at least I thought I was, and I was churning out articles for amateur paleontology mags and websites at a pace that bordered on the creepy. Many of them were about Paul and his discoveries, and I wanted him to see the things I had written about him. My voice cracked as I handed him the envelope. It was awkward."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "But Paul was very nice to me that afternoon, and after a long chat, he told me to keep in touch. I met him a few more times over the next couple of years. We exchanged a lot of e-mails, and when I decided to put journalism aside and dive into paleontology as a career, there was only one college that I wanted to attend: the University of Chicago, so I could learn under Paul. Chicago accepted my application, and I enrolled in the autumn of 2002. During freshman week, I met with Paul and begged him to let me work in his basement fossil lab, where his newest treasures from Africa and China were being revealed, entirely new dinosaurs coming into focus as sand grains were scrubbed away from the bones. I would do anything—even wash the floors or clean the shelves. Thankfully, Paul channeled my enthusiasm elsewhere. He began by teaching me how to conserve and catalog fossils, and then one day he had a surprise. “How would you like to describe a new species of dinosaur?” he asked while leading me to a row of cabinets. Spread in front of me, in drawer after drawer, were fossils of Early to middle Cretaceous dinosaurs that Paul and his team had recently brought back from the Sahara Desert. About a decade earlier, after concluding his wildly successful expeditions to Argentina that netted the primitive dinosaurs Herrerasaurus and Eoraptor, Paul shifted his attention to northern Africa. At the time, little was known about African dinosaurs. A few excursions led by Europeans during the colonial period had found some intriguing fossils in places like Tanzania, Egypt, and Niger, but once the colonizers left, so too did most interest in collecting dinosaurs. Not only that, but some of the most important African collections—made by the German aristocrat Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach, from the Early to mid Cretaceous rocks of Egypt—weren’t around anymore. They had the great misfortunate of being kept in a museum just a few blocks from Nazi headquarters in Munich and were destroyed by an Allied bombing raid in 1944. When Paul turned his focus to Africa, all he had to go by were some photographs, a few published reports, and a smattering of bones in those European museums that weren’t blitzed during the war. That didn’t stop him, though. He mounted a reconnaissance trip to Niger, in the heart of the Sahara, in 1990. His team found so many fossils that they returned again in 1993, 1997, and several times after that. These were arduous trips—proper Indiana Jones–style expeditions, often lasting for several months and afflicted by the occasional bandit attack or civil war. As something of a break, they took a year off and visited Morocco in 1995."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "There, too, they uncovered a bounty of bones, including the gorgeously preserved skull of a giant flesh-eater called Carcharodontosaurus, a dinosaur that Stromer had originally named based on a partial skull and skeleton from Egypt that were among those fossils incinerated in the Munich museum. All told, Paul’s African expeditions collected some one hundred tons of dinosaur bones, many of which still sit in a warehouse in Chicago, waiting to be studied. Those dinosaurs not in the warehouse are inventoried at Paul’s lab, and these were the bones laid out before me. Some belonged to a weird sauropod called Nigersaurus, a plant-inhaling machine with hundreds of teeth packed into the front edge of its jaws. There were several elongate vertebrae of the fish-eating spinosaurid Suchomimus—the bones that supported the tall sail that extended along its back. Nearby was the gnarly-textured skull of a carnivore called Rugops, which probably scavenged carcasses as much as it hunted. And these fossils weren’t only dinosaurs. There was the man-size cranium of the forty-foot-long crocodilian Sarcosuchus—appropriately nicknamed SuperCroc by the media-savvy Sereno—and the wing bones of a large pterosaur, and even some turtles and fish. All of these fossils came from rocks that formed over some ten to fifteen million years of the Early to middle Cretaceous, in river deltas and along the shores of warm tropical seas fringed by mangrove forests, back when the Sahara was a steamy swampy jungle instead of a desert. As my eyes darted among the fossils, the cast of characters expanding as each drawer opened, Paul stopped and picked up a bone. It was part of the face of a huge-meat eating dinosaur that looked to be almost as big as T. rex. There were other things in the same drawer: a piece of a lower jaw, some teeth, and a fused mass of bones from the back of the skull, which would have surrounded the brain and ears. Paul recounted how he’d discovered the specimens a few years back in a desolate part of Niger called Iguidi, just west of a desert oasis, in red sandstones left by a river between 100 and 95 million years ago. He could tell that they were similar to the Carcharodontosaurus bones that he’d collected in Morocco, but the match wasn’t perfect. He wanted me to figure out the discrepancy. I was nineteen years old, and this was my first taste of the detective work that goes into identifying dinosaurs. It was intoxicating. I spent the remainder of the summer scrutinizing the bones, measuring and photographing them, comparing them with other dinosaurs. I concluded that the bones from Niger were indeed very similar to the Moroccan skull of the species Carcharodontosaurus saharicus but found that there were also so many differences that the two could not have belonged to the same species. Paul agreed, and we wrote up a scientific paper describing the Niger fossils as a new dinosaur, a close but distinct relative of the Moroccan species."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "We called it Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis. It was the alpha predator of those humid seaside ecosystems of mid-Cretaceous Africa, a forty-foot-long, three-ton beast that lorded over all of the other dinosaurs that Paul had been trawling out of the Sahara. There was a whole group of dinosaurs like Carcharodontosaurus that lived throughout the world during the Early to middle Cretaceous. They are named, perhaps unoriginally, the carcharodontosaurs. Among the family album are three species—Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus, and the hauntingly named Tyrannotitan—all from South America, which during the Early to middle Cretaceous was still connected to Africa. Other siblings lived farther afield: Acrocanthosaurus in North America, Shaochilong and Kelmayisaurus in Asia, and Concavenator in Europe. And there’s also another one from the Sahara, called Eocarcharia, which Paul and I described based on some skull bones he found on another expedition to Niger. It was about 10 million years older than Carcharodontosaurus, and only about half the size. It was about as brutish as a dinosaur could get, with a gnarled knob of bone and skin above each eye that gave it an evil scowl and may have even been used to head-butt prey into submission. These carcharodontosaurs fascinated me. They were basically doing what tyrannosaurs would do many tens of millions of years later: supersizing their bodies, developing an arsenal of predatory weapons, and terrorizing every living thing from their undisputed perch at the top of the food pyramid. Where did they come from? How did they spread around the world and become so dominant? And then what happened to them? There was only one way to answer these questions. I needed to build a family tree. Genealogy is a key to understanding history, which is why so many people, me included, are obsessed with our own family trees. Knowing the connections among kin helps to untangle how our families have changed over the centuries: when and where our ancestors lived, when a migration or an unexpected death occurred, how the family merged with others through marriages. The same with dinosaurs. If we can read their family tree—or their phylogeny, as paleontologists technically call it—we can use it to illuminate their evolution. But how do you make a family tree for dinosaurs? Carcharodontosaurus doesn’t have a birth certificate, and the ancestor of Giganotosaurus wasn’t granted a visa when it left Africa for South America. But there is another type of clue coded in the fossils themselves. Evolution causes change over time, particularly in the appearances of organisms. When two species diverge from each other, usually only minor differences separate them, and you may have a hard time telling them apart at a glance, but as time ticks on and the two lineages go their separate ways, they become more and more different from each other. It’s the same reason that I look a lot like my father but barely resemble my third cousins."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "The other thing evolution occasionally does is produce new things—an extra tooth, or a horn sticking out of the forehead, or a mutation that causes a finger to be lost. These novelties will be inherited by the descendants of the first critter to develop them, but they won’t be seen in cousins that had already split off and started evolving down their own path. I’ve inherited all kinds of things from my parents, and my children will then inherit those things from me. But if my cousin suddenly goes weird and grows a set of wings, they can’t be passed on to me, because there is no direct line of descent between us. That means, thankfully in this case, that none of my children get those wings either. Genealogy, therefore, is written into the way we look. On the whole, dinosaurs with similar skeletons are probably more closely related to each other than to other species that look drastically different. But if you want to know if two dinosaurs truly are close brethren, you need to look out for those evolutionary novelties, because animals that possess a newly evolved feature like an extra finger must be more closely related to each other than to ones that don’t have it. That’s because they must have inherited that novelty from a common ancestor, which developed the feature and started an evolutionary domino effect of passing it down the bloodline, generation by generation. Any species with that extra finger is part of the bloodline; anything without it is likely on another side branch of the family tree. So to build a genealogy of dinosaurs we need to pore over their bones, find a way to assess how similar and different they are, and identify evolutionary novelties and which subsets of the dinosaurs in question share them. When I became intrigued by carcharodontosaurs, I began to track down as much information on each species as I could. I visited museums to study skeletons firsthand, and I gathered photographs, drawings, published literature, and notes for some of the more exotic fossils in faraway places that were inaccessible to an unfunded undergraduate. The more I looked, I recognized features of the bones that varied among species. Some carcharodontosaurs had deep sinuses surrounding their brain, others did not. The giant ones like Carcharodontosaurus had massive, bladelike teeth that kind of resembled those of sharks (hence its name, which means “shark-toothed lizard”), but the smaller species had much daintier chompers. The list went on and on, until I had come up with ninety-nine different ways that some of these predators differed from others. Now it was time to make some sense out of this information. I turned my list into a spreadsheet: each row a species, each column one of the features of the anatomy, each data cell filled with a 0, 1, or 2 denoting the different versions of each feature seen in that species. Dainty teeth in Eocarcharia, 0; sharky teeth in Carcharodontosaurus, 1."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.19", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "Then I opened the spreadsheet in a computer program that uses algorithms to search through the maze of data and generate a family tree. It pinpoints which anatomical features are novelties and then identifies which species share them. This may sound trivial, but the computer is necessary because the distribution of novelties can be complicated. Some are seen in many species—those big sinuses around the brain are present in most carcharodontosaurs. Others are much rarer, like the shark-mimic teeth, which are seen only in Carcharodonosaurus, Giganotosaurus, and their closest kin. The computer is able to take all of this complexity and recognize a Russian doll pattern. If two species share many novelties between only themselves, they must be each other’s closest relatives. If those two species share other novelties with a third animal, those three must be more closely related to one another than to the remainder of the dinosaurs. And so on, until a complete family tree has been drawn. This whole process is what we in the business call a cladistic analysis. My family tree of carcharodontosaurs helped me unravel their evolution. First, it clarified where these colossal carnivores came from and how they rose to glory. They got their start in the Late Jurassic and are very close relatives of that most terrifying predator of the Jurassic, the Butcher itself, Allosaurus. In effect, they evolved from a legion of hypercarnivores that was already incumbent in the apex predator niche, and then they escalated things further by becoming larger, stronger, and fiercer when their ancestors went extinct at the end of the Jurassic, 145 million years ago, during that long night of environmental and climate change. Did they drive these other allosaurs to extinction or take advantage when they succumbed for other reasons? We don’t yet know the answer. In either event, the carcharodontosaurs found a way to usurp the place of their forebears and, as the Cretaceous dawned, the kingdom was now theirs. For the next 50 million years or so, deep into the middle Cretaceous, the carcharodontosaurs ruled the world. The genealogy also gives insight into something else: why these flesh-gouging monsters lived where they did. Because they originated when most of the continents were still connected during the Late Jurassic, the first carcharodontosaurs easily spread around the world. As time went on and the continents fragmented further, different species became isolated in different areas. The structure of their family tree shows this—it reflects the motion of the continents. Some of the last carcharodontosaurs to evolve were a clan of South American and African species. (South America and Africa remained connected to each other long after links with North America, Asia, and Europe were severed.) Isolated south of the equator, the members of this clan—Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus, and the Carcharodontosaurus from Niger that I studied with Sereno—grew to sizes previously unheard of for meat-eating dinosaurs. Nevertheless, as ferocious as these carcharodontosaurs were, they wouldn’t stay on top forever."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.20", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_4.txt", "text": "Living alongside them, in their shadows, was another breed of carnivore. Smaller, faster, brainier. Their name, the tyrannosaurs. They would soon make their move and begin a new dinosaur empire."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs 5 The Tyrant Dinosaurs Qianzhousaurus Chapter Title art by Todd Marshall ONE SWELTERING SUMMER DAY IN 2010, a backhoe operator in the southeastern Chinese city of Ganzhou heard a loud crunch. He expected the worst. His crew was racing to finish an industrial park—a sprawling monotony of offices and warehouses of the sort that I’ve seen crop up all over China during the past decade. Any delay could be pricey. Maybe he had hit impenetrable bedrock, an old water main, or another nuisance that would stall the project. When the dirt and smoke cleared, however, he didn’t see any mangled pipes or wires. There was no bedrock in sight. Instead, something very different came into focus: fossilized bones, lots of them, some of them enormous. Construction halted. The workman didn’t have any advanced degrees or training in paleontology, but he realized his discovery was important. He knew it must be a dinosaur. His homeland had become the epicenter of new dinosaur discoveries, the place where about half of all new species are being found these days. So he called over his foreman, and that is when the madness began. This dinosaur had been buried for more than 66 million years, but now its fate was down to the kind of quick decisions that unfold during a crisis. Word started to leak out. In a panic, the foreman called a friend from town, a fossil collector and dinosaur enthusiast known to posterity only as Mr. Xie. Grasping the gravity of the discovery, Mr. Xie—his honorific and hazy surname recalling one of those shadowy characters in a Bond film—raced to the worksite and rang up some mates at the town’s mineral resources department, a branch of the local government. The game of telephone continued and the agency was able to round up a small team to gather the bones. It took them six hours, but they collected every scrap they could find. They filled twenty-five bags with dinosaur bits and took them to the town’s museum for safekeeping. Their timing was perfect—ominously so. Just as the team was finishing, three or four fossil traffickers appeared on the scene. Like bloodhounds, these black-market hucksters caught the scent of a new dinosaur and wanted to buy it for themselves. A little bit of bribe money would turn into a major payday if they sold the new dinosaur to some wealthy foreign businessman with a taste for exotic fossils. This kind of thing is all too common in China and in many other parts of the world (although it is often against the law). It is heartbreaking to think of the fossils that have been lost to the dark underworld of illegal dealing and organized crime. But this time, the good guys won. When scientists examined the fossils in the safety of the local museum and began to piece together the bones, they quickly recognized how incredible this new discovery was."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "It wasn’t just a jumble of random bones but a nearly complete skeleton of a predatory dinosaur, one of the massive, sharp-toothed behemoths that always seem to play the villain in films and television documentaries. And the skeleton looked similar to a famous dinosaur from halfway around the world: the great Tyrannosaurus rex, which stalked the forests of North America at about the same time that these red rocks from Ganzhou, which the backhoe operator was plowing through to lay his foundation, were formed. Then it clicked: they were looking at an Asian tyrannosaur. The ferocious ruler of a 66-million-year-old world of dense jungles, sticky with humidity all year round, with swamps and the occasional quicksand pit peppered in between the ferns, pines, and conifers. It was an ecosystem teeming with lizards, feathered omnivorous dinosaurs, sauropods, and swarms of duck-billed dinosaurs, some of which got caught in the slushy death pits and were preserved as fossils. The ones lucky enough to survive were tasty prey for the creature the workman stumbled upon by pure chance: one of the closest relatives of T. rex. THAT BLESSED WORKMAN. He had made a discovery of the sort most paleontologists dream of. Lucky for me, this was a finding that I got to be part of without having to do the hard work of hunting it myself. A few years after the craziness of that late summer day in Ganzhou, I was at a conference at the Burpee Museum of Natural History, in the frozen winter wasteland of northern Illinois, just up the road from where I grew up. Scientists from around the world had gathered to discuss the extinction of the dinosaurs. Earlier in the day, I was mesmerized by a presentation from Junchang Lü, my eyes opening wider with each slide, as photo after photo of beautiful new fossils from China flashed across the screen. I knew Professor Lü by reputation. He was widely regarded as one of China’s top dinosaur hunters, a man whose discoveries helped establish his country as the world’s most exciting place for dinosaur research. Professor Lü was a star. I was a young researcher, but to my great surprise Professor Lü approached me. I shook his hand and congratulated him on his talk, and we exchanged a few other pleasantries. But there was urgency in his voice, and I noticed he was clutching a folder thick with photos. Something was going on. Professor Lü told me he had been tasked with studying a spectacular new dinosaur found by a construction worker in southern China a few years before. He knew it was a tyrannosaur, but it seemed peculiar. It was different enough from T. rex that it must be a new species. And it looked kind of similar to a weird tyrannosaur that I had described a few years earlier as a graduate student—a slender, long-snouted predator from Mongolia called Alioramus. But Professor Lü wasn’t sure. He wanted a second opinion."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "Of course I offered to help in any way I could. Professor Lü, or Junchang, as I soon knew him, told me all about his past—how he grew up poor in Shandong Province, on China’s eastern coast, a child of the Cultural Revolution who staved off hunger by picking wild vegetables. Then, once the winds of politics changed, he studied geology in college, went to Texas to do his PhD, and came back to Beijing to take up one of the most vaunted jobs in Chinese paleontology, a professorship at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. Junchang—the peasant turned professor—became my friend. Not too long after we met at the conference, he invited me to China to help him study the new tyrannosaur and write up a scientific paper describing the skeleton. We scrutinized each part of the skeleton, comparing it to all other tyrannosaurs. We confirmed that it was a close cousin of T. rex. A little over a year later, in 2014, we unveiled the workman’s chance discovery as the newest member of the tyrannosaur family tree, a new species that we called Qianzhousaurus sinensis. The formal name is a something of a tongue twister, so we nicknamed it Pinocchio rex, in reference to its funny long snout. The press got wind of the discovery—journalists seemed to love the silly nickname—and Junchang and I were amused to see our faces splashed across the British tabloids the morning after our announcement. The facial bones of Alioramus altai, a new species of long-snouted tyrannosaur from Mongolia that I described as a PhD student. Photograph by Mick Ellison. Qianzhousaurus is part of a surge of new tyrannosaur discoveries over the past decade that is transforming our understanding of this most iconic group of meat-eating dinosaurs. T. rex itself has been in the limelight for over a century, since it was first discovered in the early 1900s. It’s the king of dinosaurs, a forty-foot-long, seven-ton behemoth on a first-name basis with almost everyone on the planet. Later during the twentieth century, scientists discovered a few close relatives of T. rex that were also impressively large and realized that these big predators formed their own branch of dinosaur genealogy, a group that we called the tyrannosaurs (or Tyrannosauroidea in formal scientific parlance). However, paleontologists struggled to understand when these fantastic dinosaurs originated, what they evolved from, and how they were able to grow so large and reach the top of the food chain. These questions have remained unanswered until now. Over the last fifteen years, researchers have recovered nearly twenty new tyrannosaur species at locations the world over. The dusty southern Chinese construction site that yielded Qianzhousaurus is one of the least unusual places where a new tyrannosaur has been found. Other new species have been pried from the sea-battered cliffs of southern England, the frigid snowfields of the Arctic Circle, and the sandy expanses of the Gobi Desert."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "These finds have allowed my colleagues and me to build a family tree of tyrannosaurs in order to study their evolution. The results are surprising. It turns out that tyrannosaurs were an ancient group that originated more than 100 million years before T. rex, during those golden days of the Middle Jurassic when dinosaurs were beginning to prosper and long-necked sauropods, like the creatures whose footprints we found in that ancient Scottish lagoon, were rumbling across the land. These first tyrannosaurs weren’t very impressive. They were marginal, human-size carnivores. They continued this way for another 80 million years or so, living in the shadows of larger predators, first Allosaurus and its kin in the Jurassic, and then the fierce carcharodontosaurs in the Early to middle part of the Cretaceous. Only then, after that interminable period of evolution in anonymity, did tyrannosaurs start growing bigger, stronger, and meaner. They reached the top of the food chain and ruled the world during the final 20 million years of the Age of Dinosaurs. THE STORY OF tyrannosaurs begins with the discovery of T. rex, the namesake of the group, in the early days of the twentieth century. The scientist who studied T. rex was a good friend of President Theodore Roosevelt’s, a boyhood chum who shared Teddy’s love for nature and exploration. His name was Henry Fairfield Osborn, and during the early 1900s, he was one of the most visible scientists in the United States. Osborn was president of New York’s American Museum of Natural History and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 1928 he even graced the cover of Time magazine. But Osborn was no normal man of science. His blood ran blue: his father was a railroad tycoon, his uncle the corporate raider J. P. Morgan. He seemed to be a member of every wood-paneled, smoke-filled, good-old-boy backroom club there was. When he wasn’t measuring fossil bones, he was rubbing shoulders with New York’s social elite in the penthouses of the Upper East Side. Osborn is not remembered very fondly today. He wasn’t a very nice man. He used his wealth and political connections to push pet ideas on eugenics and racial superiority. Immigrants, minorities, and the poor were seen as enemies. Once Osborn even organized a scientific expedition to Asia with the hope of finding the very oldest human fossils, to prove that his species couldn’t possibly have originated in Africa. He couldn’t fathom being the evolutionary descendent of an “inferior” race. No wonder he is often dismissed today as just another bygone bigot. Osborn is probably not the type of guy I would want to have a beer—or more likely, a really fancy cocktail—with if I found myself in Gilded Age New York. (I speculate, but he might not have sat down with me anyway, leery of my very ethnic-sounding Italian name.) Nevertheless, there’s no denying that Osborn was a clever paleontologist and an even better scientific administrator."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "It was in his capacity as president of the American Museum of Natural History—the august institution that rises like a cathedral on the west side of Central Park, where I would later work on my PhD—that Osborn made one of the best calls in his career. He decided to send a sharp-eyed fossil collector named Barnum Brown out to the American West in search of dinosaurs. We briefly met Brown in the last chapter, when a much older version of him was excavating Jurassic dinosaurs in the Howe Quarry in Wyoming. He was an unlikely hero. He grew up in a speck of a village on the Kansas prairie, a coal-company town where only a few hundred people lived. Maybe his parents gave him a flamboyant name inspired by the circus showman P. T. Barnum in some attempt to escape the drudgery of their rural life. The young Barnum didn’t have many people around to talk to, but he was surrounded by nature, and he became infatuated with rocks and shells. He even started a little museum at his house, something my dinosaur-obsessed younger brother, also growing up in a placid Midwestern town, would later do after seeing Jurassic Park in the cinema. Brown went on to study geology in college and then made his way from the small time to New York City in his twenties. It was there he met Osborn and was hired as a field assistant, tasked with bringing huge dinosaurs from the unexamined expanses of Montana and the Dakotas to the bright lights of Manhattan, where socialites who had never slept a night outdoors could gawk at the stupendousness of it all. Barnum Brown (left) and Henry Fairfield Osborn digging up dinosaur bones in Wyoming, 1897. AMNH Library. This is how Brown found himself, in 1902, in the desolate badlands of eastern Montana. While out prospecting the hills, Brown came across a jumble of bones. Part of a skull and jaw, some vertebrae and ribs, bits of the shoulder and arm, and most of the pelvis. The bones were enormous. The size of the pelvis indicated an animal that stood several meters tall, certainly much larger than a human. And they were clearly the remains of a muscular creature that could run relatively fast on two legs—the characteristic body type of a meat-eating dinosaur. Other predatory dinosaurs had been found before—like Allosaurus, the Butcher of the Late Jurassic—but none of these were anywhere near the colossal size of Brown’s new beast. He was on the cusp of turning thirty years old, and he had made a discovery that would define him for the rest of his life. Brown sent his discovery back to New York, where Osborn was anxiously awaiting the shipment. The bones were so big, they took years to clean up and assemble into a partial skeleton that could be exhibited to the public. This work was mostly done by the end of 1905, when Osborn announced the new dinosaur to the world."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "He published a formal scientific paper designating the new dinosaur as Tyrannosaurus rex—a beautiful combination of Greek and Latin that means “tyrant lizard king”—and put the bones on display at the American Museum, as the institution is known among scientists. The new dinosaur became a sensation, making headlines throughout the country. The New York Times celebrated it as “the most formidable fighting animal” that had ever existed. Crowds flocked to the museum, and when they came face-to-face with the tyrant king, they were aghast at its monstrous size and dumbfounded by its ancient age, then estimated at some 8 million years old (we now know that it is much older, about 66 million years old). T. rex had become a celebrity, and so had Barnum Brown. Brown will always be remembered as the man who discovered Tyrannosaurus rex, but this was just the start of his career. He developed such an eye for fossils that he steadily progressed from a fossil-collecting grunt worker to the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum, the scientist in charge of the world’s finest dinosaur collection. Today, if you visit its spectacular dinosaur halls, many of the fossils you’ll see were collected by Brown and his teams. No wonder that Lowell Dingus, one of my former colleagues in New York who wrote a biography of Brown, refers to him as “the best dinosaur collector who ever lived.” This sentiment is shared by many of my fellow paleontologists. Brown was the first celebrity paleontologist, acclaimed for his lively lectures and a weekly CBS radio show. People would flock to see him as he passed through the American West on trains, and later in his life he helped Walt Disney design the dinosaurs in Fantasia. Like any good celebrity, Brown was an eccentric. He hunted fossils in the dead of summer in a full-length fur coat, made extra cash spying for governments and oil companies, and had such a fondness for the ladies that rumors of his tangled web of offspring are still whispered throughout the western American plains. You can’t help but think that if Brown were alive today, he would be the star of some outrageous reality show. And probably a politician. A few years after T. rex stormed New York, Brown was back at it, in his fur coat, scrambling over the badlands of Montana, looking for more fossils. As usual, he found them. This time it was a much better Tyrannosaurus: a more complete skeleton with a gorgeous skull, nearly as long as a man and with over fifty sharp teeth the size of railroad spikes. While Brown’s first T. rex was too scrappy to make a good estimate for the total size of the animal, the second fossil showed that rex was a king indeed: a dinosaur well over thirty-five feet long that must have weighed several tons. There was no doubt: T. rex was the largest and most fearsome land-living predator that had ever been discovered."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "FOR THE NEXT few decades, T. rex enjoyed life at the top, the star of movies and museum exhibits around the globe. It battled the giant gorilla in King Kong and terrified audiences in the screen adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. But this fame masked a puzzle: for nearly the entire twentieth century, scientists had little idea of how T. rex fit into the broader picture of dinosaur evolution. It was an oddball, a creature so much larger and so dramatically different from other known predatory dinosaurs that it was difficult to place in the dinosaur family album. During the first few decades after Brown’s discovery, paleontologists unearthed a handful of close T. rex relatives in North America and Asia. To nobody’s surprise, Brown himself made some of the most important of these discoveries, most notably a mass graveyard of big tyrannosaurs in Alberta in 1910. These T. rex cousins—Albertosaurus, Gorgosaurus, Tarbosaurus—are quite similar to T. rex in size and have nearly identical skeletons. As the science of dating rocks advanced during the later twentieth century, it was also determined these other tyrannosaurs lived at about the same time as T. rex: the very latest Cretaceous, between 84 and 66 million years ago. So scientists were in a quandary. There were a bunch of huge tyrannosaurs at the top of the food chain thriving at the peak of dinosaur history. Where did they come from? That mystery has been answered only very recently, and as with so much of what we’ve learned about dinosaurs over the last few decades, our new understanding of tyrannosaur evolution stems from a wealth of new fossils. Many of these have come from unexpected locales, perhaps none more so than what is currently recognized as the very oldest tyrannosaur, a modest little critter called Kileskus that was discovered in 2010 in Siberia. When you think of dinosaurs, Siberia is probably not a place that comes to mind, but their fossils are now being found throughout the world, even the far northern reaches of Russia, where paleontologists need to cope with harsh winters and humid, mosquito-infested summers. Alexander Averianov, my friend from the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, is one of those paleontologists. Sasha, as we all call him, is among the world’s experts on those puny mammals that lived alongside (or more correctly, underneath) the dinosaurs. He also studies the dinosaurs that were keeping his beloved mammals down. Sasha began his career as the Soviet Union was disintegrating, and through his numerous discoveries and meticulous descriptions of fossil anatomy, he has now become one of the leading paleontologists in the new Russia. A few years ago, Sasha showed me a new dinosaur fossil from Uzbekistan at a conference. He whisked me up to his room, ceremoniously opened an ornately colored orange-and-green cardboard box, and pulled out part of the skull of a meat-eater."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "He put the fossil back in the box and handed it to me so I could take it back to Edinburgh to CAT-scan it. But before he let go, he looked me in the eye and, in the Russian-accented drawl of movie bad guys, said, “Be careful with the fossil, but be even more careful with the box. This is Soviet box. They don’t make them like this anymore.” Grinning with mischief, he then pulled out a small bottle of dark-colored liquid. “And now we toast with Dagestan cognac,” he proclaimed, pouring two glasses, then another two, and then a third round. We toasted to his tyrannosaurs. Like Brown’s first fossil of Tyrannosaurus rex, Sasha’s dinosaur Kileskus was only a fraction of a skeleton. There was part of the snout and the side of the face, a tooth, a chunk of the lower jaw, and some random bones from the hand and feet. These bones were all found within a couple of square meters in a quarry that Sasha’s team had been working in for many years, in the Krasnoyarsk region of central Siberia. Krasnoyarsk is one of the more than eighty “federal subjects” of Russia, as the post-Soviet constitution calls the equivalents to American states or Canadian provinces. It’s no little Delaware, or even Texas, or incredibly, even Alaska. Krasnoyarsk stretches across nearly the entire midsection of Russia, from the Arctic Sea up north to almost touch the border with Mongolia down south. It’s a shade below one million square miles in area, much bigger than Alaska and even slightly larger than Greenland. A lot of space, but very few people: the entire population is about the same as Chicago’s. In this vast wilderness, Sasha was able to find the world’s oldest tyrannosaur. The name he gave it, Kileskus, is based on the word “lizard” in a local language that is spoken by only a few thousand people in this isolated part of the world. The discovery didn’t get much buzz in the press, and it escaped the attention of many scientists when Sasha described it in an obscure Russian journal that isn’t on the radar of most paleontologists. Kileskus didn’t get a funny nickname, and it surely won’t be appearing in any future Jurassic Park films. It’s one of those fifty-some new dinosaurs that are announced in a technical scientific paper every year and then mostly forgotten about, except by a handful of specialist paleontologists. To me, though, Kileskus is one of the most interesting discoveries of the last decade, because it is clear proof that tyrannosaurs had gotten an early evolutionary start. Kileskus was found in rocks formed during the middle part of the Jurassic Period, about 170 million years ago, more than 100 million years before T. rex and its colossal cousins were at the top of their game in North America and Asia. Kileskus may be important, but it is underwhelming to behold."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "I first scrutinized the bones in Sasha’s dark office, in a grand old building along the icy Neva River, which was still thawing in early April. Yes, Sasha’s fossil is only a few bones, but that’s not too surprising. The vast majority of new dinosaur discoveries are just a few jumbled pieces of bone, because it takes a whole lot of luck for even a tiny fraction of a skeleton to withstand millions of years buried in the ground. No, what struck me about Kileskus was how small it is. All of the bones can comfortably fit into a couple of shoeboxes. I could easily lift them up off the shelf. If I wanted to pick up the skull of T. rex back in New York, I would need a forklift. It’s hard to believe that a meek creature like Kileskus could have given rise to a giant like T. rex. Although an accurate measure of its size is difficult because of its scrappy bones, Kileskus was probably only seven or eight feet long, most of that being the skinny tail. It stood a couple of feet tall at most—it would have come up to your waist or chest like a big dog. And it wouldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds or so. If the forty-foot-long, ten-foot-tall, seven-ton T. rex was living in Russia during the Middle Jurassic, it could have brushed Kileskus aside with little effort, even with its pathetic little arms. Kileskus was not a brutish monster. It wasn’t a top predator. It was probably something like a wolf or jackal, a long-legged, lightweight hunter that used speed to chase down small prey. It’s surely no coincidence that the quarry in Krasnoyarsk where Kileskus was found is bursting with the fossils of small lizards, salamanders, turtles, and mammals. It was these things that the very first tyrannosaurs were eating, not long-necked sauropods or jeep-size stegosaurs. Because Kileskus is so different from T. rex in size and hunting habits, how do we know that it’s even a tyrannosaur? If Kileskus had been discovered at the same time as T. rex, scientists probably wouldn’t have made the connection. Even if Kileskus had been found a few decades ago, it likely wouldn’t have registered as a primitive tyrannosaur, a great-great-great-grandparent of T. rex. Now we know, and once again, it’s because of new fossils. Sasha had the great fortune of finding Kileskus just four years after a team in far western China, led by my colleague Xu Xing, came across a very similar small meat-eater from the middle part of the Jurassic. Thankfully, Xu’s team didn’t just find a couple of broken bones. They uncovered two nearly complete skeletons, one an adult and the other a teenager. The story of how these dinosaurs got there could be written into the script of a disaster movie. The teenager was found at the bottom of a pit several feet deep, trampled by the adult."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "They were both engulfed in mud and volcanic ash. Something terrible had clearly happened, but what was torture for these dinosaurs was a lucky break for paleontologists. Xu and his group named their new dinosaur Guanlong, meaning “crown dragon” in Chinese. The name refers to the gaudy Mohawk-like crest of bone that runs along the top of the skull. The crest is thinner than a dinner plate and pierced by a number of holes. It’s the type of absurdly impractical-looking thing that probably had only one function: a display ornament for attracting mates and intimidating rivals, kind of like the flamboyant tail of a male peacock, which is for nothing but show. I spent days poring over the bones of Guanlong in Beijing. The crest is what grabbed my attention first, but other features of the bones offer critical clues for placing Guanlong on the family tree and linking it to both Kileskus and T. rex. For a start, it is clearly very similar to Kileskus: both are about the same size, have huge windowlike nostrils at the front of the snout, and have long upper-jaw bones with a deep depression above the teeth that would have housed a huge sinus. On the other hand, Guanlong exhibits many characteristics that are only seen in T. rex and other big tyrannosaurs among all of the meat-eating dinosaurs. In other words, evolutionary novelties, which as we learned earlier, are the key to understanding genealogy. For example, it has heavily fused nasal bones at the top of the snout, a broad and rounded front of the snout, a small horn in front of the eye, and two massive muscle attachment scars on the front of the pelvis. There are many more similarities as well, anatomical minutiae that may seem boring but tell my scientific colleagues and me that Guanlong is definitively a primitive tyrannosaur. And because the complete skeletons of Guanlong share so many features with the much scrappier bones of Kileskus, the latter must be a primitive tyrannosaur as well. Along with helping to prove that Kileskus is a tyrannosaur, the complete skeletons of Guanlong also paint a clearer picture of what these earliest and most primitive tyrannosaurs would have looked like, how they behaved, and how they fit into their ecosystems. Based on its limb dimensions—which are known to correlate closely with body weight in living animals—Guanlong would have weighed about 70 kilograms, or roughly 150 pounds. Guanlong was lithe and lean, with long skinny legs and a tail that stretched far beyond its body for balance. No doubt it was a speedy hunter. It had a mouth full of steak-knife-like teeth befitting a predator, but it also had fairly long arms with three claw-capped fingers capable of grabbing prey with extreme strength. They are totally different from the withered two-fingered arms of T. rex. Guanlong could hunt with its arsenal of speed, sharp teeth, and deadly claws, but it was not a top predator."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "It lived alongside much larger carnivores like Monolophosaurus, which was over fifteen feet long, and Sinraptor, a thirty-foot-long close cousin of Allosaurus that weighed more than a ton. Guanlong lived in the shade of these animals, and probably in fear of them too. At best, Guanlong was a second- or third-tier predator, an inconspicuous link in a food chain dominated by other dinosaurs. This would have been the same for Kileskus and for some of the other small and primitive tyrannosaurs that have been found recently, like the tiniest one of all, the greyhound-size Dilong from China, and Proceratosaurus, a dinosaur discovered over a century ago in England that was only recently recognized as an archaic tyrannosaur because it has a Mohawk-like crest similar to Guanlong. These petite tyrannosaurs may not have been much to look at and wouldn’t have haunted anyone’s nightmares, but they obviously were doing something right. The more fossils we find, the more successful we realize they were. There were a bunch of them, spread all over the world during the approximately 50 million years from the middle part of the Jurassic period well into the Cretaceous, from about 170 until 120 million years ago. They clearly survived that cocktail of environmental and climate changes that felled Allosaurus, the sauropods, and the stegosaurs around the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary. We now have their fossils from throughout Asia, multiple sites in England, the western United States, and probably even Australia. They were able to disperse so widely because they lived when the supercontinent Pangea was still breaking apart, meaning they could easily hop across land bridges that linked the continents, which had yet to move very far away from one another. These early tyrannosaurs had carved out a niche as small to midsize predators living in the underbrush, and they were good at it. The skeleton of the dog-size primitive tyrannosaur Dilong. Photo courtesy of the author The skull of the human-size primitive tyrannosaur Guanlong, showing the gaudy crest of bone on top of its head. Photo courtesy of the author AT SOME POINT, however, tyrannosaurs changed from bit players to the celebrated apex predators that we all love. The first whispers of this transformation are seen in fossils from the early part of the Cretaceous, about 125 million years ago. Most tyrannosaurs living at this time were small. The pint-size Dilong is the most extreme example, barely registering on the scales at about twenty pounds. Some were a bit larger, like Eotyrannus from England and a few of its older cousins like Juratyrant and Stokesosaurus, which were bulkier than Dilong, Guanlong, and Kileskus, and maybe reached lengths of about ten to twelve feet and weights of a thousand pounds or so. If you were around back then, and these midsize tyrannosaurs cooperated, you could have ridden them like horses, but they still weren’t top-of-the-food-chain animals."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "Then in 2009, another piece of the puzzle: a team of Chinese scientists described a highly unusual fossil from the northeastern corner of the country, which they called Sinotyrannus. As is so often the case, the new dinosaur was fragmentary: only a small collection of bones was preserved, including the front of the snout and lower jaw, some portions of the backbone, and a few pieces of the hand and pelvis. These bones were really similar to Guanlong, and also to Kileskus, which would be described a few months later. The base of a tall bony crest was visible right where the snout region was broken, the nostril opening was huge, and there was a deep sinus depression above the teeth. But there was one major difference: Sinotyrannus was substantially bigger than Guanlong. Based on comparisons to the bones of other meat-eating dinosaurs, it was estimated that this new predator would have been around thirty feet long, and perhaps over a ton in weight. That’s the equivalent to at least ten Guanlongs. At about 125 million years in age, Sinotyrannus was the oldest example of a large-bodied tyrannosaur ever found. I read the announcement of the new species as a graduate student, about a year after I began my PhD project on carnivorous dinosaur evolution. It was clear to me that the new dinosaur was a tyrannosaur and that it was big, but I didn’t know what else to make of it. The fossils were too scrappy to be certain of how large it was or to place it accurately in the family tree. Was it a very close relative of T. rex, the first member of that group of really big, deep-skulled, tiny-armed carnivores—Tyrannosaurus, Tarbosaurus, Albertosaurus, Gorgosaurus—that dominated the very end of the Cretaceous, about 84 to 66 million years ago? If so, maybe it would tell us how these dinosaur icons became so huge, so dominant. But was it something else? Maybe it was merely a primitive tyrannosaur that outgrew its contemporaries. After all, Sinotyrannus lived about 60 million years before T. rex, a time when every other tyrannosaur we knew of could fit in the back of a pickup truck. Could this one find really rewrite tyrannosaur history? I had the sinking feeling that this fossil would remain a problem for a long time. This happens all too often in the field of dinosaur research: a single fossil emerges that hints at a major evolutionary story—the oldest member of a major group, or the first fossil to exhibit a really important behavior or feature of the skeleton—but it’s too broken or incomplete or poorly dated to be certain. Then another fossil is never found and it’s just left hanging, a cold case waiting to be solved. The skull of Gorgosaurus, a large-bodied, latest Cretaceous tyrannosaur closely related to T. rex. Photo courtesy of the author But I shouldn’t have been so pessimistic."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "Just three years later, Xu Xing in China—the man who described Guanlong and Dilong—published a sensational article in the journal Nature. Xu and his team announced yet another new dinosaur, which they called Yutyrannus. They had more than just a few bones at their disposal—they had skeletons, three of them. Their new dinosaur was obviously a tyrannosaur and was very similar to Sinotyrannus. There were similarities in size and also in the bones—Yutyrannus had a flashy head crest and huge nostrils, just like Sinotyrannus. Yutyrannus was big: the largest skeleton was about thirty feet long. This wasn’t an estimate, because Xu and his team could take out a tape measure and size up their new dinosaur, rather than using mathematical equations to guesstimate the size of a complete skeleton based on just a few broken bones, as was our only recourse with Sinotyrannus. So Yutyrannus sealed the deal: there really were large tyrannosaurs in the Early Cretaceous, at least in China. There was something else peculiar about Yutyrannus. The skeletons were so well preserved that details of the soft tissue were visible. Usually the skin, muscles, and organs decay away long before a fossil is entombed in stone, leaving only the hard parts like bones, teeth, and shells. With Yutyrannus we got lucky—these skeletons were buried so quickly, after a volcanic eruption, that some of their softer parts did not decay. Packed all around the bones were dense clusters of slender filaments, each about fifteen centimeters (six inches) long. Similar structures were preserved on the much smaller Dilong, which was found in the same rock unit in northeastern China. These are feathers. Not the quill-pen feathers that make up the wings of today’s birds but simpler ones that look more like strands of hair. These were the ancestral structures that bird feathers evolved from, and it is now known that many (and perhaps all) dinosaurs had them. Yutyrannus and Dilong establish beyond a doubt that tyrannosaurs were among these feathered dinosaurs. Unlike birds, tyrannosaurs certainly were not flying. Instead, they probably used their feathers for display or to keep warm. And because both a large tyrannosaur like Yutyrannus and a small tyrannosaur like Dilong have feathers, this implies that the common ancestor of all tyrannosaurs had feathers, and therefore that the great T. rex itself was most likely feathered, too. The fluff-covered skeletons of Yutyrannus launched this new dinosaur to stardom in the international press, but feathers are a story that we’ll come back to later. For me, the real importance of Yutyrannus was that it could help us better understand how tyrannosaurs evolved into their huge sizes. Yutyrannus and Sinotyrannus were big—much larger than any other tyrannosaurs living before the very end of the Cretaceous, when T. rex and its brethren reigned supreme."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "However, these two Chinese tyrannosaurs weren’t truly colossal: they were about the same size as Allosaurus or the big predator Sinraptor that preyed on Guanlong, nowhere near the monstrous forty-foot-long, seven-ton body sizes of T. rex and its very close relatives. Not only that, but when the complete skeletons of Yutyrannus are compared bone by bone with the skeletons of T. rex, it becomes clear they are quite different. Yutyrannus looks like an overgrown version of Guanlong, with its ornamental head crest, big nostrils, and long, three-fingered hands. It doesn’t have the deep muscular skull, thick railroad-spike teeth, and pathetic arms of T. rex. This leads to an unexpected conclusion: despite their big bodies, Yutyrannus and Sinotyrannus weren’t very closely related to T. rex, and they didn’t have much to do with the evolution of colossal sizes in the latest Cretaceous tyrannosaurs. Instead, they were primitive tyrannosaurs experimenting with large body sizes independent of their later cousins. Put another way, they were evolutionary dead ends that, as far as we know, didn’t exist outside of one corner of China during the early Cretaceous. (This assertion can of course be proven wrong with new discoveries.) They lived alongside small tyrannosaurs, which were by far the more common type thriving in the Jurassic and early Cretaceous times. Even though they were not directly ancestral to T. rex, Yutyrannus and Sinotyrannus are far from unimportant. These early Cretaceous species do show that tyrannosaurs had the capability to become big fairly early in their evolution. Yutyrannus and Sinotyrannus were, as far as we know, the largest predators in their ecosystems. They were at the top of the food chain, the lords of a lush forest—humid in the summer, liable to be buried by snow in the winter—that clung to the sides of steep volcanoes, alive with the chirps of primitive birds and raptor dinosaurs with feathers. They had their choice of prey: corpulent long-necked sauropods if they were feeling particularly hungry, or a bounty of sheep-size, beaked plant-eaters called Psittacosaurus, primitive cousins of Triceratops, which 60 million years later would battle T. rex itself on the floodplains of western North America. In other places, separated in time and space from the forests of Early Cretaceous China, where the species of tyrannosaurs were small or medium-size, they were dwarfed by larger predators. Sinraptor towered over Guanlong in the Middle Jurassic of China. Allosaurus outmuscled the mule-size tyrannosaur Stokesosaurus in the later Jurassic of North America. The carcharodontosaur Neovenator held down Eotyrannus in the Early Cretaceous of England. And there are many more examples. It seems tyrannosaurs could get big if they had the opportunity, but only if there were no larger predators around. THE QUESTION REMAINS: how did T. rex and its closest relatives shoot up to such mind-boggling sizes? We need to look into the fossil record to see when the very first truly huge tyrannosaurs with the classic T. rex body plan emerged."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "By this, I mean tyrannosaurs that were over thirty-five feet long and one and a half tons in weight, with the big deep skulls, muscular jaws, banana-size teeth, pathetic arms, and bulky leg muscles that define T. rex. This type of tyrannosaur—true giants, undoubted top predators of record size—made their first appearance in western North America about 84 to 80 million years ago. Once they began to appear, they started turning up everywhere, both in North America and Asia. Clearly an explosive diversification had occurred. We know that the big switch happened some time in the middle part of the Cretaceous, between about 110 and 84 million years ago. Before this time, there were many small to midsize tyrannosaurs living all over the world, with only a few random bigger species like Yutyrannus. After this time, enormous tyrannosaurs reigned throughout North America and Asia, but only those continents, and no species smaller than a minibus remained. This was a dramatic change, one of the biggest in the entire history of dinosaurs. Frustratingly, very few fossils record what was going on. The middle Cretaceous is something of a dark period in dinosaur evolution. By pure bad luck, very few fossils from this entire 25-million-year time span have been found. So we’re left scratching our heads, like a detective tasked with solving a crime when the crime scene preserves no fingerprints, DNA data, or tangible evidence of any kind. What we can say, based on our growing understanding of what the Earth was like during the middle Cretaceous, is that this was probably not a great time to be a dinosaur. About 94 million years ago, between the Cenomanian and Turonian subdivisions of the Cretaceous Period, there was a spasm of environmental change. Temperatures spiked, sea levels violently oscillated, and the deep oceans were starved of oxygen. We don’t yet know why this happened, but one of the leading theories is that a surge of volcanic activity belched enormous quantities of carbon dioxide and other noxious gases into the atmosphere, causing a runaway greenhouse effect and poisoning the planet. Whatever their causes, these environmental changes triggered a mass extinction. It wasn’t as big as the extinctions at the ends of the Permian and Triassic periods, which helped dinosaurs rise to dominance, but something more akin to what happened across the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary. Still, it was one of the worst mass die-offs during the Age of Dinosaurs. Many ocean-living invertebrates disappeared for good, as did various types of reptiles. The extremely poor middle Cretaceous fossil record has made it difficult to know how these environmental dramas affected dinosaurs. However, paleontologists have recently managed to pry important new specimens from this gap. A pattern is clearly coming into focus: none of the large predators from this 25-million-year time window are tyrannosaurs. All of them belong to other groups of big carnivores like the ceratosaurs, spinosaurs, and especially the carcharodontosaurs."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "This latter group of ultrapredators, which (as we saw in the previous chapter) utterly dominated the Early Cretaceous, continued their reign deep into the middle Cretaceous. The thirty-five-foot-long carcharodontosaur Siats was the top predator in western North America about 98.5 million years ago. In Asia, the nearly T. rex–size Chilantaisaurus and the smaller Shaochilong were the top guns about 92 million years ago, and in South America, carcharodontosaurs like Aerosteon reigned about 85 million years ago. The tyrannosaurs that lived alongside these carcharodontosaurs, on the other hand, still weren’t very special, at least in their outward appearance. We don’t have many of their fossils, but some have started to turn up recently. The best of them come from Uzbekistan, where Sasha Averianov and his colleague Hans-Dieter Sues—a German-born paleontologist with an ever-present smile and infectious laugh, who is now a senior researcher at the Smithsonian Institution—worked for over a decade, in the barren Kyzylkum Desert. That Soviet-era box that Sasha carefully handed over to me a few years ago contained some of these bones. The reason I took them back to Edinburgh to CAT-scan was because two of these specimens were braincases—the puzzle of fused bones at the back of the skull that surrounded the brain and ear. If you want to see inside these braincases, into the cavities that housed the brain and sense organs, you could cut open the braincase with a saw, which is what Osborn did with the first T. rex skull, damaging it forever in the name of science. Nowadays we can use the CAT scanner and its high-powered X-rays, and we don’t have to damage a thing. When we scanned the Uzbek braincases, we confirmed that they belonged to a tyrannosaur, as they had the same architecture of bones surrounding the spinal cord and the same long tube-shaped brain cavity of T. rex, Albertosaurus, and other tyrannosaurs. They even had a middle ear with a very long cochlea, another signature tyrannosaur feature, which allowed these predators to better hear low-frequency sounds. However, the Uzbek tyrannosaur was still a Mini-Me, just about the size of a horse. In spring 2016, Sasha, Hans, and I gave the Uzbek tyrannosaur a formal scientific name, Timurlengia euotica. The name honors Timur, also known as Tamerlane, the infamous Central Asian warlord who ruled over Uzbekistan and many of the surrounding lands in the fourteenth century. It’s a fitting name for a tyrannosaur, even a midsize one that was still a few rungs below the top of the food ladder. Although not a colossus, Timurlengia was developing a larger brain and more sophisticated senses—heightened smell, vision, and hearing—than other meat-eating dinosaurs, adaptations that would eventually turn out to be handy predatory weapons for the huge tyrannosaurs that came later. Tyrannosaurs were becoming smart before they got big, but no matter how clever they were, Timurlengia and its comrades were still living under the thumb of the real warlords of the middle Cretaceous, the carcharodontosaurs."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "Then, when the clock struck 84 million years ago and the fossil record became rich again, the carcharodontosaurs were gone in North America and Asia, replaced by monstrous tyrannosaurs. A major evolutionary turnover had occurred. Was this due to the lingering effects of the temperature and sea-level changes that occurred at the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary? Was it sudden or gradual? Did tyrannosaurs actively outcompete the carcharodontosaurs, muscling them into extinction or outsmarting them with their big brains and keenly developed senses? Or did environmental changes cause these other large predators to go extinct but spare tyrannosaurs, which then opportunistically took over the large predator role? We just don’t have enough evidence to know for certain, but whatever the answer, there is no denying that by the dawn of the Campanian subinterval of the latest Cretaceous, beginning about 84 million years ago, tyrannosaurs had risen to the top of the food pyramid. During the final 20 million years of the Cretaceous, tyrannosaurs flourished, ruling the river valleys, lakeshores, floodplains, forests, and deserts of North America and Asia. There is no mistaking their signature look: huge head, athletic body, sad arms, muscular legs, long tail. They bit so hard that they crunched through the bones of their prey; they grew so fast that they put on about five pounds every day during their teenage years; and they lived so hard that we have yet to find an individual that was more than thirty years old when it died. And they were impressively diverse: we have found nearly twenty species of these big-boned tyrannosaurs from the latest Cretaceous, and there are surely many more out there waiting to be discovered. The Pinocchio-nosed Qianzhousaurus, so fortuitously discovered by that still-anonymous backhoe operator at the Chinese construction site, is one of the latest examples. Just as Brown and Osborn grasped over a hundred years ago, when they were the first humans to set eyes on a tyrannosaur, T. rex and its brethren really were the kings of the dinosaur world. The world they lorded over was very different from the planet in which tyrannosaurs grew up. Back when Kileskus, Guanlong, and Yutyrannus were stalking prey, the supercontinent Pangea had only recently begun to split, so tyrannosaurs could migrate easily across the Earth. By the latest Cretaceous, however, the continents had drifted much farther apart, reaching positions similar to the ones they occupy today. A map from this time would have looked quite a bit like today’s globe. There were, however, some major differences. Due to sea-level rise in the Late Cretaceous, North America was bisected by a seaway stretching from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, and a flooded Europe was reduced to a smattering of small islands. T. rex’s Earth was a fragmented planet, with different groups of dinosaurs living in separate areas. As a result, champions in one region might not be able to conquer another for one simple reason: they couldn’t get there."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_5.txt", "text": "Colossal tyrannosaurs never seemed to gain a foothold in Europe or the southern continents, where other groups of large predators prospered, but in North America and Asia, tyrannosaurs were unrivaled. They had become the transcendent terrors that fire our imaginations."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs 6 The King of the Dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus rex Chapter Title art by Todd Marshall THE TRICERATOPS WAS SAFE. It was across the river, separated by impassable rapids from the danger brewing on the opposite bank. But it could see what was about to happen and was powerless to stop it. No more than fifty feet away, on a spike of sand and mud that jutted into the other side of the water, a group of three Edmontosauruses lingered. Their sharp ducklike bills plucked leaves from the flowery shrubs clinging to the shore. Their cheeks—heavy with nourishment—rocked side to side in a chewing motion. The late evening sun shimmered across the currents, and the whistles of birds high in the trees radiated peace and calm. But all was not OK. On the far shore, the Triceratops noticed something the Edmontosaurus herd could not—another creature, hiding in the taller trees at the edge of the jungle where it met the sand bar, its green scaly skin almost perfectly camouflaged. Its eyes gave it away: two bulbous spheres, sparkling with anticipation. They darted from left to right, in split-second intervals, surveying the three unaware plant-munchers. Waiting for the right moment. And then it came, in a burst of violence. The red-eyed, green-skinned monster pounced out of the brush and into the path of the plant-eaters. It was a terrifying sight: the lurking predator was longer than a city bus. It reached forty feet (thirteen meters) long and weighed at least five tons. Fluff stuck out of the scales of its neck and back—a mangy, hairy fuzz. Its tail was long and muscular, its legs stocky, its arms laughably tiny, dangling to the side as it lunged toward the Edmontosaurus pack headfirst, jaws agape. When it opened its mouth, there were about fifty pointy teeth inside, each the size of a railroad spike. They clamped down on the tail of one of the Edmontosauruses, the cacophony of crunching bone and shrieking anguish echoing through the forest. Desperate, the assaulted Edmontosaurus wrestled itself free and waddled off into the trees, its severed tail dangling behind it, carrying a broken tooth from the predator as a battle scar. Would it survive or succumb to its injuries in the hidden depths of the forest? The Triceratops would never know. Annoyed by its failed attack, the beast turned its attention to the smallest of the duckbills, but the youth was racing away into the woods, dodging trunks and bushes at a sprinter’s speed. The bulky carnivore realized it had no hope of catching it and emitted a deep-throated wail in frustration. There was still one Edmontosaurus left, cornered on the sandbar: water on one side, the meat-lusting monster on the other. As the predator turned its head back toward the river, the two of them locked eyes. Escape was impossible, and then the inevitable happened. The head darted forward. Teeth met flesh."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "Bones shattered as the neck of the herbivore was ripped apart, blood spilling into the water and mixing with the white foam currents, the broken teeth of the predator raining through the sky as it tore at its victim. Then, from back in the forest, there was a rustling noise. Branches snapped and leaves flew about. The Triceratops watched in awe as four other big-headed, spike-toothed green brutes—nearly identical in size and shape to the first one—bounded onto the riverbank. They were a pack; the attacker was their leader, and now the underlings got to share in its victory. The five hungry creatures snorted and snarled, nipping at each other and biting each other’s faces as they jockeyed for the best cuts of meat. From the comfort of the opposite shore, the Triceratops knew exactly what it was seeing. For it had been there before—it had once escaped the jaws of one of these voracious killers, goring it with one of its horns until the beast released its grip. This feared predator was known to all Triceratops. It was their great rival, the terror that would rush like a ghost from the trees and mow down entire herds. It was Tyrannosaurus rex—the King of the Dinosaurs, the largest predator that has ever lived on land in the 4.5-billion-year history of Earth. T. REX IS a celebrity character—the nightmare haunter—but it was also a real animal. Paleontologists know quite a lot about it: what it looked like, how it moved and breathed and sensed its world, what it ate, how it grew, and why it was able to get so big. In part, that’s because we have a lot of fossils: over fifty skeletons, some nearly complete, more than for almost any other dinosaur. But more than anything, it’s because so many scientists are impulsively drawn to the majesty that is the King, the way so many people are obsessed with movie stars and athletes. When scientists get infatuated with something, we start playing around with every instrument, experiment, or other type of analysis at our disposal. We’ve thrown the whole toolbox at T. rex: CAT scans to look into its brain and sense organs, computer animations to understand its posture and locomotion, engineering software to model how it ate, microscopic study of its bones to see how it grew, and the list goes on. As a result, we know more about this Cretaceous dinosaur than we do about many living animals. What was T. rex like as a living, breathing, feeding, moving, growing animal? Let me indulge you with an unauthorized biography of the King of Dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Photo courtesy of the author Let’s start with the vital stats."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "It goes without saying, but T. rex was huge: adults were about forty-two feet (thirteen meters) long and weighed in the ballpark of seven or eight tons, based on those equations from a few chapters ago, which calculate body weight from the thickness of the thighbone. These proportions are off the charts for carnivorous dinosaurs. The rulers of the Jurassic—the Butcher Allosaurus, Torvosaurus, and their kin—got up to about thirty-three feet (ten meters) long and a few tons—monsters to be sure, but they had nothing on Rex. After temperature and sea-level changes ushered in the Cretaceous, some of the carcharodontosaurs from Africa and South America got even bigger than their Jurassic predecessors. Giganotosaurus, for example, was about as long as T. rex and may have reached about six tons. But that’s still a good ton or two lighter than Rex, so the King stands alone as the biggest purely meat-eating animal that lived on land during the time of dinosaurs, or indeed at any time in the history of our planet. Show a picture of T. rex to kindergartners and they’ll immediately know what it is. It has a signature style, a unique physique, or in scientific parlance, a distinctive body plan. The head was enormous, perched on a neck short and stout like a bodybuilder’s. Balancing the oversize noggin was a long, tapering tail that stuck out horizontally like a seesaw. Rex stood only on its hind legs, its muscular thighs and calves powering its movements. Like a ballerina, it balanced on the tips of its feet, the arch or sole rarely touching the ground, all of its weight held by its massive three toes. The forelimbs looked useless: puny things with two stubby fingers, comically out of proportion to the rest of the body. And the body itself: not fat like one of the long-necked sauropods, but not the skinny frame of a fast-running Velociraptor either. Its very own body type. The seat of Rex’s power was its head. It was a killing machine, a torture chamber for its prey, and an evil mask all in one. At around five feet long from snout to ear, the skull was nearly the length of an average person. More than fifty knife-sharp teeth made for a sinister smile. There were little nipping teeth at the front of the snout and a row of serrated spikes the size and shape of bananas running along the sides of the upper and lower jaws. Muscles to open and close those jaws bulged out of the back of the head near the bottle-cap-size hole that served as the ear. Each eyeball was the size of a grapefruit. In front of it, but covered in skin, was a massive sinus system that helped to lighten the head, and then big fleshy horns at the tip of the snout."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "Small horns protruded in front of and behind each eye, and another stuck downwards from each cheek—gnarly knobs of bone covered in keratin, the same stuff that makes up our fingernails. Imagine this hideous visage as your last memory before the teeth came crushing down, breaking your bones. Many a dinosaur met its end that way. Covering the body—the head, the wee arms, the stocky legs, all the way to tip of the tail—was a thick, scaly hide. In this way, T. rex resembled an overgrown crocodile or an iguana—lizardlike. But there was one key difference: Rex also had feathers sticking out from between its scales. As mentioned in the last chapter, these were not big branching ones like those on a bird wing, but were simpler filaments that looked and felt more like hair, the larger ones stiff like the quills of a porcupine. T. rex certainly couldn’t fly, and neither did its ancestors that first evolved these proto-feathers, way back in the early days of the dinosaurs. No, as we’ll learn later, feathers started out as simple wisps of integument, which creatures like T. rex used to keep warm, and as displays to attract mates and scare off rivals. Paleontologists have yet to find any fossilized feathers on a T. rex skeleton, but we’re confident that it must have had some fluff because primitive tyrannosaurs—Dilong and Yutyrannus, which we met last chapter—have been found coated in hairlike feathers, as have many other types of theropods preserved in those rare conditions that allow soft bits to turn into fossils. That means that the ancestors of T. rex had feathers, so it is highly likely that Rex did too. T. rex lived from about 68 to 66 million years ago, and its dominion was the forest-covered coastal plains and river valleys of western North America. There it lorded over diverse ecosystems that included a bounty of prey species: the horn-faced Triceratops, the duck-billed Edmontosaurus, the tanklike Ankylosaurus, the dome-headed Pachycephalosaurus, and many more. Its only competition for food was from the much smaller dromaeosaurs—raptor dinosaurs à la Velociraptor—which is to say it didn’t have much competition at all. Although several other tyrannosaurs had thrived in these same environments during the preceding 10 to 15 million years, they were not the ancestors of T. rex. Instead, Rex’s closest cousins were Asian species like Tarbosaurus and Zhuchengtyrannus. T. rex, as it turns out, was an immigrant. It got its start in China or Mongolia, hopped across the Bering Land Bridge, journeyed through Alaska and Canada, and made its way down into the heart of what’s now America. When the young Rex arrived at its new home, it found things ripe for the taking. It swept across western North America, an invasive pest that spread all the way from Canada down to New Mexico and Texas, elbowing out all of the other midsize to large predatory dinosaurs so that it alone controlled an entire continent. Then one day it all ended."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "T. rex was there when the asteroid fell down from the sky 66 million years ago, putting a violent end to the Cretaceous, exterminating all of the nonflying dinosaurs. That’s a story we’ll get to later. For the time being, only one fact really matters: the King went out on top, cut down at the peak of its power. WHAT FEAST BEFITS the King? We know T. rex was a carnivore of the highest order, a pure meat-eater. It’s one of the simplest inferences that we can make about any dinosaur, and it doesn’t require any fancy experiments or machines to figure out. T. rex had a mouth full of thick, serrated, razor-sharp teeth. Its hands and feet boasted big pointy claws. There’s really only one reason an animal would have these things: they’re weapons, used to procure and process flesh. If your teeth look like knives and your fingers and toes are hooks, then you’re not eating cabbages. For anybody who doubts that, there is plenty of other evidence: bones have been found preserved in the stomach area of tyrannosaur skeletons and in the coprolites (fossilized dung) dropped by tyrannosaurs, and western North America is peppered with skeletons of plant-eating dinosaurs—particularly Triceratops and Edmontosaurus—with bite marks that perfectly match the size and shape of T. rex teeth. Like so many monarchs, Rex was a glutton. It devoured meat. Scientists have predicted how much food an adult T. rex would need to survive, based on the food intake of living predators scaled up to an animal of Rex’s size. The estimates are nauseating. If T. rex had the metabolism of a reptile, then it would have required about 12 pounds (5.5 kilograms) of Triceratops chops per day. But that’s very likely a vast underestimate, because as we’ll see later, dinosaurs were much more birdlike than reptilian in their behaviors and physiology, and they (or at least many of them) may have even been warm-blooded like us. If that was the case, then Rex needed to gobble up some 250 pounds (about 111 kilograms) of grub each and every day. That’s many tens of thousands of calories, maybe even hundreds of thousands, depending on how fatty the King liked its steak. It’s roughly the same amount of food eaten by three or four large male lions, some of the most energetic, and hungriest, modern carnivores. Maybe you’ve heard the rumor that T. rex liked its meat dead and rotten, that Rex was a scavenger, a seven-ton carcass collector too slow, too stupid, or too big to hunt for its own fresh food. This accusation seems to make the rounds every few years, one of those stories that science reporters can’t get enough of. Don’t believe it. It defies common sense that an agile and energetic animal with a knife-toothed head nearly the size of a Smart car wouldn’t use its well-endowed anatomy to take down prey but would just walk around picking up leftovers."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "It also runs against what we know about modern carnivores: very few meat-eaters are pure scavengers, and the outliers that do it well—vultures, for instance—are fliers that can survey wide areas from above and swoop down whenever they see (or smell) a decaying body. Most carnivores, on the other hand, actively hunt but also scavenge whenever they have the chance. After all, who turns down a free meal? That’s true of lions, leopards, wolves, even hyenas, which are not the pure scavengers of legend but actually earn much of their food through the chase. Like these animals, T. rex was probably both a hunter and an opportunistic scavenger. Still doubt that Rex went out and got its own food? There’s fossil evidence that proves T. rex hunted, at least part of the time. Many of those Triceratops and Edmontosaurus bones pockmarked with T. rex tooth impressions show signs of healing and regrowth, so they must have been attacked while alive but survived. The most provocative of these specimens is a set of two fused Edmontosaurus tailbones with a T. rex tooth stuck between them, enveloped by the gnarly mass of scar tissue that merged the two bones together as they healed. The poor duck-billed dinosaur was viciously attacked by a tyrannosaur and left with a terrible injury, but it kept the predator’s tooth as a trophy from its near-death experience. Many of Rex’s bite marks are peculiar. Most theropods left simple feeding traces on the bones of their prey: long, parallel, shallow scratches, a sign that the teeth were just barely kissing the bone. That’s not surprising, because even though dinosaurs could replace their teeth throughout life (unlike us), no predator would want to break its chompers every time it ate. T. rex was different, though. Its bite marks are more complex: they start with a deep circular puncture, like a bullet hole, which grades into an elongate furrow. This is a sign that Rex bit deeply into its victim, often right through the bones, and then ripped back. Paleontologists have come up with a special term for this style of eating: puncture-pull feeding. During the puncture phase of its bite, Rex clamped down hard enough to literally break through the bones of its prey. This is why the fossilized dung heaps left by T. rex are chock full of bony chunks. Bone crunching is not normal—some mammals, like hyenas, do it, but most modern reptiles do not. As far we know, big tyrannosaurs like T. rex were the only dinosaurs capable of it. It was one of the powers that made the King an ultimate killing machine. How was T. rex able to do it? For starters, its teeth were perfectly adapted. The thick, peglike teeth were strong enough that they wouldn’t easily break when they hit bone."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "Next, consider the power behind those teeth: T. rex’s jaw muscles were massive, bulging mounds of sinew that provided enough energy to shatter the limbs, backs, and necks of Triceratopses, Edmontosauruses, and other prey. We can tell that Rex had some of the largest and most powerful jaw muscles of any dinosaur, based on the very broad and deep gullies on the skull bones where the muscles attached. Experiments can simulate the actions of these jaw muscles. One of my colleagues, Greg Erickson of Florida State University, designed a particularly clever experiment in the mid-1990s, right after he finished graduate school. Greg is one of my favorite people to hang around with—he talks with the cadence of high school jock and often looks the part in his worn baseball cap, cold beer in hand. A few years back, Greg was a regular talking head on a cable TV program about weird animal incidents—alligators crawling through sewers and invading trailer parks, that kind of thing. As much fun as he is, I admire Greg deeply as a scientist, because he brings a different approach to paleontology—experimental, quantitative, rigorously grounded in comparisons to modern animals. Greg spends a lot of time with engineers, and one day they came up with a crazy idea: they would rig up a laboratory version of T. rex and determine how strong its bite was. They started with a Triceratops pelvis with a half-inch-deep puncture left by a Rex, and then asked a simple question: how much force would it take to make an indentation this deep? They couldn’t take a real T. rex and make it bite into a real Triceratops, but they found a way to simulate it by making a bronze and aluminum cast of a T. rex tooth, putting it into a hydraulic loading machine, and smashing it into the pelvis of a cow, which is very similar in shape and structure to the Triceratops bone. They pushed and pushed the tooth until it made a half-inch-deep hole, and then used their instruments to read out how much force it required: 13,400 newtons, equivalent to about 3,000 pounds. That’s a staggering number—about the weight of an old-school pickup truck. By comparison, humans exert a maximum force of about 175 pounds with our rear teeth, and African lions bite at about 940 pounds. The only modern land animals that come close to T. rex are alligators, which also bite at around 3,000 pounds. However, we need to remember that the 3,000-pound figure for T. rex is for only a single tooth—imagine how much power a mouth full of these railroad spikes would have delivered! And because it’s a measure of the force required to make one observed fossil bite mark, it’s likely that this is an underestimate of the maximal biting power. Rex probably had the strongest bite of any land animal that ever lived. It could crunch bones with ease and would have been strong enough to bite through a car."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "All of that strength came from the jaw muscles; they were the engine that powered the teeth to deliver the bone-breaking bite. But that’s not the entire story. If the muscles delivered enough force to bust the bones of prey, they could have also broken the skull bones of the T. rex itself. Basic physics: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So it wasn’t enough for T. rex to have massive teeth and huge jaw muscles—it also needed a skull that could withstand the tremendous stresses that occurred each time it snapped its jaws shut. To figure out how, we needed to turn back to the engineers and to another paleontologist who has crossed over into the realm of hard-core numbers science. Emily Rayfield’s lab at the University of Bristol in England is a big bright room with a row of computers, its large windows and breezy open plan like something out of Silicon Valley. The shelves are lined with manuals for various software packages, but there’s nary a fossil in sight. Emily doesn’t often collect fossils; she’s not that kind of paleontologist. Instead, she builds computer models of fossils—say, the skull of T. rex—and uses a technique called finite element analysis (FEA) to study how they would have behaved in a mechanical sense. FEA was developed by engineers and calculates the stress and strain distributions in a digital model of a structure when it is subjected to various simulated loads. In plain English, it’s a way to predict what will happen to something when some kind of force is applied to it. This is very useful for engineers. Before a construction crew starts building a bridge, let’s say, the engineers better be pretty damn sure that the bridge isn’t going to collapse when heavy cars start driving over it. To check, they can build a digital model of the bridge and use the computer to imitate the stresses from real cars to see how the bridge reacts. Does it absorb the weight and force of the cars easily, or does it start to crack under pressure? If it does start to crack, the computer can identify the weak points and the engineers can go back to the plans for the actual bridge to make the necessary fixes. Emily does the same thing with dinosaurs, and T. rex has been one of her favorite muses. She built a digital model of Rex’s skull based on CAT scans of a well-preserved fossil, and then used the FEA program to simulate the forces of a bone-crunching bite and analyze how the skull reacted. The verdict: T. rex had a remarkably strong skull that was optimized to endure the extreme pushing and pulling forces of its three-thousand-pound-per-tooth chomp. It was built like an airplane fuselage: the individual bones tightly sutured together so that they wouldn’t come apart when the stress hit. The nasal bones above the snout were fused together into a long, vaulted tube, which acted as a stress sink."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "Thick bars of bone around the eye provided strength and rigidity, and the robust lower jaw was almost circular in cross section so that it could withstand high pressures from all directions. None of these things are present in other theropods, which had daintier skulls with looser connections among the various bones. The skull of Tyrannosaurus rex. Courtesy of Larry Witmer. The brain cavity (upper right-hand corner) and sinuses inside the skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex, revealed by CAT scans. Courtesy of Larry Witmer. That’s the final piece of the puzzle, the last component in the tool kit that allowed T. rex to bite so strongly that it punctured, and then pulled through, the bones of its supper. Thick peg-like teeth, huge jaw muscles, and a rigidly constructed skull: that was the winning combination. Without any of these things, T. rex would have been a normal theropod, slicing and dicing its prey with care. That’s how the other big boys did it—Allosaurus, Torvosaurus, and the carcharodontosaurs—because they didn’t have the arsenal necessary for bone-crunching. Once again, the King stands alone. T. REX WAS able to gnash through most anything that it wanted to eat, whether it was splurging on a forty-foot-long Edmontosaurus or snacking on smaller contemporaries like the donkey-size ornithischian Thescelosaurus. But how did it capture its food? Not, as it turns out, with exceptional speed. T. rex was a special dinosaur in many ways, but one thing it could not do is move very fast. There’s a famous scene in Jurassic Park where the bloodthirsty T. rex, convulsed by its insatiable appetite for human flesh, chases down a jeep driving at highway speeds. Don’t believe the movie magic—the real T. rex likely would have been left in the dust once the jeep got up to third gear. It’s not that Rex was a plodding slouch that waddled through the forest. Far from it—T. rex was agile and energetic, and it moved with purpose, its head and tail balancing each other as it tiptoed through the trees, stalking its prey. But its maximum speed was probably in the ballpark of ten to twenty-five miles per hour. That’s faster than we can run, but it’s not as quick as a racehorse or, certainly, a car on the open road. Once again, it’s high-tech computer modeling that has allowed paleontologists to study how T. rex moved. This work was pioneered in the early 2000s by John Hutchinson, an American transplant to England who is now a professor at the Royal Veterinary College near London. He spends his days working with animals: monitoring the livestock on his university’s research campus, making elephants run across scales to study their posture and locomotion, dissecting ostriches and giraffes and other exotic creatures. John chronicles his adventures on his popular blog, the wonderfully but somewhat disturbingly titled What’s in John’s Freezer?"}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "He also pops up frequently as a talking head on television documentaries, often adorned in his favorite purple shirt, which somehow doesn’t crack the cameras with its glare. Like Greg Erickson, John is a scientist whom I’ve long admired because of his unique angle on studying dinosaurs. For John, the present is very much the key to the past: find out as much as we can about the anatomy and behaviors of today’s animals, and that will help us understand dinosaurs. If you visit John’s lab, he really does have freezers stocked with the frozen cadavers of animals of all shapes and sizes, from all over the world. Odds are, one or two of them will be out thawing, getting ready for the dissection table. But there is a more sterile side to John’s lab: the computers, which he uses to make digital models of dinosaurs, like those we saw in chapter 3 that we made to predict the weight and posture of long-necked sauropods. He starts with a three-dimensional model of a skeleton, captured through CAT scans, laser surface scans, or the photogrammetry method we learned about earlier. Then he uses his knowledge of modern animals to flesh it out: to add muscles (whose sizes and positions are based on the attachment sites visible on the fossil bones) and other soft tissues, wrap it up in skin, and position it in realistic postures. The computer does its magic, putting the model through all sorts of gymnastics routines, and calculates how fast the real animal was likely able to move. John’s modeling provides us with the range of ten to twenty-five miles per hour that I cited for T. rex’s speed. The computer models also make clear that Rex would have needed absurdly large leg muscles to run as fast as a horse: more than 85 percent of its total body mass in its thighs alone, which is obviously impossible. T. rex was simply too big to run exceptionally fast. Its sheer size also conferred another liability: the Tyrant King couldn’t turn very quickly, or otherwise it would topple over like a truck taking a corner too sharply. Thus, the reality is, Spielberg had it wrong, T. rex was no sprinter, and it would have ambushed its prey with a quick strike rather than chasing it down like a cheetah. Ambushing prey can take a lot of energy—in bursts. Thankfully, T. rex had another trick up its sleeve, or more precisely, deep inside its chest. Remember those hyperefficient lungs of sauropods, which allowed them to reach such enormous sizes? T. rex had the same lungs. They are the lungs of today’s birds: rigid bellows anchored to the backbone, able to extract oxygen when the animal breaths in and also when it breathes out. They’re different from our lungs, which can take in oxygen only during inhalation, then spew out carbon dioxide during exhalation. They are a stunning feat of biological engineering."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "When today’s birds—and also T. rex—breathe in, oxygen-rich air courses through the lungs as you would expect. However, some of the inhaled air doesn’t go through the lungs right away but is shunted into a system of sacs connected to the lung. There it waits, until it is released when the animal exhales, passing through the lungs and delivering its oxygen-rich hit even as carbon dioxide waste is being expelled. Birds get twice the bang for the buck, a continuous supply of energy-sustaining oxygen. If you’ve ever wondered how some birds can fly at tens of thousands of feet, in rarefied air where we would have a hard time breathing (just ask anyone who has experienced the oxygen masks coming down midflight), their lungs are their secret weapon. Paleontologists have yet to find a fossilized T. rex lung and probably never will. The thin tissues are too delicate to fossilize. But we know that Rex had a birdlike, ultra-efficient lung, because this kind of breathing system leaves impressions on the bones, which do fossilize. It all has to do with the air sacs, the air-storage compartments integral to the bird-style lung. These sacs are akin to balloons: they are soft, thin-walled, compliant bags that inflate and deflate during the ventilation cycle. Many air sacs are connected to the lung, nestled in between the many other organs of the chest, including the trachea and esophagus, the heart, the stomach, and intestines. Sometimes they run out of room and start wiggling their way into the only space still available: the bones themselves. As they do so, they invade the bone through large, smooth-walled holes and then expand into chambers once inside. These signatures are easy to identify on fossils. We see them on the backbones of T. rex, along with many other dinosaurs, including, as we learned about earlier, the humongous sauropods. We never see these things on mammals, or lizards, or frogs, or fish, or any other types of animals—only in modern birds and extinct dinosaurs and a few very close relatives, a telltale fingerprint of their unique lungs. The drama of a T. rex ambush is coming into focus. The lungs delivered the energy, which was then transferred to the leg muscles, which propelled the Rex forward with a burst of speed to lunge at its startled victim. And then what happened? Just imagine T. rex as a giant land shark. Like a Great White, all of the action was with its head. Rex led with its noggin and used its clamp-strong jaws to grab its dinner, subdue it, kill it, and crunch through its flesh and guts and bones before swallowing. T. rex simply had to hunt headfirst, because its arms were pitifully tiny. The King evolved from smaller tyrannosaur ancestors, like Guanlong and Dilong, that used their much longer arms to grab their prey."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "But during the course of tyrannosaur evolution, the head got bigger, the arms got smaller, and the skull gradually took over all of the hunting functions that the arms used to perform. Why, then, did T. rex still have arms? Why didn’t it lose them completely, the way whales ditched their no-longer-necessary hindlegs when they evolved from land mammals that colonized the water? That mystery has captivated scientists for a long time, and it’s kept cartoonists and comedians supplied with an endless source of material for bad puns. As it turns out, those little arms—as silly as they may look—were not useless. Although short, they were stocky and muscular, and they served a purpose. Sara Burch figured it out. Sara and I both trained in Paul Sereno’s lab at the University of Chicago, where we became friends, but our paths diverged afterward: I went down the route of studying genealogy and evolution, and Sara became enthralled with bones and muscles. She did her PhD in an anatomy department, where she dissected a zoo’s worth of animals, and has since carved out a career that is common for paleontologists: teaching human anatomy to medical students. Sara knows more about the anatomical structure of dinosaurs than almost anyone alive—how their bones connected to each other, what kind of muscles they had. She reconstructed the forearm muscles of T. rex and many other theropods, determining which muscles were present, and how big they were, from the preserved attachment sites on the bones, helped along by comparisons to modern reptiles and birds for guidance. Rex’s seemingly sad arms actually turned out to have powerful shoulder extensors and elbow flexors—exactly those muscles needed to hold on to something that is trying to pull away, to keep it close to the chest. It seems that T. rex used its short but strong arms to hold down struggling prey while the jaws did their bone-crunching thing. The arms were accessories to murder. Now there’s one final twist in the story of how T. rex hunted. We increasingly believe that Rex didn’t go on the prowl alone; it traveled in packs. The evidence comes from a Canadian fossil site located between Edmonton and Calgary, in what is now Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park. It was discovered back in 1910 by none other than Barnum Brown, who just a few years earlier found the first T. rex skeleton in Montana. Brown was traveling through the heart of the Canadian prairies, floating down the Red Deer River on a boat and dropping anchor wherever he saw dinosaur bones sticking out of the riverbank. When he came to Dry Island, he noticed a number of bones from a slightly older cousin of T. rex called Albertosaurus, one of the North American apex predators right before Rex migrated over from Asia. He had time to collect only a small sample before heading back to New York."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "Those bones languished deep in the vaults of the American Museum for decades, until Phil Currie—Canada’s leading dinosaur hunter (and one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet) — took notice of them in the 1990s. He retraced Brown’s steps, relocated the site, and began excavating. Over the next decade, his team collected more than a thousand bones, which belong to at least a dozen individuals, ranging from youngsters to adults, all of them Albertosaurus. There’s really only one way numerous individuals of the same species can be preserved together: they must have lived and died together. A few years later, Phil’s crew found a similar mass graveyard in Mongolia, packed with several Tarbosauruses, the very closest Asian cousin of T. rex. Albertosaurus and Tarbosaurus were evidently pack animals, and we reckon that Rex itself was as well. If a seven-ton, bone-crunching, ambush predator isn’t scary enough on its own, then just imagine a pack of them working together. Sweet dreams! LET’S GET INTO the King’s head. What did it think? How did it sense its world? How did it locate its prey? These are, of course, very difficult questions to answer. Even with modern living animals, it’s almost impossible to put ourselves in their feet, or paws, or paddles and feel what their world is like. But we can study their brains and sense organs and start to put together a picture. With dinosaurs, however, we are usually out of luck: the brains, eyes, nerves, and tissues associated with the ears and nose are soft and decay easily, meaning they rarely make it through the rigors of fossilization. What can we do? Technology, yet again, makes the impossible possible. The brains, ears, noses, and eyes of dinosaurs may be long gone, but these organs occupied spaces in the bones. The brain cavity, the eye socket, and so on. We can study these spaces to get a sense of the original sense organs that filled them, but there is another problem: many of these spaces are inside the bones, not observable from the outside. That’s where the technology comes in: we can use CAT scans (also known by the shorter abbreviation of CT) to visualize the inside of dinosaur bones. CAT scans are nothing more than high-powered X-rays. That’s why they’re popular in medicine: if you feel a pain in your gut or a creak in your bones, your doctor will probably stick you in a CAT scanner to see what’s going on inside your body without having to cut you open. Ditto with dinosaurs. We can use the X-rays to take an array of internal images, which we can then stitch together into three-dimensional models using various software packages. This procedure has become practically routine in paleontology, such that many labs—including my own in Edinburgh—have a CAT scanner onsite."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "Ours was hand-built by one of my colleagues, Ian Butler, a geochemist by training who now finds himself scanning fossil after fossil, each one leading him deeper into the addiction that is paleontology. Ian Butler CAT-scanning the skull of the primitive tyrannosaur Timurlengia at the University of Edinburgh. Photo courtesy of the author A CAT scan reconstruction of the brain, inner ear, and associated nerves and blood vessels of Tyrannosaurus rex. Courtesy of Larry Witmer. Ian and I are newcomers to the fossil-scanning game. We’re following in the footsteps of a few giants in the field: Larry Witmer of Ohio University, Chris Brochu of the University of Iowa, and the wife-and-husband team of Amy Balanoff and Gabe Bever, who started at the University of Texas, moved on to the American Museum in New York (where I met them when I was a PhD student), and are now ensconced at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Balanoff and Bever are virtuosos who can read CAT scans the way a linguist deciphers ancient manuscripts. In the grayscale splotches of the X-rays, they can make out the internal structures that powered the intelligence and sensory prowess of long-dead dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurs like T. rex have been some of their favorite subjects—their favorite patients, if you will, whose behaviors and cognitive abilities are mysteries to be diagnosed. The scans tell us quite a bit about our patient. First off, Rex had a distinctive brain. It didn’t look anything like our brain but was more of a long tube with a slight kink at its back, surrounded by an extensive network of sinuses. It’s also a relatively large brain, at least for a dinosaur, which hints that T. rex was fairly intelligent. Now, measuring intelligence is riddled with uncertainties, even for humans: just think of all of the IQ tests, exams, SAT scores, and other things that we use to try to assess how smart people are. However, there is a straightforward measure that scientists use to roughly compare the intelligence of different animals. It’s called the encephalization quotient (EQ). It’s basically a measure of the relative size of the brain compared to the size of the body (because, after all, bigger animals have bigger brains simply because of their body size: elephants have bigger brains than we do but are not more intelligent). The largest tyrannosaurs like T. rex had an EQ in the range of 2.0 to 2.4. By comparison, our EQ is about 7.5, dolphins come in around 4.0 to 4.5, chimps at about 2.2 to 2.5, dogs and cats are in the 1.0 to 1.2 range, and mice and rats languish around 0.5. Based on these numbers, we can say that Rex was roughly as smart as a chimp and more intelligent than dogs and cats. That’s a whole lot smarter than the dinosaurs of stereotype. One part of the tyrannosaur brain was particularly enlarged: the olfactory bulbs."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "These are the lobes at the front of the brain that control the sense of smell. The two bulbs were each a little larger than a golf ball, much bigger in absolute size than in any other theropods. Of course, T. rex was one of the biggest theropods, so maybe it had whopping olfactory lobes simply by virtue of its extreme bulk. What is needed, then, is a relative measure of olfactory bulb size. My friend Darla Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary did just that. She compiled CAT scans of numerous theropods, calculated the size of their olfactory bulbs, and normalized them by dividing by body size. Even after all of this, she still found the big tyrannosaurs to be extreme outliers: they, along with the raptor dinosaurs, had proportionally enormous olfactory bulbs, and thus a sharp sense of smell, compared to other meat-eating dinosaurs. It wasn’t only the nose. Other senses were heightened as well. The CAT scans allow us to see inside Rex’s inner ear: the pretzel-shaped network of tubes that control both hearing and balance. The semicircular canals at the top of the inner ear—which make the pretzel shape—were long and loopy. As we know from comparisons to modern animals, this means that T. rex was agile and capable of highly coordinated head and eye movements. Sticking downward from the pretzel is the cochlea, the part of the inner ear that regulates hearing. In T. rex the cochlea was elongated, more than in most other dinosaurs. There is a tight relationship in living animals: the longer the cochlea, the better sensitivity to lower-frequency sounds. In other words, Rex also had a keen sense of hearing. Vision, too: the huge eyeballs of T. rex faced partially to the side and partially to the front, meaning that they were capable of binocular vision. The King could see in three dimensions and perceive depth, just like us. There’s another scene in Jurassic Park where the freaked-out humans are told to stay still, because if they don’t move, then the T. rex can’t see them. Nonsense—because it could sense depth, a real Rex would have made an easy meal out of those sad, misinformed people. Thus it wasn’t all brute strength. T. rex had brawn all right, but it also had brains. High intelligence, world-class sense of smell, keen hearing and vision. Add these things to the armory: they’re what Rex used to target its victims, to choose which poor dinosaurs would have to die. WHEN I ENVISION T. rex as a real animal, what most amazes me is that it would have started life as a tiny hatchling. All dinosaurs, as far as we know, hatched from eggs. We have yet to find any T. rex eggs, but we do have eggs and nests of many closely related theropods. Most of these dinosaurs seemed to guard their nests and provide at least a bit of care for their young."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "Without some parental love, the baby dinosaurs would have been hopeless, because they were tiny: no dinosaur eggs that we know of are larger than a basketball, so even the mightiest species like T. rex would have been, at most, the size of a pigeon when they entered the world. Back when my parents were learning about dinosaurs in school, the assumption was that T. rex and kin grew like iguanas: they kept growing throughout their life, gradually getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Rex was able to get so large because it lived for a long time: after about a century, it would reach its final size of forty-two feet and seven tons, then finally saunter off and die. This type of thinking even percolated into the dinosaur books I read as a child, but like many once cherished notions about dinosaurs, it turns out to be false. Dinosaurs like T. rex grew rapidly, a lot more like birds than lizards. The evidence is buried deep inside the bones of dinosaurs, and paleontologists like Greg Erickson found a way to tease it out. Bones are not static rods and blobs stuck in our bodies; no, they’re dynamic, growing, living tissues that repair and remodel themselves constantly. This is why your bones heal if you break them. As most bones grow, they get wider in all directions, expanding outward from the center, but usually bones grow rapidly only during certain parts of the year: the summer or the wet season, when food is plentiful. Growth slows down during the winter or dry season. If you cut open a bone, you can see a record of each time growth transitions from rapid to slow: a ring. That’s right—just like trees, bones have rings inside, and because that summer-to-winter switch happens once a year, that means one ring is laid down each year. By counting the rings you can tell how old a dinosaur was when it died. Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada. Photo courtesy of the author Greg got permission to cut open the bones of several different T. rex skeletons, along with many other close tyrannosaur relatives like Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus. Shockingly, not a single bone had more than thirty growth rings. That means tyrannosaurs matured, reached adult size, and died within three decades. Big dinosaurs like T. rex didn’t grow slowly for many decades (or centuries) but must have reached their huge sizes by growing rapidly for a much shorter period of time. But how quickly? To figure it out, Greg constructed growth curves: he plotted the age of each skeleton, determined from the number of bone rings against its body size, calculated from those equations we learned about earlier that estimate weight based on limb dimensions. This allowed Greg to compute how quickly T. rex grew each year."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "The number is almost too big to comprehend: during its teenage years, from about ages ten to twenty, Rex put on about 1,700 pounds (760 kilograms) per year. That’s close to 5 pounds per day! No wonder T. rex had to eat so much—all of that Edmontosaurus and Triceratops flesh fired the insane teenage growth spurt that turned a kitty-size hatchling into the King of the Dinosaurs. You could call T. rex the James Dean of dinosaurs: it lived fast and died young. And all of that hard living put a tremendous strain on its body. The skeleton had to endure the daily addition of five pounds during the spurt years. Somehow the body had to morph from wee hatchling to monster, so it comes as no surprise that the skeleton of T. rex changed dramatically as it matured. As youngsters, they were sleek cheetahs, as teenagers gangly looking sprinters, and as adults pure-blooded terrors longer and heavier than a bus. The younger ones probably ran a lot faster than the adults and maybe could have chased down their prey, whereas the silverbacks were so huge that they could only ambush and relied much more on their strength than their speed. What’s particularly frightening is that juveniles and adults seemed to live together in packs, meaning they may have hunted in teams, complementing each other’s skills to make life hell on their prey. One of my dearest paleontologist friends has made a career studying how T. rex changed as it grew. He’s a Canadian named Thomas Carr, now a professor at Wisconsin’s Carthage College. You can spot Thomas from a mile away. He has the fashion sense of a 1970s preacher and some of the mannerisms of Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. Thomas always wears black velvet suits, usually with a black or dark red shirt underneath. He has long bushy sideburns and a mop of light hair. A silver skull ring adorns his hand. He’s easily consumed by things and has a long-running obsession with absinthe and the Doors. That and tyrannosaurs: he’ll talk a lot about T. rex, because it’s his favorite subject of all. Ever since he was young, he wanted to study the Tyrant King, and he eventually wrote a PhD dissertation on how the skull of T. rex changed as it matured. It was over 1,270 pages long; meticulous as Thomas always is, it’s one of his shorter scholarly works. Bone by bone, Thomas has chronicled the metamorphosis of Tyrannosaurus rex. Almost the entire head was reshaped as it went from boy to man, girl to woman. The skull started out long and low, with a stretched-out snout, thin teeth, and shallow depressions for jaw muscles. Throughout the teenage years, it got bigger, deeper, and stronger. The sutures between bones locked more tightly together, the jaw-muscle depressions became much deeper, and the teeth turned into bone-shattering pegs."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_6.txt", "text": "The juveniles weren’t capable of puncture-pull feeding; that only became possible in adulthood, around the same time that Rex switched from a speedster to a slower ambusher. There were other changes too: the sinuses within the skull expanded, probably to help lighten the ever heavier head, and the little horns on the eyes and cheeks became larger and more prominent, the tiny bumps becoming gaudy display ornaments to attract mates when those teenage hormones kicked in. It was quite the transformation. After all of those meals, the decade of exponential growth, the complete refiguring of the skull, the loss of the ability to run fast but the acquisition of puncture-pull biting, the Rex was all man, all woman, and ready to claim its throne. AND THERE YOU have it, a glimpse into the life and times of the most famous dinosaur in history. T. rex bit so hard it could crunch through the bones of its prey, it was so bulky that it couldn’t run fast as an adult, it grew so fast as a teenager that it put on five pounds a day for a decade, it had a big brain and sharp senses, it hung around in packs, and it was even covered in feathers. Maybe it’s not the biography you were expecting. And there’s the rub. Everything we have learned about T. rex tells us that it, and dinosaurs more generally, were incredible feats of evolution, well adapted to their environments, the rulers of their time. Far from being failures, they were evolutionary success stories. They were also remarkably similar to animals of today, particularly birds—Rex had feathers, grew rapidly, and even breathed like a bird. Dinosaurs were not alien creatures. No, they were real animals that had to do what all animals do: grow, eat, move, and reproduce. And none of them did it better than T. rex, the one true King."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs 7 Dinosaurs at the Top of Their Game Triceratops Chapter Title art by Todd Marshall AS TERRIFYING AS IT WAS, T. rex was not a global supervillain. Its dominion was North America—western North America, to be more precise. No Asian, European, or South American dinosaurs lived in fear of T. rex. In fact, they never would have met one. During the latest Cretaceous—the last throes of dinosaur evolution, about 84 to 66 million years ago, when T. rex and its jumbo-size tyrannosaur cousins topped the food chain—the geographical harmony of Pangea was a distant memory. By then, the supercontinent had long ago fractured into pieces, each chunk drifting apart from the others slowly over the Jurassic and Early to middle part of the Cretaceous, the gaps in between the new shards of land filled by oceans. When T. rex took its crown, just a couple million years before the Age of Dinosaurs ended in a bang, the map was more or less as it is today. North of the equator there were two big landmasses: North America and Asia, with essentially their modern shapes. They ever so slightly kissed each other near the North Pole, but otherwise were separated by a wide Pacific Ocean. There was an Atlantic Ocean, too, on the other side of North America, which encircled a series of islands that corresponded to modern-day Europe. Sea level was so high during the latest Cretaceous—the result of a hothouse world where very little, if any, water was locked up in polar ice caps—that most of low-lying Europe was flooded. Only a constellation of random morsels—the higher parts of Europe—poked up from the waves. High sea level also pushed water farther inland, so that warm subtropical seas lapped far onto both North America and Asia. The North American seaway extended all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic. In effect, it bisected the continent into an eastern slice called Appalachia and a western microcontinent called Laramidia, the hunting grounds of T. rex. It was a similar situation in the south. The yin-and-yang puzzle pieces of South America and Africa had just recently detached, a narrow corridor of the South Atlantic nestled between. Antarctica sat at the bottom of the world, balanced on the South Pole. Off to its north was Australia, a bit more crescent-shaped than it is today. Fingers of crust kept Antarctica in contact with both Australia and South America, but these were tenuous, liable to be swamped any time sea level crept up slightly. During those high-water stands, just as in the north, seas extended far inland onto the southern continents, drowning much of northern Africa and southern South America. What is now the Sahara would have been waterlogged. However, during those times when the seas receded a little bit, an archipelago provided a route between Africa and Europe—a highway, albeit a fleeting and treacherous one, between north and south."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "A few hundred miles off the east coast of Africa was a triangular wedge, an island continent. This was India, the only large piece of land in the latest Cretaceous that would look out of place to us today. India began its life as a sliver of ancient Gondwana—the big mass of southern lands that separated from the north when Pangea began to split—wedged in between what would become Africa and Antarctica. It severed all ties with its neighbors some time during the early part of the Cretaceous and began a race northward, moving at more than six inches (fifteen centimeters) per year. Most continents, by contrast, drift at a much slower pace, about the speed that our fingernails grow. This brought India to the middle part of the proto–Indian Ocean, a bit south of the Horn of Africa, in the latest Cretaceous. Another 10 million years or so and it would complete its journey, colliding with Asia to form the Himalayas, but by then the dinosaurs were long gone. In between these pieces of land were the oceans—a domain dinosaurs were never able to conquer. The warm waters of the Cretaceous, as during the Jurassic and Triassic beforehand, were the hunting grounds of various types of giant reptiles: plesiosaurs with long noodle-shaped necks, pliosaurs with enormous heads and paddlelike flippers, streamlined and finned creatures called ichthyosaurs that looked like reptilian versions of dolphins, and many others. They dined on each other and on fish and sharks (most of which were much smaller than today’s species), which in turn fed on tiny shelled plankton that choked the ocean currents. None of these reptiles were dinosaurs—even though they are often mistaken for dinosaurs in popular books and movies, they were merely distant reptilian cousins. For whatever reason—and we don’t yet know the answer—no dinosaurs were able to do what whales did: start on the land, change their bodies into swimming machines, and make a living in the water. They were stuck on the land, one of the few liabilities they were never able to overcome. In the latest Cretaceous, this meant that they had to deal with a disjointed world. The land was divided into different kingdoms, fragments of dry ground separated by those reptile-infested seas, their dinosaurs isolated from each other. And that includes T. rex. The King may have been able to easily subjugate the dinosaurs of Europe or India or South America, but it never got the chance. It was restricted to western North America. This was good news for other dinosaurs, especially the plant-eaters, but it also gave other types of meat-eaters the opportunity to seize their own kingdoms, and various groups of carnivores did just that, the story a little bit different on each of the Cretaceous continents. Each landmass had a unique suite of dinosaurs—its own megapredators, second-tier hunters, scavengers, big and small herbivores, and omnivores."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "Provinciality extended to other species as well: there were distinct types of crocodiles, turtles, lizards, frogs, and fishes on the various parcels of land, and of course, different types of plants too. In this way, isolation bred diversification. So it was that the latest Cretaceous—this world of such geographical and ecological complexity, with different ecosystems stranded on different continents—was the heyday of the dinosaurs. It was their time of greatest diversity, the apogee of their success. There were more species than ever before, from pint-size ones to giants, eating all kinds of foods, endowed with a spectacular variety of crests, horns, spikes, feathers, claws, and teeth. Dinosaurs at the top of their game, doing as well or better than they had ever done, still in control more than 150 million years after their earliest ancestors were born on Pangea. TO FIND THE best fossils of latest Cretaceous dinosaurs—including bones of T. rex itself—you have to go to hell—or rather, the badlands surrounding Hell Creek, a once trickling tributary of the Missouri River that is now a flooded arm of a reservoir in northeastern Montana. It’s a place of stifling humidity and mosquito swarms, with rare breezes and little shade. Just rock bluffs that stretch to the horizon in all directions, radiating heat like a sauna. Barnum Brown was one of the first explorers to visit Hell Creek in search of dinosaurs, and it was in the scabby hills a hundred miles or so southeast of the creek where he found the first skeleton of T. rex in 1902. His bosses in New York were overjoyed, and Brown was given a mandate to bring more fossils back to the big city. Over the next few years, decked out in his fur coat with his pickaxe slung over his shoulder, he prospected the bluffs, gullies, and dry streambeds along the Missouri River and farther southeast. The fossils kept coming, and after a while Brown came to understand the geology of the area. All of the bones were buried inside a thick sequence of rocks that formed much of the badlands topography—a layer-cake array of reds, oranges, browns, tans, and blacks, made up of sand and mud deposited by ancient rivers. He called these rocks the Hell Creek Formation. The Hell Creek rocks were formed between about 67 and 66 million years ago, by a tangle of rivers that drained the young Rocky Mountains to the west, then meandered across a vast floodplain, occasionally bursting their banks and pooling into lakes and swamps, before emptying eastward into that great seaway that cut North America in two. These were fertile, lush environments, a perfect setting for so many types of dinosaurs to thrive. It was also an environment where sediments were being deposited and turned into rock, with the bones inside them along for the ride. Lots of dinosaurs and lots of sediments—that’s the recipe for a fossil bonanza."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "I took my first trip to Hell in 2005, a century after Brown’s T. rex was unveiled in New York. I was an undergraduate, a month removed from my first-ever dinosaur-hunting expedition, excavating Jurassic sauropods in Wyoming with Paul Sereno. Looking to gain additional fieldwork experience, I drove out to Montana with a crew from the closest thing I could call my local museum, the aforementioned Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois. Rockford isn’t the type of place you’d expect to have a dinosaur museum. For one, not a single dinosaur fossil has ever been found in Illinois—my home state is too flat, too geologically boring, almost barren of rocks formed during the time dinosaurs reigned. Nor have past decades been kind to its manufacturing-based economy. Yet Rockford has one of the finest natural history museums in the Midwest. The staff of the Burpee Museum often refer to themselves as “the little museum that could,” which speaks to the odd twists of fate they’ve had to navigate. For most of its existence, the museum was little more than a fusty collection of stuffed birds, rocks, and Native American arrowheads, poking out of the nooks and lofts of a once-grand nineteenth-century mansion. Then in the 1990s, the museum received a startling donation from a private benefactor, and a new wing was added. Exhibits were needed to fill the expansion, so the administrators hatched a trip to Hell Creek to bring back dinosaurs. At that time, the Burpee Museum had only a single paleontology curator on its payroll, a soft-spoken, barrel-chested northern Illinois boy named Mike Henderson, infatuated with the smeared fossils of worms that lived hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs. He needed help, so he teamed up with a childhood friend—a boisterous, loudmouthed people person named Scott Williams. Along with comic books and superhero movies, Scott loved dinosaurs as a kid, but he didn’t have the opportunity to pursue paleontology as a career and ended up going into law enforcement. He was still a cop—and he looked the part, with his goatee, stocky build, and thick Chicago accent—when I first met him at the Burpee Museum when I was in high school. A few years later, after leaving the force for a full-time career in science, he became the collections manager at the museum, and today he helps manage one of the world’s largest dinosaur collections, at the Museum of the Rockies in Montana. During the summer of 2001, Mike and Scott led an eclectic crew of museum staff, geology students, and amateur volunteers out to the heart of Hell. They set up camp near the tiny town of Ekalaka, Montana, population about three hundred, not too far from the T-shaped junction where Montana meets both Dakotas. Brown had once searched this ground, but Mike and Scott found something that had eluded even the maestro. They happened upon the best, most complete skeleton of a teenage T. rex that had ever been found."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "It was the keystone fossil that told paleontologists that the King was a gangly, long-snouted, thin-toothed sprinter as a youngster, before it metamorphosed into a truck-size bone-crunching brute as an adult. Mike, Scott, and their crew discovered a fossil that immediately made the Burpee Museum a major player in dinosaur research. When the skeleton—which they nicknamed Jane, after a museum donor—went on display a few years later, paleontologists from around the world flocked to anonymous Rockford, Illinois, to see it—as did many hundreds of thousands of kids, families, and tourists. The Burpee Museum now had a superstar to headline its new exhibition hall. Mike and Scott kept going back to Hell for months at a time during the next few summers. Eventually they invited me to come along, but only after I earned their trust. I had become friends with Mike and Scott during my frequent visits to the Burpee Museum, which began while I was a high school sophomore. They first knew me as an annoying teenager with a dinosaur obsession, who, tape recorder and autograph Sharpie in hand, religiously attended the Museum’s annual PaleoFest, where notable scientists came to speak about their adventures studying dinosaurs (which, incidentally, is where I first met two of the eminent paleontologists who would later become my academic advisors: Paul Sereno and Mark Norell). I continued to drive up to Rockford throughout college, and once I started formally training to become a paleontologist in Sereno’s lab, Mike and Scott thought I was ready to join them on their annual descent into Hell. A thousand miles separate Rockford and Ekalaka. When we arrived, we took up residence at a place called Camp Needmore, a scattering of wooden bunkhouses deep in the cool pine forests that rise above the badlands. That first night I was kept awake by the wail of a synthesizer, coming from one of the cabins next door. It was the bunkhouse occupied by a trio of volunteers who drove out separately from Rockford, all professionals taking a break from the grind of the office. Their ringleader was a short, quirky fellow. His name—Helmuth Redschlag—conjured up images of an imperious Prussian general, but he was from Middle America, and his job was much more sedate: he was an architect. Each night he partied deep into the morning with his friends—feasting on filet mignon and imported Italian cheeses, sipping fruity Belgian beers to the disco trash beat. Still, every morning he was up at six a.m., eager to head back into the furnace of Hell on the trail of dinosaurs. “It makes me feel alive. The heat. The sun beaming down, burning you, scarring your neck and your back, desperate for shade and water,” Helmuth said to me in the calm of one morning, before we set out into the inferno. Uh huh, uh huh, I nodded along, unsure of what to make of him."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "A couple of days later, while I was out prospecting with Scott and some of the other student volunteers, we got a frantic call from Helmuth. He was wandering a few miles down the road, enjoying the pain of the sun on his skin, when something caught his eye in a gully: a dark brown bulge sticking out of the dull tan-colored mud rocks. A lot of things caught Helmuth’s eye—he was an architect, after all, and a fine one at that—and his attention to the details of shapes and textures made him a very good fossil hunter. He sensed that this one was special, so he started to dig into the hillside. By the time we arrived on the scene, he had exposed a thighbone, several ribs and vertebrae, and part of the skull of a dinosaur. The bones from the head gave away its identity. Many of them were randomly shaped pieces of something flat and platelike, resembling shattered glass, and a few others were sharp, pointy cones: horns. Only one dinosaur in the Hell Creek ecosystem fit the profile: Triceratops, with three horns on its face and a broad, thick, billboard-like frill extending from behind its eyes. Triceratops, like its arch-nemesis T. rex, is a dinosaur icon. In films and documentaries, it usually plays the gentle, sympathetic plant-eater, the perfect dramatic foil to the Tyrant King. Sherlock versus Moriarty, Batman versus the Joker, Trike versus Rex. But it’s not all movie magic; no, these two dinosaurs truly would have been rivals 66 million years ago. They lived together along the lakes and rivers of the Hell Creek world, and they were the two most common species there—Triceratops making up some 40 percent of Hell Creek dinosaur fossils, T. rex coming in second at about 25 percent. The King needed immense amounts of flesh to fuel its metabolism; its three-horned comrade was fourteen tons of slow-moving prime steak. You can figure out what happened next. Indeed, Triceratops bones with bite marks matching T. rex attest to their ancient battles, but don’t think for a moment that it was an unfair fight, always destined to go the way of the predator. Triceratops was armed with a set of weapons: its horns, a stout one on the nose and a longer, thinner one above each eye. Like the frill on the back of the head, the horns probably evolved primarily for display—to make Triceratops seem sexy to potential mates and scary to its rivals—but no doubt Triceratops would use them in self-defense when needed. Triceratops is a new type of dinosaur in our story. It belongs to a group of plant-eating ornithischians called ceratopsians, which descended from some of the small, fast-running, leaf-toothed critters like Heterodontosaurus and Lesothosaurus of the Early Jurassic. Beginning some time in the Jurassic, the ceratopsians went down their own evolutionary path."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "They switched from walking on their hind legs to plodding along on all fours and started to develop a wardrobe variety of horns and frills on their heads, which would get larger and gaudier as a hatchling turned into a hormone-fueled adult that needed to woo mates. The first ceratopsians were dog-size critters; one of them, Leptoceratops, straggled into the Late Cretaceous, where it lived alongside Triceratops, its much larger cousin. As ceratopsids got bigger over time—morphing into bovine versions of dinosaurs that were very common in North America during the latest Cretaceous—they changed their jaws so that they could engulf unholy quantities of plants. They packed their teeth closely together so that the jaws were essentially blades—four in all, one on each side of the upper jaw and one on each side of the lower. The jaws would snap shut in a simple up-and-down motion, the opposing blades slicing past each other like a guillotine. At the front of the snout was a razor-sharp beak, which would pluck the stems and leaves and deliver them to the blades. Triceratops surely was as good at eating plants as T. rex was at devouring meat. The skull of Triceratops, the iconic horned dinosaur. Photo courtesy of the author Finding a Triceratops was another coup for the Burpee Museum, exactly what it needed to accompany the teenage T. rex in the new exhibit space. From the moment Helmuth showed us the bones in the ground, I could tell that Mike and Scott were thinking exactly that. Helmuth too—and as the discoverer of the new dinosaur, he got to give it a nickname. Like me he is a big fan of The Simpsons, so he decided to call it Homer. One day, we surmised, Homer would join Jane in the halls of the Burpee Museum. A jumble of Triceratops bones at the Homer site, belonging to a pack of juveniles. Photo courtesy of the author My field notebook from the 2005 Burpee Museum expedition to Hell Creek, showing the field map of the Homer Triceratops site that I made. Photo courtesy of the author But first we had to get Homer out of the ground. The crew began to wrap up the exposed bones in plaster bandages, to protect them during transport back to Rockford. Others were tasked with finding more bones. Thomas Carr—my absinthe-drinking, Goth-dressing friend who studies T. rex—was with us on the expedition and was part of this team. Clad in khaki (it was far too hot for his usual all-black getup) and sucking down Gatorade by the gallon (absinthe was more of an indoor pursuit), he attacked the mudstones with his rock hammer (which he nicknamed Warrior) and his pickaxe (Warlord), exposing a number of new Triceratops bones. As he and the others pulverized the hillside, more bones were jarred loose. Eventually the excavation site extended for some seven hundred square feet (sixty-four square meters), and yielded over 130 bones."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "It quickly became very complex, so Scott tasked me with making a map—a skill I had learned the previous month from Paul Sereno. I laid out a meter-by-meter grid of string attached to chisels pounded into the rock. Using the grid for reference, I sketched the location of each bone in my field notebook. On the adjacent page I identified each bone, assigned it a number, and made notes on its size and orientation. In this way, we began to make order from the chaos. The map and bone inventory revealed something peculiar. There were three copies of the same bone: three left nasals, the bone that makes up the front and side of the snout. Each Triceratops had only one left nasal, the same way it had only one head or one brain. Then it dawned on us: we had three Triceratopses: not only Homer, but Bart and Lisa too. Helmuth had found a Triceratops graveyard. It was the first time that anybody had found more than one Triceratops in the same place. Until Helmuth walked into that gully, we thought Triceratops was a solitary animal—and we were fairly confident, because Triceratops was so common, already known from hundreds of fossils found over a hundred years, each one a single individual, encountered on its own. But one discovery can change everything, and because of what Helmuth found, we now think that Triceratops was a pack species. It’s actually not too surprising, because there is ample evidence that close cousins of Triceratops—some of the other large, horned ceratopsian species living in other parts of North America during the final 20 million years of the Cretaceous—were social creatures that cohabited in big groups. One of these species, Centrosaurus, which lived in modern-day Alberta about 10 million years before Triceratops and had a giant horn rising from its nose, has also been found in a bone bed—not a modest bonebed like the Homer site, but one covering an area of nearly three hundred football fields and entombing more than a thousand individuals. Several other ceratopsians have also been found in mass graves, providing a wealth of circumstantial evidence that these big, slow, horned, plant-munching species were communal. It brings to mind an evocative image: these dinosaurs probably moved across Late Cretaceous western North America in vast herds, many thousands strong, rumbling the ground and kicking up clouds of dust as they plowed across the landscape, not much unlike the bison that would conquer the same plains many millions of years later. After we finished working the Homer site, we continued to prospect the miles of monotonous badlands around Ekalaka, trying to set out early in the morning to beat the worst of the heat. We found a lot of other dinosaur fossils—nothing as important as Homer, but clues from some of the other animals that shared the latest Cretaceous floodplains with Triceratops and T. rex."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "We discovered scores of teeth from smaller carnivores, including dromaeosaurid raptors of the Velociraptor mold, as well as the chompers of a pony-size animal called Troodon, a close relative of the raptors that had developed a taste for a more omnivorous diet. We also came across some foot bones of human-size omnivorous theropods called oviraptorosaurs—weird, toothless dinosaurs with flamboyant crests of bone atop their skulls and sharp beaks adapted to eat a whole variety of food, from nuts and shellfish to plants and small mammals and lizards. Other fossils pointed to two distinct types of herbivores: a fairly boring ornithischian called Thescelosaurus, about the size of a horse, and a slightly larger and much more interesting creature called Pachycephalosaurus, one of the “dome-headed” dinosaurs with a bowling-ball skull that it used to batter its rivals in fights over mates and territory. We also spent a couple of days excavating at another locality, which we hoped would turn out to be as productive as the Homer site. It didn’t live up to our expectations, but it did produce bones of what is the third most common dinosaur in the Hell Creek formation: another plant-eater called Edmontosaurus. At about seven tons in weight and forty feet (twelve meters) from snout to tail, Edmontosaurus was a big herbivore like Triceratops but of a very different breed. It was a hadrosaur, a member of the duck-billed clan of dinosaurs that evolved from a separate branch of the ornithischian family tree. They were also very common in the Late Cretaceous—particularly in North America—and many of them lived in herds, walking on either two or four legs depending on how fast they wanted to move, and communicating with bellowing sounds produced by the convoluted spaghetti-twisted nasal chambers within their elaborate head crests. Their nickname comes from the broad, toothless, ducklike bill at the front of their snout, which they used to snare twigs and leaves. Like ceratopsians, their jaws were modified into scissors for slicing—but with even more, and more tightly packed, teeth. Nor were their jaws limited to simple up-and-down movements, but they could pivot from side to side and even hinge outward a little bit, allowing for complex chewing motions. They were some of the most intricate feeding machines ever produced by evolution. Pachycephalosaurus, the dome-headed, head-butting dinosaur from Hell Creek. Photo courtesy of the author The hadrosaurs, and probably also the ceratopsians, had these sophisticated jaws for a reason. They were fine-tuned by evolution to feed on a new type of plant that had arisen earlier in the Cretaceous: the angiosperms, more commonly known as the flowering plants. Although flowering plants are exceedingly abundant today—the source of much of our food, the décor in many of our gardens—they would have been unknown to the first dinosaurs rising up on Pangea in the Triassic. They were likewise unfamiliar to the giant long-necked sauropods of the Jurassic, which instead inhaled other types of vegetation like ferns, cycads, ginkgos, and evergreen trees."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "Then, about 125 million years ago, in the Early Cretaceous, small flowers emerged in Asia. With another 60 million years of evolution, these proto-angiosperms had diversified into a range of shrubs and trees, including palms and magnolias, that dotted the Late Cretaceous landscape and that were tasty fodder for the new types of herbivorous dinosaurs that could eat them. There may have even been a little bit of grass—a very specialized type of angiosperm—sprinkled on the ground, but proper grasslands would not develop until much later, many tens of millions of years after the dinosaurs cleared out. Hadrosaurs and ceratopsians eating flowers. Smaller ornithischians feeding on shrubs, the pachycephalosaurs head-butting each other in tests of dominance. Poodle-size raptors prowling for salamanders, lizards, even some of our early mammal relatives, all of which are known from Hell Creek fossils. A variety of omnivores—Troodon and the freakish oviraptorosaurs—picking up whatever scraps the more specialized meat-eaters and plant-eaters forgot about. Other dinosaurs I haven’t yet mentioned, like the speed-demon ornithomimosaurs, and the heavily armored Ankylosaurus, fighting for their own niches. Pterosaurs and primitive birds soaring overhead; crocodiles lurking offshore in the rivers and the lakes. Not a sauropod to be found, and the King—the great T. rex itself—ruling over all of it. This was the Late Cretaceous of North America, the final flourish of the dinosaurs before disaster struck. Because of the wealth of fossils discovered by everyone from Barnum Brown to the teams from the Burpee Museum, it is the single richest dinosaur ecosystem known to science during the entire Age of Dinosaurs anywhere in the world, our best picture of how a variety of dinosaurs lived together and fit together into one food chain. It was much the same story in Asia, where big tyrannosaurs like my Pinocchio rex reigned over communities of duckbills, domeheads, raptors, and theropod omnivores—due to the close physical proximity with North America that allowed regular exchange of species between the two continents. Meanwhile, south of the equator, things were much different. ALMOST SMACK IN the middle of Brazil is a gently rolling plateau that was once covered by woodland savannah but is now prime farming country. There people grow some of the same crops found in the fields that stretch between my hometown and the Burpee Museum—mostly corn and soybeans—but also more exotic things like sugarcane, eucalyptus, and a whole host of delicious but unfamiliar fruits. This area is called Goiás, and it’s a landlocked state of some six million residents, crisscrossed by lonely highways. The national capital, Brasília, is a few hours away, and the Amazon surges a thousand miles to the north. Few foreign tourists ever make it here. Goiás, however, holds many secrets. You wouldn’t know it from the mundane topography, but underneath the farms is a hidden landscape, one that was on the surface between 86 and 66 million years ago."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "It is a terrain of windblown deserts on the fringes of great river valleys, represented today by a thousand-foot-thick basement of rocks, the foundation for the corn and bean fields. These rocks were molded out of the sand dunes, rivers, and lakes of the Late Cretaceous, in what was then a great basin formed from the residual stresses of South America and Africa cracking apart. This basin was a haven for dinosaurs. The Cretaceous rocks of Goiás remain mostly buried, but they do poke up here and there, along roads or stream banks. The best place to see them, though, is in quarries, where heavy machinery has torn through the earth to expose the layers of sandstone and mudstone beneath. That’s where I found myself one day in early July 2016, the beginning of the austral winter but still hot and muggy, adorned with a hard hat to save my scalp from falling stone and shin guards up to my knees to protect against an even greater danger: snakes. I had been invited to Brazil by Roberto Candeiro, a professor at the Universidade Federal de Goiás, the main university in the state, and an expert on the dinosaurs of South America. I had excavated and studied a lot of Late Cretaceous dinosaurs in North America and Asia, but Roberto advised me to get a southern perspective. He didn’t mention snakes as part of the deal. A few years earlier, Roberto had started a new undergraduate geology program at his university’s palm-lined campus on the rapidly growing outskirts of Goiânia, the state capital. The bleached white of the lecture halls—whose corridors were open to the breezy subtropical air—contrasted with the dirt streets and aluminum-roofed shanties just a few miles away. Mopeds growled their way through traffic while old men chopped coconuts with machetes on the roadsides, and monkeys swung from the trees in the distance. The next time I return, many of these remnants of old Brazil will probably be gone. The excitement of the new course, on the sparkling campus in the biggest city around, attracted a number of keen students, some of whom were joining Roberto and me on the trip to the quarry. There was Andre, a vivacious, potbellied comedian going back to school after trying out many different careers—papaya grower, taxi driver, and years ago a ranch hand in charge of manually deseminating male, and artificially inseminating female, pigs on one of those big farms in the flatlands. Much younger was eighteen-year-old Camila, a short wisp of a woman whose stature belies her boundless energy and ferocity—she relieves stress by kickboxing in her spare time. And then Ramon, a tall, tanned heartbreaker who, with his skinny jeans and hair slicked over to one side, could have leaped right out of one of the Brazilian boy-band music videos that seemed to be playing on every restaurant television."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "The quarry we were gathered in was owned by a young guy whose family had been farming in central Brazil for generations. They mined the rock for fertilizer. It is a strange type of stone that looks like concrete, with pebbles of various shapes and sizes embedded within a white matrix. The white stuff is limestone; the pebbles are various rocks that were washed around by the raging rivers of latest Cretaceous Brazil. Among those pebbles are rare bones—dinosaur fossils. Maybe one out of every ten or twenty thousand of them is bone instead of boulder, but whatever bones you can find are treasure, because they are the remains of some of the last dinosaurs of South America, those species living around the same time as T. rex, Triceratops, and the Hell Creek gang up north. Roberto Candeiro searching for fossils in Goiás, Brazil. Photo courtesy of the author Alas, after many hours of searching, we didn’t find any bones in the quarry when I visited. We also didn’t get bitten by any snakes, so it was a rare day when I came home from the field empty-handed but happy. Later during the trip, we did find some bones in other places, but only fragments. There would be no new species this time—which is often the case when you’re exploring a new area, because finding totally new dinosaurs is a hard job, dependent on luck and circumstance. But Roberto has led many such field trips over the past decade, often taking along his motley crew of students, and they’ve found a lot of bones. Roberto keeps some of them in his lab in Goiânia, where I spent the remainder of my time in Brazil working with Roberto and another of his buddies, an oil-company geologist named Felipe Simbras, who studies dinosaurs as a hobby. When you look at the fossils shelved in Roberto’s lab, it’s striking to see no T. rex. No tyrannosaurs of any kind, in fact, are known from the latest Cretaceous of Brazil. Spend a day walking through the Hell Creek badlands in Montana, and you’ll probably find several T. rex teeth—they’re that common. But zilch in Brazil, or anywhere else in the southern half of the planet. Instead, Roberto has drawers of other types of carnivorous dinosaur teeth. Some of these belong to a group that we’ve already met: the carcharodontosaurs, that clan of mighty meat-eaters that evolved from the allosaurs and terrorized much of the planet earlier in the Cretaceous. A few of them, like Carcharodontosaurus from Africa, which I studied with Paul Sereno, eventually reached sizes rivaling T. rex. Up north, the carcharodontosaurs came and went, ruling for tens of millions of years before ceding their crown to the tyrannosaurs in the middle Cretaceous. Down south they persisted to the very end of the Cretaceous, retaining their heavyweight title because there were no tyrannosaurs around to take it. Another type of tooth is commonly found in Brazil."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "They’re also sharp, serrated blades, so they must have come from the mouth of a carnivore, but they are usually a little smaller, more delicate. They belong to a different group of theropods called abelisaurids, an offshoot of fairly primitive Jurassic stock that found the southern continents ripe for the taking during the Cretaceous. A decent skeleton of one, called Pycnonemosaurus, was found one state over from Goiás, in Mato Grosso. The bones are fragmented but are thought to belong to an animal that was about thirty feet (nine meters) long and weighed a couple of tons. Even better skeletons of abelisaurids have been found farther south, in Argentina, while others have been discovered in Madagascar, Africa, and India. These more complete fossils—Carnotaurus, Majungasaurus, and Skorpiovenator among them—reveal abelisaurids as fierce animals, a little bit smaller than tyrannosaurs and carcharodontosaurs, but still at or near the top of the food chain. They had short, deep skulls, sometimes with stubby horns jutting out from near the eyes. The bones of the face and snout were encrusted with a rough, scarred texture, which probably supported a sheath made of keratin. They walked on two muscular legs like T. rex, but had even more pitiful arms. Although it was thirty feet (nine meters) long and 1.6 tons in weight, Carnotaurus had arms barely bigger than a kitchen spatula, which flopped around in a useless way, probably all but invisible if you were watching it go about its everyday business. Clearly the abelisaurids didn’t need their arms, relying on their jaws and their teeth for all of the dirty work. That dirty work, for both abelisaurids and carcharodontosaurids, was catching and chomping the other dinosaurs they lived with, particularly the plant-eaters. Some of them were similar to northern species—for example, some duck-billed dinosaurs have been found in Argentina. But for the most part, it was a different bunch of herbivores down south. There were no pulsating herds of ceratopsians like Triceratops, and no dome-headed pachycephalosaurs. There were, however, sauropods. Hordes of them. T. rex didn’t chase down any of these long-necked titans up in ancient Montana, as sauropods seemed to have disappeared from most of North America some time during the middle part of the Cretaceous (although they still did frequent the southern reaches of the continent). Not so in Brazil or the other austral lands. There sauropods remained the primary large-bodied plant-eaters, right up to the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. It was one particular type of sauropod that spread across the southlands. The halcyon days of the Jurassic were far gone, and no longer did Brachiosaurus, Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, and their ilk crowd together in the same ecosystems, finely dividing the niches between them with their distinctive teeth, necks, and feeding styles. What was left at the end of the Cretaceous was a more restricted roster of sauropods, a subgroup called the titanosaurs."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "Some were truly Biblical in proportions—like Dreadnoughtus from Argentina or Austroposeidon, described by Felipe the oilman and his colleagues from a series of vertebrae—each one the size of a bathtub—found directly south of Goiás in São Paulo State. It’s the largest dinosaur ever found in Brazil, and probably stretched about eighty feet (twenty-five meters) from snout to tail. It strains the senses to envision what it must have weighed, but probably somewhere in the ballpark of twenty to thirty tons, maybe much more. Other late-surviving southern titanosaurs—from Brazil and elsewhere—were considerably smaller. The so-called aeolosaurins were modest creatures, at least as sauropods go, with some of the better-known species, like Rinconsaurus, at a mere four tons and thirty-six feet (eleven meters) long. Another subgroup, called saltasaurids, were of the same general size, and they protected themselves from the hungry abelisaurids and carcharodontosaurs with a patchwork of armor plates implanted in their skin. We also know that there were some smaller theropods but nothing like the panoply of small to midsize carnivores and omnivores in North America. Maybe, you could argue, we just haven’t found their small and delicate bones yet, but that’s not a very satisfying explanation, because there are many skeletons of similar-size animals found in Brazil, but they are crocodiles, not theropods. Some of them were fairly standard water dwellers that probably wouldn’t have competed very much with dinosaurs, but others were bizarre animals adapted for living on the land, so unlike today’s crocs. Baurusuchus was a long-legged, doglike pursuit predator. Mariliasuchus had teeth that looked like the incisors, canines, and molars of mammals, which it probably used like pigs to eat a smorgasbord omnivorous diet. Armadillosuchus was a burrower with bands of flexible body armor, and it may have been able to roll up in the style of an armadillo, hence its name. None of these animals lived in North America, as far as we know. It seems that, in Brazil and throughout the Southern Hemisphere, these crocodiles were filling ecological niches held by dinosaurs in other parts of the world. Carcharodontosaurs and abelisaurids instead of tyrannosaurs, sauropods instead of ceratopsians, swarms of crocs instead of raptors, oviraptorosaurs, and other small theropods. The north and the south were different from each other during those waning years of the Cretaceous, that much is certain. But these big continental areas were downright normal—boring, even—compared to what was going on at the same time in the middle of the Atlantic, where some of the weirdest dinosaurs to ever evolve were hopping around the flooded remnants of Europe. OF ALL THE people who have ever studied dinosaurs, collected dinosaur bones, or even thought about dinosaurs in any serious way, there’s never been anybody quite like Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás. Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás, I should say, because this man was literally an aristocrat who dug up dinosaur bones."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "He seems like the invention of a mad novelist, a character so outlandish, so ridiculous, that he must be a trick of fiction. But he was very real—a flamboyant dandy and a tragic genius, whose exploits hunting dinosaurs in Transylvania were brief respites from the insanity of the rest of his life. Dracula, in all seriousness, has nothing on the Dinosaur Baron. Nopcsa was born in 1877 to a noble family in the gentle hills of Transylvania, in what is now Romania but was then on the fringes of the decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire. He spoke several languages at home, and they instilled within him an urge to wander. He also had urges of another kind, and when he was in his twenties, he became the lover of a Transylvanian count, an older man who regaled him with tales of a hidden kingdom of mountains to the south, where tribesmen wore dapper costumes, brandished long swords, and spoke in an indecipherable tongue. The local mountain men called their homeland Shqipëri. We know it today as Albania, but then it was a backwater on the southern edge of Europe, occupied for centuries by another great empire, the Ottoman. The baron decided to check it out for himself. He headed south, through the borderlands that separated two empires, and when he arrived in Albania, he was welcomed with a gunshot, which sliced through his hat and narrowly missed his skull. Undeterred, he proceeded to cross much of the country on foot. He picked up the language, grew his hair long, started dressing like the natives, and earned the respect of the insular tribes nestled among the mountain peaks. But the tribesmen might not have been so welcoming if they’d known the truth: Nopcsa was a spy. He was being paid by the Austro-Hungarian government to provide intelligence on their Ottoman neighbors, a mission that became even more critical—and dangerous—as the empires collapsed and the map of Europe was redrawn in the hellfires of World War I. That’s not to say that the baron was merely a mercenary. He was enamored of Albania—obsessed, really. He became one of Europe’s leading experts on Albanian culture and came to truly love its people—one in particular. Nopcsa fell for a young man from a sheepherding village in the high mountains. This man—Bajazid Elmaz Doda—nominally became Nopcsa’s secretary, but he was so much more, although it wasn’t spoken about so openly in those less accepting times. The two lovers would remain together for nearly three decades, enduring the leers of their peers, surviving the disintegration of their respective empires, traveling Europe by motorcycle (Nopcsa on the bike, Doda in a sidecar). Doda was by Nopcsa’s side when, in the chaos before the Great War, the baron plotted an insurgency of mountain men against the Turks—even smuggling in firearms to build an arsenal—and then later tried to install himself as king of Albania. Both schemes failed, so Nopcsa turned to other pursuits."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "As it turned out, that would be dinosaurs. In fact, Nopcsa became interested in dinosaurs before he knew anything of Albania, before he met Doda. When he was eighteen, his sister picked up a mangled skull on the family estate. The bones had turned to stone, and it didn’t look like any animal the young baron had ever seen scurrying or soaring across his stately grounds. He brought it with him when he started university in Vienna later that year, and upon showing it to one of his geology instructors, he was told to go find more. And so he did, obsessively exploring the fields, hills, and riverbeds of the land he would later inherit, on foot and horseback. Four years later, a blueblood in name but still just a student, he stood up in front of the learned men of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and announced what he had been up to and what he had found: a whole ecosystem of strange dinosaurs. Nopcsa continued to collect Transylvanian dinosaurs for much of the rest of his life, taking breaks here and there when his services were needed in Albania. He studied them, too, and in doing so was one of the first people who made any attempt to grasp what dinosaurs were like as real animals, not simply bones to be classified. He had a genius when it came to interpreting fossils, and it didn’t take him very long to notice that something was odd about the bones he was finding on his estate. He could tell that they belonged to groups that were common in other parts of the world—a new species that he named Telmatosaurus was a duckbill, a long-necked critter called Magyarosaurus was a sauropod, and he also found the bones of armored dinosaurs. However, they were smaller than their mainland relatives, in some cases, astoundingly so; while its cousins were shaking the Earth with their thirty-ton frames in Brazil, Magyarosaurus was barely the size of a cow. At first Nopcsa thought the bones belonged to juveniles, but when he put them under a microscope, he realized that they had the characteristic textures of adults. There was only one suitable explanation: these Transylvanian dinosaurs were miniatures. This raised an obvious question: why were they so tiny? Nopcsa had an idea. Along with his expertise in espionage, linguistics, cultural anthropology, paleontology, motorbiking, and general scheming, the baron was also a very good geologist. He mapped the rocks that held the dinosaur fossils and could tell that they had formed in rivers—thick sequences of sandstones and mudstones that were deposited either in the channels or off to the side when the rivers flooded. Underneath these rocks were other layers that came from the ocean—fine clays and shales bursting with microscopic plankton fossils."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "Tracing out the aerial extent of the river rocks and scrutinizing the contacts between the river and ocean layers, Nopcsa realized that his estate used to be part of an island, which emerged from the water some time during the latest Cretaceous. The mini-dinosaurs were living on a small bit of turf, probably around thirty thousand square miles (eighty thousand square kilometers) in area, about the size of Hispaniola. Maybe, Nopcsa conjectured, the dinosaurs were small because of their island habitat. It stemmed from an idea that some biologists of the time were beginning to entertain, based on studies of modern species living on islands and the discovery of some strange small mammal fossils in the middle of the Mediterranean. This theory held that islands are akin to laboratories of evolution, where some of the normal rules that govern larger landmasses break down. Islands are remote, so it is always a little bit random as to which species can make their way out to them, being carried by the wind or rafting in on floating logs. There is less space on islands, so fewer resources, so some species may not be able to get so big. And, because islands are severed from the mainland, their plants and animals can evolve in splendid isolation, their DNA cut off from that of their continental cousins, each inbred island-living generation becoming more different, more peculiar over time. This, Nopcsa, thought, is why his island-dwelling dinosaurs were so tiny, so funny looking. Later research showed that Nopcsa was correct, and his dwarf dinosaurs are now regarded as a prime example of the “island effect” in action. Otherwise, fate wasn’t so kind to the baron. Austria-Hungary was on the losing side in the Great War, and Transylvania was handed over to one of the winners, Romania. Nopcsa lost his lands and his castle, and a senseless attempt to reclaim his estate ended with him getting pummeled by a gang of peasants and left for dead by the side of the road. With little money to support his lavish lifestyle, Nopcsa grudgingly accepted the directorship of the Hungarian Geological Institute in Budapest, but bureaucratic life was not for him, so he quit. He sold off his fossils and moved to Vienna with Doda, destitute and overcome with a melancholy that we would probably today recognize as depression. Eventually he had enough. In April 1933, the erstwhile baron slipped some sedative into his lover’s tea. When Doda drifted off to sleep, Nopcsa put a bullet into him, then turned the gun on himself. Nopcsa’s tragic demise left one mystery. The baron had cracked the riddle of the island dinosaurs, and he knew why they were small, but almost every bone he found—whether sauropod, duckbill, or armored ankylosaur—came from a plant-eater. He had little clue as to what predators prowled his miniature menagerie. Were there freakish versions of tyrannosaurs or carcharodontosaurs that ruled the island, perhaps ones that skipped over from the continents?"}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "Other types of meat-eaters, also of diminutive stature? Or maybe there were no carnivores at all—the herbivores able to shrink in size because there was nothing out there hunting them. Solving this problem took a century and another remarkable character, a Transylvanian cut from the same cloth as Nopcsa. Mátyás Vremir is also a polymath, a man of many languages, a traveler who sets out for strange lands with little more than his rucksack. He’s never been a spy—as far as I know—but for many years he hopscotched around Africa, working on oil rigs and scouting new drill sites. Now he runs his own company in his native city of Cluj-Napoca, doing environmental surveys and geological consulting on building projects. He’s also into many other things: skiing and exploring caves in the Carpathians, canoeing the Danube Delta, and rock climbing, often bringing along his wife and two young sons (in this custom, he departs from Nopcsa). Tall and wiry, with the long hair of a rocker and the piercing eyes of a wolf, he has an intense personal code of honor and does not suffer fools gladly—or really, at all—but if he likes and respects you, he will go to war with you. He’s one of my favorite people in the world. If I ever found myself in any real danger, in any godforsaken corner of the planet, he’s the one person whom I would want by my side, a man I know I could trust with my life. He has many talents, but what Mátyás does best is find dinosaurs. Along with my friend Grzegorz from Poland, who found all of those footprints of the first dinosauromorphs, Mátyás has the best nose for fossils of anybody I’ve ever known. And he seems to do it so effortlessly; when we’re together in Romania, me all festooned in my pricey field gear and Mátyás strolling along in his board shorts, cigarette dangling from his lips, it’s always he who sees the good fossils. But it isn’t really that easy. Mátyás is in fact ruthless: when on the scent of fossils, he’ll wade into frigid rivers in the Romanian winter, abseil down hundred-foot cliffs, or contort himself into the tightest and deepest of caves. Once I saw him push his way through rapids on a broken foot because he saw a bone sticking out of the opposite riverbank. At that very same river, in autumn 2009, Mátyás made the most important discovery of his life. He was out prospecting with his boys when he saw some chalk-white lumps poking out from the rusty red rocks on the bank a few feet above the waterline. Bones. He took out his tools and scratched into the soft mudrock, and more kept coming: the limbs and torso of a poodle-size critter. Excitement quickly turned to fear: the local power station would soon be discharging a surge of water into the river, and the rising currents would probably wash away the bones."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.19", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "So Mátyás worked quickly, but with the precision of a surgeon, and cut the skeleton out of its 69-million-year-old tomb. He brought it back to Cluj-Napoca, made sure it was kept safe in the local museum, and then got down to trying to figure out what it was. He was pretty sure it was a dinosaur, but nothing like it had been found in Transylvania before. Some outside advice would be useful, so Mátyás e-mailed a paleontologist who had excavated and described a great variety of small Late Cretaceous dinosaurs: Mark Norell, the dinosaur curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the guy with Barnum Brown’s old job. Like me, Mark gets a lot of random e-mails from people asking him to identify their fossils, which often are nothing more than misshapen rocks or lumps of concrete. But when he opened the e-mail from Mátyás and downloaded the photos that were attached, Mark was gobsmacked. I know because I was there. I was Mark’s PhD student at the time, writing a thesis on theropod dinosaur genealogy and evolution. Mark called me into his office—a stately suite looking out over Central Park—and asked what I thought about the cryptic message he had just received from Romania. We both agreed the bones looked like a theropod’s, and when we did a bit of research, we realized that no good meat-eating dinosaur skeletons had ever been found in Transylvania. Mark replied to Mátyás and they struck up a friendship, and a few months later, the three of us found ourselves together in the February chill of Bucharest. We convened in the wood-paneled office of one of Mátyás’s colleagues, a thirty-something professor named Zoltán Csiki-Sava, who, after the fall of Communism put an end to his forced conscription in Ceaușescu’s army, went to college and became one of Europe’s top dinosaur experts. All of the bones were laid out before us on a table, and it was up to us four to identify them. Seeing the specimen with our own eyes, we had no doubt it was a theropod. Many of its light, delicate bones resembled those of Velociraptor and other lithe, fierce raptor species. It was about the same size as Velociraptor, too, or maybe a tad smaller. But something didn’t quite fit. Mátyás’s dinosaur had four big toes on each foot, the two inner ones bearing huge, sickle-shaped claws. The raptors were famous for their retractable sickle claws—which they used to slash and gut their prey—but they had only one on each foot. Besides, they had only three main toes, not four. We were stuck in a quandary, and it seemed that we might have a new dinosaur on our hands. Mátyás Vremir surveying the Red Cliffs in Transylvania, on the lookout for fossils of dwarfed dinosaurs. Photo courtesy of the author Over the course of the week, we kept studying the bones, measuring and comparing them to the skeletons of other dinosaurs. Finally it dawned on us."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.20", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "This new Romanian theropod was a raptor, but a peculiar one, with extra toes and claws compared to its mainland relatives. This was quite the revelation: while the plant-eating dinosaurs of the ancient Transylvanian island got small, the predators went weird. It wasn’t just the double set of killer claws and the extra toe. The Romanian raptor was stockier than Velociraptor, many of the bones of its arms and legs were fused together, and it had even withered its hand into a conjoined mass of stubby fingers and wristbones. It was a new breed of meat-eating dinosaur, and a few months later we gave it a fitting scientific name: Balaur bondoc; the first word is an archaic Romanian term for dragon and the second means “stocky.” Balaur bondoc was the top dog of the Late Cretaceous European islands. Less tyrant than assassin, Balaur would employ its arsenal of claws to subdue the cow-size sauropods and mini-duckbills and armored dinosaurs marooned in the middle of the rising Atlantic. As best we can tell, it was the largest carnivorous dinosaur on the islands. Who knows what fossils Mátyás will find next, but it seems fairly certain he’ll never come across a giant tyrannosaurish carnivore. After a century of searching, after the collection of thousands of fossils—of not only bones but also eggs and footprints, and not only dinosaurs but also lizards and mammals—not a single scrap of a big flesh-eater has ever turned up. Not even a tooth. That absence is probably telling us something: the island was too small to support giant bone-crunching monsters, so it was the feisty little guys like Balaur that topped the food chain—another sign of just how unusual these most stupendous of dinosaur ecosystems were during the closing years of the Cretaceous. The foot of Balaur, the tiny top predator of the latest Cretaceous Transylvanian island. Photograph by Mick Ellison. ON ONE OF my trips to Transylvania, we took the afternoon off from fossil hunting and headed into the hills. Mátyás stopped the car outside a castle, near a small village called Săcel. It must have been grand once, but now it was falling to ruin, abandoned long ago. Most of the bright green paint on the outside had faded, exposing the bricks. The windows were all busted, the wooden floors were decaying, and the plaster was sprayed with graffiti. Feral dogs wandered about like zombies. Dust clung to every surface. But somehow, as if defying the laws of gravity and the ravages of time, a gilded chandelier hung proudly from the ceiling in the foyer. We walked underneath it, nervously, as we climbed a set of creaking stairs. Upstairs, more squalor was spread before us: an echoing chasm of a room, with a gaping hole where there used to be a bay window."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.21", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_7.txt", "text": "It was here—a hundred years ago, when it was a library—where Baron Nopcsa sat and read about dinosaurs, learning the nuances of their bones, theorizing about why the fossils he was finding on the grounds outside were so strange. This castle was Nopcsa’s home, the seat of his family’s dynasty for centuries. Many generations of Nopcsas lived here, and when the baron himself was at the height of his achievement—when he was spying on the Albanians for his empire and lecturing about dinosaurs to packed audiences all over the continent—it probably seemed that many generations more would follow. So, too, it was with the dinosaurs. Toward the end of the Cretaceous—when T. rex and Triceratops were fighting in North America, carcharodontosaurs were hunting gigantic sauropods throughout the south, and a parade of dwarfs had colonized the European islands—dinosaurs seemed invincible. But like castles, like empires, and like genius noblemen with a flair for the dramatic, the great dynasties of evolution can also fall—sometimes when least expected."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs 8 Dinosaurs Take Flight Archaeopteryx Chapter Title art by Todd Marshall THERE IS A DINOSAUR OUTSIDE my window. I’m watching it as I write this. Not a photo on a billboard, or a copy of a skeleton from a museum, or one of those obnoxious animatronic things you see in amusement parks. A real, honest-to-goodness, living, breathing, moving dinosaur. A descendant of those plucky dinosauromorphs that emerged on Pangea 250 million years ago, part of the same family tree as Brontosaurus and Triceratops, and a cousin of T. rex and Velociraptor. It’s about the size of a house cat, but with long arms tucked against its chest, and a much shorter pair of twiggy legs. Most of its body is the crisp white of a bridal gown, but the edges of its arms are gray, and the tips of its hands are jet black. As it stands stiff-legged on my neighbor’s rooftop, its head arching proudly upward, it cuts a regal profile against the darkening clouds of eastern Scotland. When the sun breaks through for a moment, I catch a glint reflecting from its beady eyes, which start to dart back and forth. No doubt this is a creature of keen senses and high intelligence, and it’s onto something. Maybe it can tell that I’m watching. Then, without warning, it yawns open its mouth and emits a high-pitched screech—an alarm to its compatriots, perhaps, or a mating call. Or maybe a threat directed my way. Whatever it is, I can hear it clearly through the double glazing, thankful now that there is a pane of glass between us. The fluffy-coated critter becomes silent again and swivels its neck so that it’s now staring directly at me. It definitely knows I’m here. Expecting another shriek, I’m surprised when it closes its mouth, its jaws coming together to form a sharp, yellow beak, which hooks downward at the front. It doesn’t have any teeth, but this beak looks like a nasty weapon that could do a lot of damage. Mindful again that I’m indoors and safe from any harm, I give the glass a playful little tap. And then the creature makes its move. With a grace that I can only struggle to describe, it pushes its webbed feet off the slate tiles, extends its feathered arms outward, and leaps into the breeze. I lose sight of it as it disappears over the trees, probably on its way to the North Sea. THE DINOSAUR I’M watching is a seagull. There are thousands of them living around Edinburgh. I see them every day, sometimes diving for fish in the sea a couple of miles north of my house, but more often I watch in disgust as they pick at discarded burger wrappers and other waste on the streets of the Old Town."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "Occasionally I catch one of them dive-bombing an unsuspecting tourist, spearing a french fry or two with its beak before launching back into the sky. When I observe this type of behavior—the cunning, the agility, the nastiness—it’s easy to see the inner Velociraptor in an otherwise forgettable seagull. Seagulls, and all other birds, evolved from dinosaurs. That makes them dinosaurs. Put another way, birds can trace their heritage back to the common ancestor of dinosaurs, and therefore are every bit as dinosaurian as T. rex, Brontosaurus, or Triceratops, the same way my cousins and I are Brusattes because we trace our lineage back to the same grandfather. Birds are simply a subgroup of dinosaurs, just like the tyrannosaurs or the sauropods—one of the many branches on the dinosaur family tree. It’s a notion that’s so important, it bears repeating. Birds are dinosaurs. Yes, it can be hard to get your head around. I often get people who try to argue with me: sure, birds might have evolved from dinosaurs, they say, but they are so different from T. rex, Brontosaurus, and the other familiar dinosaurs that we shouldn’t classify them in the same group. They’re small, they have feathers, they can fly—we shouldn’t call them dinosaurs. On the face of it, that may seem like a reasonable argument. But I always have a quick retort up my sleeve. Bats look and behave a whole lot differently than mice or foxes or elephants, but nobody would argue that they’re not mammals. No, bats are just a weird type of mammal that evolved wings and developed the ability to fly. Birds are just a weird group of dinosaurs that did the same thing. And just so there is no confusion, I’m talking about birds—real, true birds. This has nothing to do with another favorite cast member of the Age of Dinosaurs, the pterosaurs. Often referred to as pterodactyls, these were reptiles that glided and soared through the air on long, skinny wings anchored by a stretched fourth finger (the ring finger). Most were about the size of average birds today, but some had wingspans wider than small airplanes. They originated around the same time as dinosaurs in the Pangean days of the Triassic, and died out with most dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous, but they were not dinosaurs, and they were not birds. Instead, they were close cousins of dinosaurs. Pterosaurs were the first group of vertebrates (animals with backbones) to evolve wings and fly. Dinosaurs—in the guise of birds—were the second. This means that dinosaurs are still among us today. We’re so used to saying that dinosaurs are extinct, but in reality, over ten thousand species of dinosaurs remain, as integral parts of modern ecosystems, sometimes as our food and our pets, and in the case of seagulls, sometimes as pests."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "Indeed, the vast majority of dinosaurs died 66 million years ago, when that latest Cretaceous world of T. rex versus Triceratops, of the giant Brazilian sauropods and Transylvanian island dwarfs, was plunged into chaos. The reign of the dinosaurs ended and a revolution followed, forcing them to cede their kingdom to other species. But a few stragglers made it through, a few dinosaurs that had what it took to endure. The descendants of these remarkable survivors live on today as birds, the enduring legacy of over 150 million years of dinosaur domination, of a dead empire. THE REALIZATION THAT birds are dinosaurs is probably the single most important fact ever discovered by dinosaur paleontologists. Although we’ve learned much about dinosaurs over the past few decades, this is not a radical new idea pushed by my generation of scientists. Quite the opposite: it’s a theory that goes back a long way, to the era of Charles Darwin. The year was 1859. After two decades of sitting around and stewing over the observations he made as a young man sailing the world on the HMS Beagle, Darwin was finally ready to go public with his startling discovery: species are not fixed entities; they evolve over time. He even had a mechanism to explain evolution, a process he called natural selection. That November, he laid it all out in the Origin of Species. This is how it works. All populations of organisms are variable in their features. For instance, if you look at a bunch of rabbits in nature, they will have slightly different fur colors, even if they all belong to the same species. Sometimes one of those variations confers a survival advantage—say, darker fur that helps a rabbit camouflage itself better—and because of that, the individuals with that feature have a better chance of living longer and reproducing more. If that variation is heritable—if it can be passed on to offspring—then over time it will cascade throughout the population so that the entire rabbit species is now dark-haired. Dark hair has been naturally selected, and the rabbits have evolved. This process can even produce new species: if a population is somehow divided and each subset goes its own way, evolving its own naturally selected features until the two subsets are so different that they’re unable to reproduce with each other, they have developed into separate species. This process has brought into being all of the world’s species over the course of billions of years. It means that all living things—modern and extinct—are related, cousins on one grand family tree. Elegant in its simplicity, so far-reaching in its implications, today we regard Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection as one of the fundamental rules underpinning the world as we know it."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "It’s what produced the dinosaurs, what molded them into such a fantastic variety of species that were able to rule the planet for so long, adapting to drifting continents, shifting sea levels, changes in temperature, and the threats from competitors hoping to snatch their crown. Evolution by natural selection is also what produced us, and don’t be mistaken, it continues to operate right now, constantly, all around us. It’s why we’re so worried about superbugs that evolve resistance to antibiotics, why we’re always in need of new medicines to stay a step ahead of the bacteria and viruses that will do us harm. Some folks still dispute the reality of evolution today—and I won’t say any more about that—but whatever disagreements we have now pale in comparison to what was happening in the 1860s. Darwin’s book—written in beautiful, accessible prose for public consumption—sparked a fury. Some of society’s most cherished notions about religion, spirituality, and humankind’s place in the universe suddenly seemed up for debate. Evidence and accusations flew back and forth, and both sides were on the lookout for a trump card. For many of Darwin’s supporters, the ultimate proof of his new theory would be “missing links,” transitional fossils that capture, like a freeze frame, the evolution of one type of animal into another. These would not only demonstrate evolution in action, but could visually convey it to the public in a way that no book or lecture ever could. Darwin didn’t have to wait long. In 1861, quarry workers in Bavaria found something peculiar. They were mining a type of fine limestone that breaks into thin sheets, which was used at the time for lithographic printing. One of the miners—now nameless to history—split open a slab and found a 150-million-year-old skeleton of a Frankenstein creature inside. It had sharp claws and a long tail like a reptile but feathers and wings like a bird. Other fossils of the same animal were soon found in other limestone quarries that sprinkled the Bavarian countryside, including a spectacular one that preserved nearly the entire skeleton. This one had a wishbone, like a bird, but its jaws were lined with sharp teeth, like a reptile. Whatever this creature was, it seemed to be half reptile, half bird. This Jurassic hybrid was named Archaeopteryx, and it became a sensation. Darwin included it in later editions of the Origin of Species as evidence that birds had a deep history which could be explained only by evolution. The strange fossil also caught the eye of one of Darwin’s best friends and most vociferous supporters. Thomas Henry Huxley is perhaps best remembered as the man who came up with the term agnosticism to describe his uncertain religious views, but in the 1860s he was popularly known as Darwin’s Bulldog. It was a nickname he gave himself, because he was unrelenting in his defense of Darwin’s theory, taking on anyone—in person or in print—who maligned it."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "Huxley agreed that Archaeopteryx was a transitional fossil, linking reptiles and birds, but he went one step further. He noticed that it bore an uncanny resemblance to another fossil discovered in the same lithographic limestone beds in Bavaria, a small flesh-eating dinosaur called Compsognathus. So he proposed his own radical new idea: birds descended from dinosaurs. Debate continued for the next century. Some scientists followed Huxley; others didn’t accept the link between dinosaurs and birds. Even as a deluge of new dinosaur fossils emerged from the American West—the Jurassic Morrison dinosaurs like Allosaurus and its many sauropod compatriots, the Cretaceous Hell Creek congregation of T. rex and Triceratops—there didn’t seem to be enough evidence to settle the question. Then, in the 1920s, a book by a Danish artist made the simplistic argument that birds couldn’t have come from dinosaurs because dinosaurs apparently didn’t have collarbones (which birds fuse into wishbones), and although it may sound a little absurd, that viewpoint held sway until the 1960s (and today we realize that dinosaurs did indeed have collarbones, so the point is moot). As Beatlemania swept the globe, protesters marched for civil rights in the American South, and war raged in Vietnam, the consensus was that dinosaurs had nothing to do with birds. They were just very distant cousins that looked kind of similar. The feather-covered skeleton of Archaeopteryx, the oldest bird in the fossil record. Photo courtesy of the author That all changed in 1969, that tumultuous year of Woodstock. Revolution was afoot, as societal norms and traditions were being challenged throughout the West. That spirit of rebellion also percolated into science, and paleontologists started to see dinosaurs differently. Not as the dim-witted, dull-colored, slow-moving wastes of space that defined a pointless era of prehistory, but as more active, dynamic, energetic animals that ruled their world through talent and ingenuity, creatures that were very similar in many ways to living animals—particularly birds. A new generation—led by an unassuming Yale professor named John Ostrom and his rambunctious student Robert Bakker—completely reimagined dinosaurs, even making the argument that dinosaurs lived together in herds, had keen senses, cared for their young, and may have been warm-blooded like us. The dromaeosaur (raptor) Velociraptor locked in combat with the primitive horned dinosaur Protoceratops, from the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Photograph by Mick Ellison, with assistance from Denis Finnin. Photo courtesy of the author The catalyst for this so-called Dinosaur Renaissance was a series of fossils unearthed a few years before, in the mid-1960s, by Ostrom and his team. They were out in far southern Montana, close to the border with Wyoming, prospecting in colorful rocks formed on a floodplain during the Early Cretaceous, some time between 125 and 100 million years ago. They found over a thousand bones of a dinosaur—a dinosaur that was astonishingly birdlike. It had long arms that looked almost like wings and the lithe build indicative of a fast-running dynamo of an animal."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "After a few years of studying the bones, Ostrom announced them in 1969 as a new species: Deinonychus, a raptor. It was a close cousin of Velociraptor, which was discovered in the 1920s in Mongolia and described by Henry Fairfield Osborn (the New York aristocrat who named T. rex), but in these pre–Jurassic Park times, it had yet to become a household name. Ostrom realized the enormous implications of his find. He used Deinonychus to resurrect Huxley’s idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs, which he argued in a series of landmark scientific papers in the 1970s, a lawyer making his case by meticulous presentation of incontrovertible evidence. Meanwhile, his flamboyant former student Bakker went a different route. The cowboy-hatted, hippie-haired child of the Sixties became an evangelist. He preached the dinosaur-bird connection—and the new image of dinosaurs as warm-blooded, big-brained evolutionary success stories—to the public with a Scientific American cover story in 1975 and a wildly successful book in the 1980s, The Dinosaur Heresies. Their contrasting styles caused considerable friction between them, but together Ostrom and Bakker revolutionized how everyone viewed dinosaurs. By the end of the 1980s, most serious students of paleontology had come around to their way of thinking. The recognition that birds came from dinosaurs raised a provocative question. Maybe, Ostrom and Bakker surmised, some of the most familiar features of modern birds first evolved in dinosaurs. Perhaps raptors like Deinonychus—so birdy in their bones and body proportions—even had that one thing that is most quintessentially “bird”: feathers. After all, because birds evolved from dinosaurs, and because the half-dinosaur half-bird Archaeopteryx was found covered in fossilized feathers, feathers must have developed somewhere along their evolutionary lineage—maybe in a dinosaur long before birds came onto the scene. Moreover, if some dinosaurs did have feathers, that would be the final jab in the gut to the few old-blood holdovers who didn’t accept the connection between dinosaurs and birds. The problem, though, is that Ostrom and Bakker couldn’t be sure if dinosaurs like Deinonychus had feathers. All they had were bones. Soft bits like skin, muscles, tendons, internal organs, and yes, feathers, rarely survive the ravages of death, decay, and burial to become fossilized. Archaeopteyx—which Ostrom and Bakker considered the oldest bird in the fossil record—was a lucky exception, having been buried quickly in a quiet lagoon and rapidly turned to stone. Maybe they would never be able to tell one way or another. So they waited, hopeful that somebody, somewhere, somehow would find feathers on a dinosaur. Then in 1996, as his career was drawing to a close, Ostrom was at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in New York, where fossil hunters from around the world congregate to present new discoveries and discuss their research. While milling about the American Museum, Ostrom was approached by Phil Currie, a Canadian who was part of that first post-1960s generation raised on the idea that birds are dinosaurs."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "The theory so fascinated Currie that he spent much of the 1980s and 1990s hunting for small birdlike raptors in western Canada, Mongolia, and China. He had, in fact, just returned from one of his trips to China. While he was there, he caught wind of an extraordinary fossil. He took a photograph of it out of his pocket and showed it to Ostrom. There it was, a small dinosaur surrounded by a halo of feathery fluff, immaculately preserved as if it had died yesterday. Ostrom began to cry. His knees got weak, and he almost fell to the floor. Somebody had found his feathered dinosaur. The fossil Currie showed Ostrom—later named Sinosauropteryx—was only the start. Scientists sprinted to the Liaoning region of northeastern China, where it was found, with the mad ambition of prospectors on a gold rush. But the true authorities were the local farmers. They knew the land intimately and understood that even a single prime specimen, when sold to a museum, could bring them more money than a lifetime of toiling in the fields. Within a few years, farmers from all over the countryside had reported several other feathered dinosaur species, which were given names like Caudipteryx, Protarchaeopteryx, Beipiaosaurus, and Microraptor. Today, some two decades later, more than twenty such species are known, and these are represented by thousands of individual fossils. These dinosaurs had the great misfortune to live in a dense forest surrounding a wonderland of ancient lakes, a landscape that was periodically obliterated by volcanoes. Some of these eruptions spewed out tsunamis of ash, which combined with water to flood the landscape in a viscous ooze that buried everything in sight. The dinosaurs were captured going about their everyday business, preserved Pompeii-style. That’s why the details of the feathers are so pristine. Ostrom was a guy who waited hours for a bus, only to have five come along at once. He now had a whole ecosystem of feathered dinosaurs, which proved him right: birds really did arise from dinosaurs, an extension of the same family as T. rex and Velociraptor. The feathered dinosaurs of Liaoning are now among the most celebrated fossils in the world, and rightly so. When it comes to new dinosaur discoveries, nothing in my lifetime approaches their significance. ONE OF THE greatest privileges I’ve had in my career is studying many of the feathered dinosaurs of Liaoning, in museums all over China. I’ve even had the chance to name and describe a new one, the raptor Zhenyuanlong that we met back in the first few pages of this book, that mule-size creature with wings. These Liaoning dinosaurs are gorgeous fossils—as suited for an art gallery as a natural history museum—but they’re so much more than that. They are the fossils that help us untangle one of the biggest riddles of biology: how evolution produces radically new groups of organisms, with restyled bodies capable of remarkable new behaviors."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "The formation of small, fast-growing, warm-blooded, flying birds from ancestors that looked like T. rex and Allosaurus is a prime example of this sort of jump—what biologists call a major evolutionary transition. You need fossils to study major transitions, because they’re not the sort of thing we can re-create in the lab or witness in nature. The Liaoning dinosaurs are an almost perfect case study. There are a lot of them, and they exhibit great diversity of body size, shape, and feather structure. They run the gamut from dog-size plant-eating ceratopsians with simple porcupine-style quills, to thirty-foot-long primitive cousins of T. rex coated in hairlike fuzz (like Yutyrannus, which we also met a few chapters ago), to raptors like Zhenyuanlong with full-on wings, and even to crow-size weirdos with wings on both the arms and the legs, something not seen in any modern birds. Each is a snapshot, and when stitched together and placed on a family tree, they provide something of a running film of an evolutionary transition in action. Most fundamentally, the Liaoning fossils confirm where birds perch on the dinosaur family tree. Birds are a type of theropod; they are rooted in that group of ferocious meat-eaters that most famously includes T. rex and Velociraptor and also many of the other predators that we’ve come across: the herd-living Coelophysis from Ghost Ranch, the Butcher Allosaurus from the Morrison Formation, the carcharodontosaurs and abelisaurids that terrorized the southern continents. This is exactly what Huxley, and later Ostrom, proposed. The Liaoning fossils sealed the deal by verifying how many features are shared uniquely by birds and other theropods: not just feathers, but also wishbones, three-fingered hands that can fold against the body, and hundreds of other aspects of the skeleton. There are no other groups of animals—living or extinct—that share these things with birds or theropods: this must mean that birds came from theropods. Any other conclusion requires a whole lot of special pleading. Among theropods, birds nest within an advanced group called the paravians. These carnivores break some of the stereotypes that many people still hold about dinosaurs, particularly theropods. They weren’t lumbering monsters like T. rex, but smaller, nimbler, smarter species, most of which were human-size or tinier. In effect, they were a subgroup of theropods that went on their own path, trading the brawn and girth of their ancestors for bigger brains, keener senses, and more compact, lightweight skeletons that permitted a more active lifestyle. Other paravians include Ostrom’s Deinonychus, Velociraptor, and my oh-so-birdlike Zhenyuanlong, along with all of the other dromaeosaurid raptor and troodontid species. These dinosaurs are the closest relatives of birds. They all had feathers, many of them had wings, and more than a few surely looked and acted like modern birds. LEFT The feathered dromaeosaur (raptor) Sinornithosaurus from Liaoning, China. Photograph by Mick Ellison. RIGHT Close-ups of the simple filament-like feathers along the head (top) and longer, quill-type feathers along the forearm (bottom) of Sinornithosaurus. Photograph by Mick Ellison."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "Somewhere within this flock of paravian species lies the line between non-bird and bird. As with the division between non-dinosaur and dinosaur, way back in the Triassic, this distinction is blurry. And it’s getting less distinct with each new fossil from Liaoning. Truthfully, it’s just a matter of semantics: today’s paleontologists define a bird as anything that falls into the group that includes Huxley’s Archaeopteryx, modern birds, and all descendants of their Jurassic common ancestor. It’s more historical convention than a reflection of any biological distinction. By this definition, Deinonychus and Zhenyuanlong fall ever so slightly on the non-bird side of the border. Let’s forget about that for a second. Definitions can distract from the story line. Today’s birds stand out among all modern animals. Feathers, wings, toothless beaks, wishbones, big heads that bob along on an S-shaped neck, hollow bones, toothpick legs . . . the list goes on. These signature features define what we call the bird body plan: the blueprint that makes a bird a bird. This body plan is behind the many superskills that birds are so renowned for: their ability to fly, their hypercharged growth rates, their warm-blooded physiology, and their high intelligence and sharp senses. We want to know where this body plan came from. The feathered dinosaurs of Liaoning give us the answer. And it’s remarkable: many of the supposedly signature features of today’s birds—the components of their blueprint—first evolved in their dinosaur ancestors. Far from being unique to birds, these features developed much earlier, in ground-living theropods, for reasons wholly unrelated to flight. Feathers are the best example—and we’ll return to them in a moment—but they are merely emblematic of a much bigger pattern. To see it, we have to start at the base of the family tree and move up. Let’s begin with a central feature of the bird blueprint. Long, straight legs and feet with three skinny main toes—hallmarks of the modern bird silhouette—first appeared more than 230 million years ago in the most primitive dinosaurs, as their bodies were reshaped into upright-walking, fast-running engines that could outpace and outhunt their rivals. In fact, these hind-limb features are some of the defining characteristics of all dinosaurs, the very things that helped them rule the world for so long. Then a little bit later, some of these upright-walking dinosaurs—the earliest members of the theropod dynasty—fused their left and right collarbones into a new structure, the wishbone. It was a seemingly minor change, which stabilized the shoulder girdle and probably allowed these stealthy, dog-size predators to better absorb the shock forces of grabbing prey. Much later, birds would co-opt the wishbone to serve as a spring that stores energy when they flap their wings. These proto-theropods, however, never could have known this would eventually happen, just as the inventor of the propeller had no idea the Wright Brothers would later put it on an airplane."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "Many tens of millions of years down the line, a subset of these upright-walking, wishbone-chested theropods called maniraptorans developed a gracefully curved neck, for reasons unknown. I speculate it may have had something to do with scouting for prey. Meanwhile, some of these species were getting smaller in size, probably because their shrinking physiques gave them entry to new ecological niches—trees, brush, perhaps even underground caves or burrows that were inaccessible to giants like Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus. Later, a subset of these small, upright, wishboned, bobbing-necked theropods started to fold their arms against the body, probably to protect the delicate quill-pen feathers that were evolving around the same time. These were the paravians—a subgroup of the maniraptorans, and the immediate ancestors of birds. These are just a few examples; there are many more. The point is, when I look at that seagull outside my window, many of the features that allow me to immediately recognize it as a bird are not actually trademarks of birds. They’re attributes of dinosaurs. This pattern isn’t confined to anatomy, either. Many of the most notable behaviors and biological characteristics of living birds also have deep dinosaurian heritage. Some of the best evidence comes not from Liaoning but from another trove of spectacular fossils, found in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. For the last quarter century, a joint team from the American Museum of Natural History and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences has been mounting annual summer expeditions to this desolate expanse of central Asia. The fossils they have collected—which date from the Late Cretaceous, between about 84 and 66 million years ago—provide unprecedented insight into the lifestyles of dinosaurs and early birds. Leading the Gobi project is one of America’s most prominent paleontologists, Mark Norell, the head of the American Museum’s dinosaur collection and my former PhD supervisor. Mark grew up in Southern California, a long-haired surfer dude who worshipped Jimmy Page but at the same time had a nerdy obsession with collecting fossils. He did his graduate work at Yale, where Ostrom was one of his mentors, and was barely into his thirties when he was hired to Barnum Brown’s old curatorial post, widely regarded as the top dinosaur research job in the world. Mark Norell using one of his signature tricks for collecting fossils in damp conditions: drenching the plaster jacket covering the fossil in gasoline and lighting it on fire. Aino Tuomola. An oviraptor buried while protecting its nest, collected by Mark Norell in Mongolia. Photo courtesy of the author The total opposite of a stuffy academic caricature, Mark travels the planet hunting for the two things he knows best: dinosaurs, obviously, but also his other infatuation: Asian art. The stories he’s accumulated along the way—in auction houses, Chinese dance clubs, Mongolian yurts, fancy European hotels, and seedy bars—often seem too outrageous to be true but make him one of the best raconteurs I’ve known."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "A few years ago, the Wall Street Journal published a hagiography of Mark, referring to him as “the coolest dude alive.” Mark does dress like a hipster version of Andy Warhol (another of his heroes), hold court in a majestic office overlooking Central Park, boast a collection of ancient Buddhist art that puts many museums to shame, and bring portable fridges into the desert so he can make sushi while doing fieldwork. Is it enough to qualify as the single coolest individual in the world? I’ll let others judge. I do know that Mark is one of the world’s best advisors. He’s whip smart and thinks big, always urging his students to ask fundamental questions about how evolution works—for instance, how did a dinosaur turn into a bird? Never a micromanager or a credit stealer, he tries to attract motivated students, supplies them with kick-ass fossils, and then steps aside. That, and he never lets his students pay for beer. I and many of Mark’s students have built our careers studying dinosaurs he wrested from the Gobi. Among them are skeletons entombed by flash storms that captured parent dinosaurs brooding their nests of eggs just like the birds we know today. They show that birds inherited their superb parenting skills from their dinosaurian antecedents, and that these behaviors go back at least to some of the small, winged, arch-necked maniraptoran species. Mark’s crews have also discovered a wealth of dinosaur skulls, including the well-preserved crania of Velociraptor and other maniraptorans. CAT scanning of these specimens—spearheaded by Mark’s former student Amy Balanoff, who we met a couple of chapters ago—has revealed that these dinosaurs had huge brains, with an expanded forebrain at the front. It is the large forebrain that makes modern birds so intelligent and acts as their in-flight computer, allowing them to control the complicated business of flying and navigating the complex 3-D world of the air. We don’t precisely know why these maniraptorans evolved such intelligence, but the Gobi fossils tell us that the ancestors of birds got smart before they took to the skies. The list continues. Numerous theropods, found in the Gobi and elsewhere, had bones hollowed out by air sacs, which, as we learned earlier, are telltale signs that they had the ultra-efficient “flow through” lung that takes in oxygen during both inhalation and exhalation, a precious feature of birds that delivers the juice needed to maintain their high-energy way of life. The microscopic structure of dinosaur bones indicates that many species—including all known theropods—had growth rates and physiologies intermediate between slow-maturing, cold-blooded reptiles and the fast-growing, warm-blooded birds of today. Thus, we now know that a flow-through lung and relatively fast growth emerged more than 100 million years before birds took wing, as those first fast-running, long-legged dinosaurs were carving out a new livelihood as energetic live wires so different from the sluggish amphibians, lizards, and crocodiles they were battling."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "We even know that both the typical sleeping posture of birds and the way in which they mine calcium from their bones for the shells of their eggs first arose in dinosaurs long before birds. What we think of as the bird body plan, therefore, wasn’t so much a fixed blueprint as a Lego set that was put together brick by brick over evolutionary time. The same was true of the classic behavioral, physiological, and biological repertoire of today’s birds. And the same was true of feathers. WHENEVER I VISIT China, I always make time to see Xu Xing. He’s a polite, mild-tempered man who grew up poor in Xinjiang, a politically disputed sweep of western China that was once crossed by the Silk Road. Unlike most children in the West, Xu had no interest in dinosaurs when he was young. He didn’t even know they existed. When he won a prestigious scholarship to go to college in Beijing, the government told him that he would study paleontology, a subject he had never heard of before. Xu complied and actually enjoyed it, and then he went on to train further under Mark Norell in New York. Today, he’s the world’s greatest dinosaur hunter. He’s named more than fifty new species, more than anybody else alive. Compared to Mark’s presidential suite in the turret of the American Museum of Natural History, Xu’s office at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing is spartan. But it contains some of the most amazing fossils you’ll ever see. In addition to the dinosaurs that Xu finds himself, he is routinely sent bones that have been collected by farmers, construction workers, and various other people from all over China. Many of those are new feather-covered dinosaurs from Liaoning. Whenever I visit and stride up to Xu’s door, I feel the adrenaline of a kid running into a toy store. The fossils I’ve seen in Xu’s office tell the story of how feathers evolved. More than any other part of a bird’s body or biology, feathers are central to figuring out where birds—and many of their unique abilities, like flight—came from. Feathers are nature’s ultimate Swiss Army knife, multipurpose tools that can be used for display, insulation, protection for eggs and babies, and of course, flight. Indeed, they have so many uses that it has been difficult to figure out which purpose they first evolved to serve and how they were modified into airfoils, but the Liaoning fossils are starting to provide an answer. Feathers didn’t suddenly spring forth when the first birds entered the scene; they evolved in their distant dinosaurian ancestors. The common ancestor of all dinosaurs may have even been a feathered species."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "We don’t know for sure, because we can’t study that ancestor directly, but it’s an inference based on an observation: so many small dinosaurs from Liaoning that are well preserved—the bounty of meat-eating theropods like Sinosauropteryx but also pint-size plant-eaters like Psittacosaurus—are found coated in some type of integument. Either these various dinosaurs evolved their feathers separately, which is unlikely, or they inherited them from a deep ancestor. These earliest feathers, however, looked very different from the quill pens of modern birds. The material that glazed the body of Sinosauropteryx and most other Liaoning dinosaurs was more like fluff, made up of thousands of hairlike filaments that paleontologists call proto-feathers. No way could these dinosaurs fly—their feathers were too simple, and they didn’t even have wings. So the first feathers must have evolved for something else, probably to keep these small, chinchilla-like dinosaurs warm or maybe as a way to camouflage their bodies. For most dinosaurs—the vast majority of those that I’ve studied in Xu’s office and in other Chinese museums—a coat of fluffy or bristly feathers was enough. However, in one subgroup—those wishboned, swan-necked maniraptorans—the hairy strands became longer and then started to branch, first into a few simple tufts and then later into a much more orderly system of barbs projecting sideways from a central shaft. Thus, the quill was born (or, in scientist-speak, the pennaceous feather). Lined up and layered across each other on the arms, these more complex feathers formed wings. Many theropods, particularly paravians, had wings of varying shapes and sizes. Some, like the dromaeosaurid Microraptor—one of the first feathered dinosaurs that Xu named and described—even had wings on both the arms and the legs, something unheard of in today’s birds. Wings, of course, are essential for flight. They are the airfoils that provide lift and thrust. For this reason, it was long assumed that wings must have evolved specifically for flight, that some maniraptorans turned their primitive dino-fuzz into sheets of pennaceous quill pens because they were fine-tuning their bodies into airplanes. It’s an intuitive explanation, but it’s probably false. In 2008, a team of Canadian researchers was prospecting the badlands of southern Alberta, an area rich in fossils of tyrannosaurs, ceratopsians, duckbills, and other last-surviving Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of North America. At the helm was another polite, even-tempered scientist: Darla Zelenitsky, one of the world’s experts on dinosaur eggs and reproduction. Her crew had found the skeleton of a horse-size ornithomimosaur—a beaked, omnivorous ostrich-mimic theropod—and its body was surrounded by wispy dark streaks, some of which seemed to continue straight onto the bone. If they were in Liaoning, Darla told her team with a snide laugh, they could call these things feathers and announce the find as a career-defining discovery. But they couldn’t be feathers. This ornithomimosaur was entombed in a sandstone dumped by a river, not rapidly buried in mint condition by Liaoning-style volcanic surges. Plus, no feathered dinosaurs had ever been reported from North America before."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "Darla Zelenitsky collecting dinosaurs in Mongolia. Photo courtesy of the author The joke ran its course a year later, when Darla and her team—which also included her husband François Therrien, an expert on dinosaur ecology—found a nearly identical fossil. Another ornithomimosaur, in sandstone, with a mange of cotton-candy fuzz around it. Something strange was going on, so the duo went into the storehouse of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, where François is a curator, to check out other ornithomimosaurs in the collection. There they found a third fluffy skeleton that had been discovered in 1995—a year before Phil Currie took that photograph of the first feathered theropod from Liaoning and showed it to John Ostrom. The paleontologists who excavated the Albertan fossil in the mid-1990s didn’t yet know that dinosaur feathers could be preserved, but Darla and François could tell that the tufts on the three ornithomimosaurs were nearly identical in size, shape, structure, and position to the feathers on many of the Liaoning theropods. This could mean only one thing: they had found the first feathered dinosaurs in North America. The ornithomimosaurs that Darla and François discovered didn’t merely have feathers. They also had wings. You can clearly see the black splotches on the arm bones where large, quill-pen-style feathers were anchored, a tidy series of dots and dashes arrayed in lines all up and down the forearm. There’s no way this dinosaur could fly, though—it was far too big and heavy, and its arms were far too short and its wings too small to provide a large enough surface area to support the animal in the air. Moreover, it didn’t have the huge chest muscles necessary to power flight (the breast muscles of today’s birds, whose massive sizes make them good eating) nor the asymmetrical feathers (with a leading vane shorter and stiffer than the trailing vane) that are necessary to withstand the severe forces of surging through an airstream. The same turns out to be true of many of the winged theropods of Liaoning, including Zhenyuanlong. They had wings, sure, but their hefty bodies, pathetically undersize wings, and puny frames made them wholly unsuitable for the air. But why else would a dinosaur develop wings? It may seem like a conundrum, but we have to remember that today’s birds use their wings for many things other than flying (which is why, for instance, flightless birds like ostriches don’t lose their arms entirely). They are also used as display structures to entice mates and frighten rivals, as stabilizers that help birds climb, as fins to help them swim, and as blankets for keeping eggs warm in the nest, along with many other functions. Wings could have evolved for any of these reasons—or maybe another function entirely—but display seems the most likely, and there is growing evidence for it."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "When I was doing my PhD with Mark Norell in New York, there was another student working on his degree a couple of hours north at Yale, in the same department that Ostrom taught in before his death in 2005. Jakob Vinther comes from Denmark, and he has the Viking physique to prove it; he’s tall, with sandy blond hair, a big bushy beard, and intense Nordic eyes. Jakob never intended to study dinosaurs—he yearns for the Cambrian Period, that time a few hundred million years before the dinosaurs when life in the oceans was undergoing its big bang. While studying these ancient animals, Jakob started to wonder about how fossil preservation works on the microscopic scale. He began to look at lots of different fossils under high-powered microscopes and realized that many of them preserved a variety of small, bubblelike structures. Comparisons to modern animal tissues showed these to be melanosomes: pigment-bearing vessels. Because melanosomes of different size and shape correspond to different colors—sausage-shaped ones make black; meatball-shaped ones, a rusty red; and so on—Jakob gathered that by looking at fossilized melanosomes, you could tell what colors prehistoric animals would have been when they were alive. We were always told this was impossible, but Jakob proved the experts wrong. In my mind, it’s one of the cleverest things a paleontologist has ever done in my lifetime. Naturally, Jakob decided to take a gander at the newly discovered feathered dinosaurs. If the feathers were preserved well enough, he hoped, they might contain melanosomes. One by one, Jakob and his colleagues in China put the Liaoning dinosaurs under the microscope, and his hunch was proven correct. They found melanosomes everywhere—of all shapes and sizes, orientations, and distributions—which reveal that the feathers of nonflying, winged dinosaurs were a rainbow of different colors. Some were even iridescent, like those of today’s shiny-sheened crows. Colorful wings like these would have been perfect display instruments—just like the fabulous tail of a peacock. Although it doesn’t definitively prove that these dinosaurs were using their wings for display, it is solid circumstantial evidence. The totality of the evidence—that wings first evolved in dinosaurs too large and ungainly to fly, that these wings were ornately colored, and that modern birds use their wings for display—has led to a radical new hypothesis. Wings originally evolved as display structures—as advertising billboards projecting from the arms, and in some cases, like Microraptor, the legs, and even the tail. Then these fashionably winged dinosaurs would have found themselves with big broad surfaces that by the unbreakable laws of physics could produce lift and drag and thrust. The earliest winged dinosaurs, like the horse-size ornithomimosaurs and even most raptors like Zhenyuanlong, probably would have considered the lift and drag produced by their billboards to be little more than an annoyance. In any case, whatever lift was generated wasn’t nearly enough to get such large animals into the air."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "But in more advanced paravians, which had the magic combination of bigger wings and smaller body size, the billboards would have been able to take on an aerodynamic function. These dinosaurs could now move around in the air, even if awkwardly at first. Flight had evolved—and it had happened totally by accident, the billboards now repurposed as airfoils. The more fossils we find—particularly in Liaoning—the more complex the story gets. The early development of flight appears to have been chaotic. There was no orderly progression, no long evolutionary march in which one subgroup of dinosaurs was refined into ever better aeronauts. Instead, evolution had produced a general type of dinosaur—small, feathered, winged, fast-growing, efficient-breathing—that had all of the attributes needed to start playing around in the air. There seems to have been a zone on the dinosaur family tree where this type of animal had free reign to experiment. Flight probably evolved many times in parallel, as different species of these dinosaurs—with their different airfoil and feather arrangements—found themselves generating lift from their wings as they leaped from the ground, scurried up trees, or jumped between branches. Some of them were gliders, able only to soar passively on air currents. Microraptor undoubtedly could glide, as its arm and leg wings were big enough to support its body in the air. This isn’t just conjecture but has been demonstrated by experiments in which scientists have built anatomically correct, life-size models and stuck them in wind tunnels. Not only do they submissively stay afloat, but they’re pretty good at coasting in the airflow. There’s also another type of dinosaur that could probably glide, but in a much different way than Microraptor. The tiny Yi qi—maybe the wackiest dinosaur ever found—had a wing, but not made of feathers. Instead, it had a membrane of skin stretching between its fingers and body, like a bat. This membrane must have been a flight structure, but it was not flexible enough to actively flap, so gliding is really the only possibility. The fact that Microraptor and Yi have such divergent wing configurations is some of the strongest evidence that different dinosaurs were evolving distinct flight styles independently of one another. Other feathered dinosaurs would have started flying in a different way—by flapping. This is called powered flight, because the animal actively generates lift and thrust by beating its wings. Mathematical models suggest that some non-bird dinosaurs were plausible flappers, including Microraptor and the troodontid Anchiornis, as both had wings big enough and a body light enough that flapping could have powered them through the air, at least theoretically. These first attempts probably would have been awkward, as these dinosaurs wouldn’t have had the muscle strength or stamina to stay in the sky very long, but they provided evolution with a starting point. Now, with these big-winged, small-bodied dinosaurs fluttering around, natural selection could get to work and modify these creatures into better fliers."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "One of these wing-beating lineages—maybe the descendants of Microraptor or Anchiornis, or one that evolved completely separately—got even smaller, developed bigger chest muscles and hyperelongated arms. They lost their tails and teeth, ditched one of their ovaries, and hollowed out their bones even more to lessen their weight. Their breathing became more efficient, their growth faster, and their metabolism more supercharged, so that they became fully warm-blooded, able to maintain a constant high internal body temperature. With each evolutionary enhancement, they became even better fliers, some able to stay airborne for hours on end, others able to sail through the oxygen-starved upper reaches of the troposphere, over the rising Himalayas. These were the dinosaurs that became the birds of today. EVOLUTION MADE BIRDS from dinosaurs. And as we’ve seen, it happened slowly, as one lineage of theropod dinosaurs acquired the characteristic features and behaviors of today’s birds piecemeal, over tens of millions of years. A T. rex didn’t just mutate into a chicken one day, but rather, the transition was so gradual that dinosaurs and birds just seem blend into each other on the family tree. Velociraptor, Deinonychus, and Zhenyuanlong are on that “non-bird” side of the genealogy, but were they around today, we would probably consider them just another type of bird, no stranger than a turkey or an ostrich. They had feathers, they had wings, they guarded their nests and cared for their babies, and hell, some of them could probably even fly a little bit. During the tens of millions of years that dinosaurs were evolving the signature features of birds one by one, there was no long game, no greater aim. There was no force guiding evolution to make these dinosaurs ever more adapted to the skies. Evolution works only in the moment, naturally selecting features and behaviors that make an animal successful in its particular time and place. Flight was something that just kind of happened when the time was right. It may have even gotten to the point where it was inevitable. If evolution manufactures a small, long-armed, big-brained hunter with feathers to keep warm and wings to woo mates, it doesn’t take very much for that animal to start flapping around in the air. In that moment, working with a fluttering dinosaur with some awkward aerial ability struggling to survive in a dinosaur-eat-dinosaur world, natural selection could kick in and start shaping its progeny into even better fliers. With each additional refinement, you would have something that could fly better, farther, faster—until a modern-style bird had emerged. The culmination of this long transition was a game-changer in the history of life. When evolution had finally succeeded in assembling a small, winged, flying dinosaur, a great new potential was unlocked. These first birds began to diversify like crazy, probably because they had evolved a new ability that allowed them to invade novel habitats and live a different lifestyle than their predecessors. We can see this (relatively) sudden change in the fossil record."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "As part of my PhD project, I joined forces with two number crunchers to assess how rates of evolution changed across the dinosaur-bird transition. Graeme Lloyd and Steve Wang are paleontologists, but I don’t know if either of them has ever collected a fossil. They are first-rate statisticians—math whizzes who take joy in sitting in front of their computers for hours, writing code and running analyses. The three of us worked together to devise a new way of calculating how fast or slow animals change features of their skeletons over time and how these rates change branch by branch on the family tree. We started with the big new genealogy of birds and their closest theropod cousins that I produced with Mark Norell. We then made a vast database of anatomical features that vary in these animals—some species, for example, have teeth, but others, a beak. By mapping the distribution of these characteristics onto the family tree, we could see where one condition changed into another, where teeth gave way to beaks, and so on. This allowed us to count up how many changes occurred on each branch of the tree. We could also figure out how much time each branch on the tree represented, by using the ages of each fossil. Change over time is rate, and thus we could measure the pace of evolution for each branch. Then, using Graeme and Steve’s statistical know-how, we could test whether certain time intervals in dinosaur-bird evolution, or certain groups on the family tree, had higher rates of change than others. The results were about as clear as anything I’ve ever seen spit out of a statistics software program: most theropods were evolving at ho-hum background rates, but then, once an airworthy bird had emerged, the rates went into overdrive. The first birds were evolving much faster than their dinosaur ancestors and cousins, and they maintained these accelerated rates for many tens of millions of years. Meanwhile, other studies have shown that there was a sudden decrease in body size and a spike in rates of limb evolution right around this same point on the genealogy, as these first birds were quickly getting smaller and growing longer arms and bigger wings so that they could fly better. Although it had taken tens of millions of years for evolution to make a flying bird out of a dinosaur, now things were happening very fast, and birds were soaring. A QUICK WALK from Xu Xing’s office in Beijing is another room, brighter and less solemn but with fewer fossils. It’s where Jingmai O’Connor works—but only part of the time. The reason there aren’t many fossils here is because Jingmai studies Liaoning birds—the bona fide fliers that flapped over the heads of the feathered dinosaurs—and most of these are crushed onto limestone slabs, so she can describe and measure them from photographs blown up on her computer screen."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.19", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "That means she can easily work from home, which is deep among the last remaining Beijing hutongs—traditional narrow-alleyed neighborhoods of single-story stone buildings pasted together. Good thing too, because she spends a lot of her nonscience time hanging about in the hutongs, raving and even occasionally DJ-ing in the trendy clubs of China’s suddenly hip capital. Jingmai calls herself a paleontologista—fitting, given her fashionista style of leopard-print Lycra, piercings, and tattoos, all of which are at home in the club but stand out (in a good way) among the plaid-and-beard crowd that dominates academia. A native of Southern California—half Irish, half Chinese by blood—Jingmai is a Roman candle of energy—delivering caustic one-liners one moment, speaking in eloquent paragraphs about politics the next, and then it’s on to music or art or her own unique personal brand of Buddhist philosophy. Oh yes, and she’s also the world’s number one expert on those first birds that broke the bounds of Earth to fly above their dinosaur ancestors. Many birds lived during the Age of Dinosaurs. The first flapping fliers must have originated sometime before 150 million years ago, because that is the age of Archaeopteryx, Huxley’s Frankenstein creature, which is still, as far as we know, the very oldest true bird, unarguably capable of powered flight, in the fossil record. Most likely, evolution had already assembled a small, winged, flapping, bona fide bird sometime in the middle part of the Jurassic Period, around 170 to 160 million years ago. That means there was a good hundred million years during which birds coexisted with their dinosaur predecessors. LEFT Yanornis, a species of true bird—which could fly by flapping its large feathered wings—from Liaoning, China. RIGHT Jingmai O’Connor, the world’s leading expert on the oldest bird fossils. Photo courtesy of the author A hundred million years is a lot of time to attain a lot of diversity, particularly as these early birds were evolving at such fast rates compared to other dinosaurs. The Liaoning birds that Jingmai studies are a snapshot of this Mesozoic aviary—the best portrait of what birds were doing during the earliest years of their evolutionary history. Every week, middlemen and museum curators from all over China send photographs to Jingmai and her colleagues in Beijing, of new bird fossils plucked from the rolling fields of northeastern China by farmers. Thousands of these fossils have been reported over the last two decades, and they are much more common than feathered dinosaurs like Microraptor and Zhenyuanlong. It’s probably because flocks of primitive birds were suffocated by noxious gases from the big volcanic eruptions, and their limp bodies then fell into the lakes and forests that were buried by the ashy sludge that also entombed the feathered dinosaurs. Week after week, Jingmai opens her e-mail, downloads the photographs, and finds herself staring at a new type of bird. These birds include countless species; Jingmai seems to be naming a new one every month or two."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.20", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_8.txt", "text": "They lived in the trees, on the ground, and even in and around the water like ducks. Some of these still had teeth and long tails, retained from their Velociraptor-like forebears, whereas others had the tiny bodies, huge breast muscles, stubby tails, and majestic wings of modern birds. Meanwhile, gliding and gawkily flapping alongside these birds were some of those other dinosaurs experimenting with flight—the four-winged Microraptor, the bat-winged species, and so on. This is more or less where things stood 66 million years ago. This whole suite of birds and other airborne dinosaurs was there, gliding and flapping overhead, when T. rex and Triceratops were duking it out in North America, carcharodontosaurs were chasing titanosaurs south of the equator, and dwarf dinosaurs were hopping across the islands of Europe. And then they witnessed what came next, the instant that snuffed out almost all of the dinosaurs, all but a few of the most advanced, best-adapted, best-flying birds, which made it through the carnage and are still with us today—among them the seagulls outside my window."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.1", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs 9 Dinosaurs Die Out Edmontosaurus Chapter Title art by Todd Marshall IT WAS THE WORST DAY in the history of our planet. A few hours of unimaginable violence that undid more than 150 million years of evolution and set life on a new course. T. rex was there to witness it. When a pack of Rexes woke up that morning 66 million years ago on what would go down as the final day of the Cretaceous Period, all seemed normal in their Hell Creek kingdom, the same as it had for generations, for millions of years. Forests of conifers and ginkgos stretched to the horizon, interspersed with the bright flowers of palms and magnolias. The distant churn of a river, rushing eastward to empty into the great seaway that lapped against western North America, was drowned out by the low bellow of a herd of Triceratops several thousand strong. As the pack of T. rex readied themselves for the hunt, sunlight began to trickle through the forest canopy. It highlighted the outlines of various small critters darting through the sky, some flapping their feathered wings and others gliding on currents of hot air rising from the humidity of the young day. Their chirps and tweets were beautiful, a dawn symphony that could be heard by all the other creatures of the forest and floodplains: armored ankylosaurs and dome-headed pachycephalosaurs hiding in the trees, legions of duckbills just beginning their breakfast of flowers and leaves, raptors chasing mouse-size mammals and lizards through the brush. Then things started to get weird, truly outside all norms of Earth history. For the last several weeks, the more perceptive of the Rexes may have noticed a glowing orb in the sky, far off in the distance—a hazy ball with a fiery rim, like a duller and smaller version of the sun. The orb seemed to be getting larger, but then it would disappear from view for large portions of the day. The Rexes wouldn’t have known what to make of it; it was far beyond their brainpower to contemplate the motions of the heavens. But this morning, as the pack broke through the trees and emerged onto the riverbank, all of them could see that something was different. The orb was back, and it was gigantic, its shine illuminating much of the sky to the southeast in a cloudy psychedelic mist. Then, a flash. No noise, only a split-second flare of yellow that lit up the whole sky, disorienting the Rexes for a moment. As they blinked their eyes back to focus, they noticed that the orb was now gone, the sky a dull blue. The alpha male turned to check on the rest of his pack . . . . And then they were blindsided. Another flash, but this one far more vengeful. The rays lit the morning air in a fireworks display and burned into their retinas."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.2", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "One of the juvenile males fell over, cracking his ribs. The rest of them stood frozen, blinking manically, trying to rid themselves of the sparks and speckles that flooded their vision. Still no sound to go with the visual fury. In fact, no noise at all. By now, the birds and flying raptors had stopped chirping, and silence hung over Hell Creek. The calm lasted for only a few seconds. Next, the ground beneath their feet started to rumble, then to shake, and then to flow. Like waves. Pulses of energy were shooting through the rocks and soil, the ground rising and falling, as if a giant snake were slithering underneath. Everything not rooted into the dirt was thrown upward; then it crashed down, and then up and down again, the Earth’s surface having turned into a trampoline. Small dinosaurs and the little mammals and lizards were catapulted upward, then splattered onto trees and rocks when they landed. The victims danced across the sky like shooting stars. Even the largest, heaviest, forty-foot-long Rexes in the pack were launched several feet off the ground. For a few minutes, they bounced around helplessly, flailing about as they rode the trampoline. Moments earlier they had been the undisputed despots of an entire continent; now they were little more than seven-ton pinballs, their limp bodies careening and colliding through the air. The forces were more than enough to crush skulls, snap necks, and break legs. When the shaking finally stopped and the ground was no longer elastic, most of the Rexes were littered along the riverbank, casualties on a battlefield. Very few of the Rexes—or the other dinosaurs of Hell Creek—were able to walk away from the bloodbath. But some did. As the lucky survivors staggered out, sidestepping the corpses of their compatriots, the sky began to change color above them. Blue turned to orange, then to pale red. The red got sharper and darker. Brighter, brighter, brighter. As if the headlights of a giant oncoming car were coming closer and closer. Soon everything was bathed in an incandescent glory. Then the rains came. But what fell from the sky was not water. It was beads of glass and chunks of rock, each one scalding hot. The pea-size morsels pelted the surviving dinosaurs, gouging deep burns into their flesh. Many of them were gunned down, and their shredded corpses joined the earthquake victims on the battlefield. Meanwhile, as the bullets of glassy rock whizzed down from above, they were transferring heat to the air. The atmosphere grew hotter, until the surface of the Earth became an oven. Forests spontaneously ignited and wildfires swept across the land. The surviving animals were now roasting, their skin and bones cooking at temperatures that instantaneously produce third-degree burns. It was no more than fifteen minutes since the T. rex pack was startled by that first jolt of light, but by now they were all dead, as were most of the dinosaurs they had lived with."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.3", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "The once-lush woodlands and river valleys were aflame. Still, animals had survived—some of the mammals and lizards were underground, some of the crocodiles and turtles were underwater, and some of the birds had been able to fly to safer refuges. Over the next hour or so, the rain of bullets ceased, and the air cooled. A breath of calm once again settled over Hell Creek. It seemed that the danger was over, and many of the survivors came out of their hiding places to survey the scene. Carnage everywhere, and although the sky was no longer radioactive red, it was getting blacker as it choked up with soot from the forest fires, which were still raging. As a couple of raptors sniffed the charred bodies of the T. rex pack, they must have thought that they had survived the apocalypse. They were wrong. Some two and a half hours after the first light flash, the clouds began to howl. The soot in the atmosphere began to swirl into tornadoes. And then—woosh—the wind charged across the plains and through the river valleys, blowing at hurricane force, hard enough to make many of the rivers and lakes burst their banks. Along with the wind was a deafening noise, louder than anything these dinosaurs had ever heard. Then another. Sound travels much slower than light, and these were the sonic booms that occurred at the same time as the two light flashes, caused by the distant horror that had started the chain reaction of brimstone hours earlier. The raptors shrieked in pain as their ears ruptured, and many of the smaller critters hurried back into the safety of their burrows. While all of this was happening in western North America, other parts of the world were going through their own upheavals. The earthquakes, glassy-rock rain, and hurricane winds were less severe in South America, where carcharodontosaurs and giant sauropods roamed. The same was true of the European islands that the weird Romanian dwarf dinosaurs called home. Still, these dinosaurs also had to deal with quaking ground, wildfires, and intense heat, and many of them died during those same chaotic two hours that wiped out most of the Hell Creek community. Other places, though, had it much worse. Much of the mid-Atlantic coast was sliced apart by tsunamis twice as tall as the Empire State Building, which flushed the carcasses of plesiosaurs and other sea-dwelling giant reptiles far inland. Volcanoes started to spew out rivers of lava in India. And a zone of Central America and southern North America—everything within a radius of about six hundred miles (one thousand kilometers) of the Yucatán Peninsula of modern-day Mexico—was annihilated. Vaporized. As the morning gave way to afternoon and then evening, the winds died down. The atmosphere continued to cool, and although there were a few aftershocks, the ground was stable and solid. The wildfires seared away in the background."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.4", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "When night finally came and this most horrible of days finally was over, many—maybe even most—of the dinosaurs were dead, all over the world. Some did stagger on, however, into the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year, and the next decades. It was not an easy time. For several years after that terrible day, the Earth turned cold and dark because soot and rock dust lingered in the atmosphere and blocked out the sun. The darkness brought cold—a nuclear winter that only the hardiest of animals could survive. The darkness also made it very difficult for plants to subsist, as they need sunlight to power photosynthesis to make their food. As plants died, food chains collapsed like a house of cards, killing off many of the animals that had been able to endure the cold. Something similar happened in the oceans, where the death of photosynthesizing plankton took out the larger plankton and fish that fed on them and in turn the giant reptiles at the top of the food pyramid. The sun did eventually break through the darkness, as the soot and other gunk was leached out of the atmosphere by rainwater. These rains, however, were highly acidic and would have scalded much of the Earth’s surface. And the rain was not able to remove some ten trillion tons of carbon dioxide that had been blown up into the sky with the soot. CO2 is a nasty greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, and soon nuclear winter gave way to global warming. All of these things conspired in a war of attrition to knock off whatever dinosaurs were not felled by the initial cocktail of earthquakes, brimstone, and fires. A few hundred years after that dreadful day—a few thousand years at the absolute most—western North America was a scarred, post-apocalyptic landscape. What was once a diverse ecosystem of sweeping forests, alive with the hoofbeats of Triceratops and ruled by T. rex, was now quiet and mostly empty. Here and there, the odd lizard scurried through the bushes, some crocodiles and turtles paddled in the rivers, and rat-size mammals periodically peeked out of their burrows. A few birds were still around, picking at seeds still buried in the soil, but all the other dinosaurs were gone. Hell Creek had turned to Hell. So had much of the rest of the world. It was the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. WHAT HAPPENED ON that day—when the Cretaceous ended with a bang and the dinosaurs’ death warrant was signed—was a catastrophe of unimaginable scale that, thankfully, humankind has never experienced. A comet or an asteroid—we aren’t sure which—collided with the Earth, hitting what is now the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. It was about six miles (ten kilometers) wide, or about the size of Mount Everest. It was probably moving at a speed of around 67,000 miles per hour (108,000 kilometers per hour), more than a hundred times faster than a jet airliner."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.5", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "When it slammed into our planet, it hit with the force of over 100 trillion tons of TNT, somewhere in the vicinity of a billion nuclear bombs’ worth of energy. It plowed some twenty-five miles (forty kilometers) through the crust and into the mantle, leaving a crater that was over 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide. The impact made an atom bomb look like a Fourth of July cherry bomb. It was a bad time to be alive. The Hell Creek dinosaurs were living about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) northwest of ground zero, as the Microraptor flies. Give or take a little artistic license, they would have experienced the string of terrors described above. Their cousins in New Mexico—southern versions of T. rex, other types of horned and duck-billed dinosaurs, and some of the few sauropods living in North America, whose bones I’ve collected during many summers of fieldwork—would have been even worse off. They were only about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) from the impact site. The closer you were, the greater the horrors: the light and sound pulses would have arrived quicker, the earthquakes would have been more severe, the rain of glass and rocks would have been heavier, and the temperature of the oven would have been greater. All creatures living within six hundred miles (a thousand kilometers) or so of the Yucatán would have been instantly turned into ghosts. Earth forty-five seconds after the impact of the Chicxulub asteroid, with a growing cloud of dust and molten rock shooting into the atmosphere and a fire-igniting heat pulse starting to spread across the oceans and land. Artwork by Donald E. Davis, NASA. Relief map of the modern-day Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, showing the outline of the Chicxulub crater (the remainder of the crater is underwater). Courtesy of NASA. The glowing orb in the sky, which piqued the interest of the T. rex herd, was the comet or asteroid itself (from here on out, I’ll just refer to it as an asteroid for simplicity). If you were around back then, you would have seen it. The experience would have probably been similar to those times Halley’s Comet has come close to Earth. Seemingly floating up in the heavens, the asteroid would have appeared harmless. You would have been oblivious, at least at first. The first flash of light occurred as the asteroid punched through the Earth’s atmosphere and violently compressed the air in front of it, so much that the air became four or five times as hot as the surface of the sun and ignited. The second flash was the impact itself, when asteroid met bedrock. The sonic booms associated with both of these flashes followed many hours later, sound moving much slower than light. With them came the winds, which probably blasted at over 600 miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per hour) close to the Yucatán and still at several hundred miles per hour by the time they reached Hell Creek."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.6", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "(For comparison, Hurricane Katrina’s maximum wind speed was measured at about 175 miles per hour.) As the asteroid and Earth smashed together, an enormous amount of energy was unleashed, which fed shock waves that caused the ground to shake like a trampoline. These earthquakes were probably around 10 on the Richter scale—far more powerful than anything human civilizations have ever coped with. Some of these earthquakes triggered the Atlantic tsunamis, which ripped up house-size boulders and flung them far inland; others kicked the Indian volcanoes into hyperdrive, and they kept erupting for thousands of years, compounding everything else the asteroid had wrought. The energy from the collision vaporized the asteroid and the bedrock that it hit. Dust, dirt, rock, and other debris from the collision shot up into the sky—most as vapor or liquid but some as small but still solid pieces of rock. Some of this material flew past the outer fringes of the atmosphere into outer space. But what goes up (as long as it doesn’t reach escape velocity) must come down, and as it did, the liquified rock cooled into glassy blobs and tear-shaped spears, which transferred heat to the atmosphere, transforming it into an oven. The spiking temperatures lit forests on fire—maybe not all over the world, but certainly in much of North America and anywhere else within a few thousand miles of the Yucatán. We see the singed remnants of leaves and wood—the kind of stuff left after a campfire has been extinguished—in rocks that were laid down right after the asteroid hit. The soot from the fires, with other dust and grime kicked up by the impact but too light to fall back down to earth, would have floated up into the atmosphere, clogging the currents that circulate air across the globe, until the entire planet was dark. The ensuing period—thought to be equivalent to a global nuclear winter—probably killed off most of the dinosaurs in areas far from the smoldering crater. I could go on and on, exhausting my thesaurus, but if I go much further, you probably won’t believe me. Which would be a shame, because all that I write really happened. And we know that because of the work of one man, a geological genius who is one of my scientific heroes: Walter Alvarez. WE’VE ALREADY ESTABLISHED that I did some silly things in high school, when my obsession with dinosaurs overtook my better judgment. My fanboy stalking of Paul Sereno wasn’t nearly the worst of it. Nothing was more brazen than when I picked up the phone one day in the spring of 1999 and cold-called Walter Alvarez at his office in Berkeley, California. I was a fifteen-year-old kid with a rock collection; he was the eminent National Academy of Sciences member who nearly twenty years earlier had proposed the idea that a giant asteroid impact killed off the dinosaurs. He answered on the second ring."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.7", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "Even more astounding, he didn’t hang up as I rambled on about the purpose of my call. I had read his book T. rex and the Crater of Doom—still, to my mind, one of the best pop-science books on paleontology ever written—and was captivated by how he put together the clues that pointed to the asteroid. His book explained how the detective game started in a rocky gorge on the outskirts of the medieval commune of Gubbio, in the Apennine Mountains of Italy. It was here where Alvarez first noticed the unusual character of the thin band of clay that marked the end of the Cretaceous. As chance had it, my family was gearing up for a trip to Italy to celebrate my parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary. It would be my first time outside of North America, and I wanted to make it memorable. For me, that wasn’t basilicas and art museums, but a pilgrimage to Gubbio, to stand on the spot where Alvarez started to figure out one of the biggest riddles in science. But I needed directions, so I decided to go straight to the source. Professor Alvarez gave me detailed instruction that even a kid without any modicum of Italian could follow. We also talked for a while about my interest in science. Looking back, I am astonished that such a scientific giant could be as kind and generous with his time as he was. But alas, it turned out to be for naught, because my family never made it to Gubbio that summer. Floods closed the main rail line from Rome, and I was devastated. My whining nearly ruined my parents’ second honeymoon. Five years later, however, I was back in Italy for a college geology field course. We were staying in a small observatory in the Apennines run by Alessandro Montanari, one of the many scientists who made a name in the 1980s studying the end-Cretaceous extinction. On our first-day tour we passed through the library, where a solitary figure was scrutinizing a geological map under a flickering light. “I want you all to meet my friend and mentor, Walter Alvarez,” Sandro said in his singsong Italian accent. “Some of you may have heard of him.” I was paralyzed. Never, before or since, have I been as gobsmacked. The rest of the tour was a blur, but afterward I sneaked back to the library and gently opened the door. Alvarez was still there, hunched over the map in a trance of concentration. I felt bad about interrupting him—maybe he was homing in on some other unsolved mystery of Earth history. I introduced myself and was gobsmacked a second time when he remembered our conversations from a few years back. “Did you make it to Gubbio back then?” he asked me. I could only mutter an embarrassed no, not really wanting to admit that I had wasted his time with that phone call—and several e-mails that followed."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.8", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "“Well then, get ready, because I’m taking your class there in a few days,” he replied. I flashed a megawatt smile. Days later we were in Gubbio, gathered in the gorge, Mediterranean sun beaming down and fast cars whizzing by, a fourteenth-century aqueduct perched precariously on the cliffs above. Walter Alvarez stepped in front of us. His khakis were stuffed with rock samples; he wore a wide-brimmed hat and reflective aquamarine shirt to ward off the sun. He pulled his hammer out of its holster, and pointed downward and to his right, to a thin gouge in the rock that cut through the rosy pink limestone forming most of the gorge. This rock was softer, finer; it was a layer of clay, about one centimeter thick, a bookmark separating the limestones of the Cretaceous below from those of the postextinction Paleogene period above. It was here—this man, standing at this spot, looking at this strip of clay—where the asteroid theory was conceived a quarter century earlier. Afterward, we stopped for truffle pasta, white wine, and biscotti at a five-hundred-year-old restaurant just down the road. Before our lunch, we dutifully signed a leather guest book, inscribed with the names of many of the geologists and paleontologists who have come through Gubbio to study the gorge and its celebrity clay. It read like a Hall of Fame roster, and I’ve never taken more pride in signing my name. For the next two hours, I sat across from Walter as, between mouthfuls of linguine, he told my starstruck classmates and me the story of how he cracked the dinosaur mystery. Walter Alvarez pointing to the boundary between the Cretaceous rocks (below) and Paleocene rocks (above) in Gubbio, Italy. The boundary is the divot located between his rock hammer and right knee. Courtesy of Nicole Lunning. In the early 1970s, not long after Walter finished his PhD, the plate-tectonics revolution had consumed the science of geology, and people now realized that continents moved around over time. One way you could track their motions was by looking at the orientation of small crystals of magnetic minerals, which point themselves toward the North Pole when lavas or sediments harden into stone. Walter reckoned that this new science of paleomagnetism could help untangle how the Mediterranean region was assembled—how small plates of crust rotated and crushed into each other to form modern-day Italy and raise the Alps. That is what first brought him to Gubbio, to measure microscopic bits of minerals within the thick limestone sequence of the gorge. But when he was there, he became intrigued by an even bigger mystery. Some of the rocks he was measuring were crammed with fossil shells of all shapes and sizes, which belonged to a great diversity of creatures called forams—tiny predators that float around in the ocean plankton. Above these rocks, however, were nearly barren limestones, sprinkled with a few tiny, simple-looking forams. Walter was observing a line between life and death."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.9", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "It’s the geological equivalent of listening to those last few moments on a cockpit voice recorder before it gives way to silence. Walter wasn’t the first person to notice it. Geologists had been working in the gorge for decades, and painstaking work by an Italian student named Isabella Premoli Silva had determined that the diverse forams were Cretaceous in age, the simple ones from the Paleogene. The knife-edge separation between them corresponded to what had long been recognized as a mass extinction—one of those unusual times in Earth history when lots of species disappear simultaneously all over the world. But this wasn’t your average mass extinction. Specks of plankton weren’t its only casualties, and it wasn’t confined to the water. It decimated the oceans and the land, and killed off many other types of plants and animals. Including the dinosaurs. No way could that be coincidence, Walter thought. What happened to the forams must have been linked to what happened to the dinosaurs and all of the other things that perished, and he wanted to figure it out. The key, he realized, was hidden in that tiny strip of clay between the fossil-rich Cretaceous limestones and the sterile Paleogene ones. But when he first saw it, it didn’t seem all that special. It wasn’t heaving with mangled fossils, streaked with flamboyant colors, or rotten in scent. It was just clay, so fine that you couldn’t even see the individual grains with the naked eye. Walter called his dad for help. His father just so happened to be a Nobel Prize–winning physicist: Luis Alvarez, who had discovered a host of subatomic particles and had been one of the key players in the Manhattan Project. (He even flew behind the Enola Gay to monitor the effects of Little Boy when it was dropped on Hiroshima.) Alvarez the younger thought that Alvarez the elder might have some unconventional ideas for chemically analyzing the clay. Maybe there was something hidden in there that could tell them how long it took the thin layer to form. If it formed gradually, the product of millions of years of slow accumulation of dust in the deep ocean, then the death of the forams, and thus of the dinosaurs, was a drawn-out affair. But if it was deposited suddenly, that meant the Cretaceous must have ended in catastrophe. Measuring the length of time it took a rock layer to form is tricky—one of the headaches faced by all geologists. But in this case, the father-and-son team came up with what they figured was a clever solution. Heavy metals—some of those elements in the nether regions of the periodic table, like iridium—are rare on Earth’s surface, which is why most people have never heard of them. But tiny amounts of them fall at a more or less constant rate from the deep reaches of outer space as cosmic dust."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.10", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "The Alvarezes reasoned that if the clay layer had only a tiny peppering of iridium, then it had formed very quickly; if it had a larger amount, then it must have formed over a much longer time period. New instruments now allowed scientists to measure even very small concentrations of iridium, including one in a lab at Berkeley run by one of Luis Alvarez’s colleagues. They weren’t prepared for what they found. They found iridium all right—lots of it. Too much of it. There was so much iridium that it would have taken many tens of millions of years—maybe even hundreds of millions of years—of steady cosmic dusting to deliver it all. Which was impossible, because the limestones above and below the clay were dated well enough that the Alvarezes knew that the clay layer could have been deposited over only a few million years at most. Something was amiss. Maybe it was a mistake, some local quirk of the Gubbio gorge. So they went to Denmark, where rocks of the same age jut into the Baltic Sea. Here, too, they found an iridium anomaly right at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. Before long, a tall young Dutchman named Jan Smit caught wind of what the Alvarezes were doing and reported that he had also been sniffing around for iridium—and had found a spike at the boundary in Spain. More reports of iridium soon followed, from rocks formed on land, in shallow water, and in the deep ocean, all at that fateful moment when dinosaurs disappeared. The iridium anomaly was real. The Alvarezes went through the possible scenarios: volcanoes, flooding, climate change, and others, but only one made sense. Iridium is super-rare on Earth but much more common in outer space. Could something from the deep expanses of the solar system have delivered an iridium bomb 66 million years ago? Perhaps it was a supernova explosion, but more likely a comet or an asteroid. After all, as the many craters pockmarking the surface of the Earth and moon attest to, these interstellar visitors do occasionally bombard us. It was a bold idea, but not a crazy one. Luis and Walter Alvarez, with their Berkeley colleagues Frank Asaro and Helen Michel, published their provocative theory in Science in 1980. It unleashed a decade of scientific frenzy. Dinosaurs and mass extinctions were constantly in the news, the impact hypothesis was debated in countless books and television documentaries, a dinosaur-killing asteroid made the cover of Time, and hundreds of scientific papers went back and forth on what really killed the dinosaurs, with scientists as diverse as paleontologists, geologists, chemists, ecologists, and astronomers weighing in on the hottest scientific issue of the day. There were feuds, egos clashed, but the crucible of fierce debate put everyone at the top of their game, as they gathered (or disputed) evidence for an impact."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.11", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "By the end of the 1980s, it was undeniable that the Alvarezes were correct: an asteroid or comet did hit the planet 66 million years ago. Not only was the same iridium layer found all over the world, but other geological oddities pointing to an impact were found alongside the iridium. There was a strange type of quartz in which the mineral planes had collapsed, leaving a telltale sign of parallel bands shooting through the crystal structure. This “shocked quartz” had previously been found in only two places: the rubble of nuclear bomb tests and the inside of meteor craters, formed from the fierce shock waves of these explosive events. There were spherules and tektites—spherical or spear-shaped bullets of glass forged from the melted products of a big collision that cooled as they fell back down through the atmosphere. Tsunami deposits were discovered around the Gulf of Mexico, dating right to the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, showing that a monumental event caused monstrous earthquakes right when the quartz was being shocked and the tektites were falling. Then, as the 1990s dawned, the crater was finally found. The smoking gun. It had taken a while to find it because it was buried under millions of years of sediment in the Yucatán. The only detailed studies of the area had been carried out by oil-company geologists who kept their maps and samples locked up for many years. But there could be no doubt: the 110-mile-wide (180 km) hole buried under Mexico, called the Chicxulub crater, was dated right to the end of the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago. It is one of the largest craters on Earth, a sign of just how big the asteroid was, how catastrophic the impact. It was probably one of the biggest, perhaps the biggest asteroid to hit Earth in the last half billion years. The dinosaurs probably didn’t stand a chance. BIG DEBATES IN science—particularly those that spill out of the specialist journals and into the public eye—always attract skeptics. So it was with the asteroid theory. These dissenters couldn’t argue that there was no asteroid—the discovery of the Chicxulub crater made such a claim foolish. Instead, they contended that the asteroid was wrongly accused, an innocent bystander that just so happened to smash into the Yucatán when dinosaurs and the many other things that died out at the end of the Cretaceous—the flying pterosaurs and sea-living reptiles, the coiled ammonites, the big and diverse foram communities in the ocean, and many others—were already on their way out. At worst, the asteroid was the coup de grace that finished a holocaust nature had already started. It might seem too coincidental to take seriously—a six-mile-wide asteroid arriving exactly when thousands of species were already on their deathbed. However, unlike the flat-earthers and global-warming deniers, these skeptics had a point. When the asteroid fell from the sky, it didn’t rudely interrupt some kind of static, idyllic, lost world of the dinosaurs."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.12", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "No, it hit a planet that was in quite a bit of chaos. The big volcanoes in India that the asteroid kicked into overdrive had actually started erupting a few million years before. Temperatures were gradually getting cooler, and sea levels were fluctuating dramatically. Maybe some of these things factored into the extinction? Perhaps they were the primary culprits; maybe these longer-term environmental changes were causing dinosaurs to slowly waste away. The only way to test these ideas against each other is to look very closely at the evidence that we have—dinosaur fossils. What we have to do is track dinosaur evolution over time, to see if there are any long-term trends and see what changes occurred at or near the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, when the asteroid hit. This is where I enter the picture. From the time I first spoke with Walter Alvarez on the phone, I was hooked on the riddle of the dinosaur extinction. My addiction spiraled as I stood next to Walter in the Gubbio gorge. Then, as a graduate student I finally had a chance to make my own contribution to the debate, using one of the specialties I had developed as a young researcher: using big databases and statistics to study evolutionary trends. My venture into the extinction debate was a joint one, with my old friend Richard Butler. A few years earlier, we were bushwhacking through Polish quarries on the hunt for footprints of the very oldest dinosaurs; now in 2012 as I was starting to wrap up my PhD, we wanted to know why the descendants of these wispy ancestors disappeared over 150 million years later, after they became so phenomenally successful. The question we asked ourselves was this: how were dinosaurs changing during the 10 to 15 million years before the asteroid hit? The way we addressed it was using morphological disparity, the same metric that I used to study the very oldest dinosaurs, which quantifies the amount of anatomical diversity over time. Increasing or stable disparity during the latest Cretaceous would indicate that dinosaurs were doing rather well when the asteroid came, whereas declining disparity would suggest they were in trouble and maybe already on their way to extinction. We crunched the numbers and found some intriguing results. Most dinosaurs had relatively steady disparity during that last gasp before the impact, including the meat-eating theropods, long-necked sauropods, and small to midsize plant-eaters like the dome-skulled pachycephalosaurs. There was no sign that anything was wrong with them. But two subgroups were in the midst of a disparity decline: the horned ceratopsians like Triceratops and the duck-billed dinosaurs. These were the two main groups of large-bodied plant-eaters, which consumed enormous amounts of vegetation with their sophisticated chewing and leaf-shearing abilities. If you were standing around during the latest Cretaceous—anytime between about 80 and 66 million years ago—it was these dinosaurs that would have been most abundant, at least in North America where the fossil record of this time is best."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.13", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "They were the cows of the Cretaceous, the keystone herbivores at the base of the food chain. Around the same time we were doing our study, other researchers were examining the dinosaur extinction from other angles. Teams led by Paul Upchurch and Paul Barrett in London undertook a census of dinosaur species diversity over the course of the Mesozoic—a simple count of how many dinosaurs were alive at every given point of their reign, corrected for biases caused by the uneven quality of the fossil record. They found that dinosaurs as a whole were still very diverse at the time the asteroid hit, as numerous species were frolicking throughout not only North America but the entire planet. Curiously enough, however, the horned and duck-billed dinosaurs underwent a decline in species numbers right at the end of the Cretaceous, coincident with their decline in disparity. What would all of this have meant in real-world terms? After all, it was a curious mix: most dinosaurs doing fine, but the big plant-guzzlers showing signs of stress. This question was addressed by a clever computer modeling study by one of the new breed of highly quantitative graduate students: Jonathan Mitchell from the University of Chicago. Jon and his team built food webs for several Cretaceous dinosaur ecosystems, based on careful review of all the fossils that had been found at particular field sites—not only the dinosaurs, but everything they lived with, from crocodiles and mammals down to insects. Then they used computers to simulate what would happen if a few species were knocked out. The result was startling: those food webs that existed when the asteroid struck, which had fewer large herbivores at their bases because of the diversity decline, collapsed easier than the more diverse food webs from only a few million years before the impact. In other words, the loss of some of the big herbivores, even without the decline of any of the other dinosaurs, made end-Cretaceous ecosystems highly vulnerable. Statistical analyses and computer simulations are all well and good, and there’s no doubt that they are the future of dinosaur research, but they can be a little abstract, and sometimes it’s useful to simplify things. In paleontology, that means going back to the fossils themselves: holding them in your hands and thinking deeply about them as living, breathing animals, considering them as the very animals that first had to cope with those Late Cretaceous volcanic eruptions and temperature and sea-level shifts, then later stare down an asteroid the size of a mountain. What we really want to study are the fossils of those last surviving dinosaurs, the ones that witnessed or came close to witnessing the asteroid do its dirty work. Unfortunately, there are only a few places in the world that preserve these types of fossils—but they are starting to tell a convincing story. The most famous place, without doubt, is Hell Creek."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.14", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "People have been collecting the bones of T. rex, Triceratops, and their contemporaries for well over a hundred years now throughout the upper Great Plains of the American West. The rocks of Hell Creek are very well dated, too. And that means you can track the diversity and abundance of dinosaurs through time, right up to the iridium layer that fingerprints the asteroid. A number of scientists have done just that—my friend David Fastovsky (author of the best dinosaur textbook on the market) and his colleague Peter Sheehan, a team led by Dean Pearson, and other crews led by Tyler Lyson, a gifted young scientist who grew up on a sprawling ranch in North Dakota in the heart of some of the best dinosaur-bone badlands. They’ve all found the same thing: dinosaurs were thriving all throughout the time the Hell Creek rocks were laid down, as the Indian volcanoes were erupting and temperatures and sea levels were changing, right up to that moment the asteroid hit. There are even Triceratops bones a few centimeters below the iridium. It seems that the asteroid caught the residents of Hell Creek blissfully unaware, right at the peak of their glory days. Things were similar in Spain, where important new discoveries are emerging from the Pyrenees, along the border with France. This area is being scoured by an energetic duo of thirty-something paleontologists—Bernat Vila and Albert Sellés, two of the most dedicated guys I know, who often find themselves working for months on end without a salary, victims of Spain’s torturously slow recovery from a series of financial crises that began in the late 2000s. Somehow that hasn’t stopped them. They keep finding dinosaur bones, teeth, footprints, and even eggs. These fossils show that a diverse community—including theropods, sauropods, and duckbills—persisted here into the very latest Cretaceous with no indication that anything was amiss. It’s interesting that, a few million years before the asteroid hit, there was a brief turnover event, when armored dinosaurs disappeared locally and more primitive plant-eaters were replaced by advanced duckbills. It’s possible that this is related to the decline of the big plant-eaters in North America, although this is hard to prove. It may be that changes in sea level were to blame; as seas rose and fell, they carved up the land that dinosaurs could live on, which led to some small changes in the composition of ecosystems. Finally, the story appears to be the same in Romania, where Mátyás Vremir and Zoltán Csiki-Sava have been collecting a great diversity of latest Cretaceous dinosaurs, and also in Brazil, where Roberto Candeiro and his students keep finding more teeth and bones of big theropods and enormous sauropods that probably made it to the end."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.15", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "The drawbacks of these places are that the rocks are still not dated very well, so we can’t be absolutely sure where the dinosaur fossils sit relative to the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, but no doubt the dinosaurs in both areas are latest Cretaceous in age, and there are no signs that they were in any type of trouble. There was so much new evidence from fossils, statistics, and computer modeling that Richard Butler and I figured the time had come to synthesize it. We came up with something of a dangerous idea: perhaps we could recruit a crack team of dinosaur experts to sit down, discuss everything we currently know about the dinosaur extinction, and try to come to a consensus on why we thought dinosaurs died out. Paleontologists had been arguing for decades on this topic, and in fact it was dinosaur workers who were some of the most ardent skeptics of the asteroid hypothesis in the 1980s. We thought our subversive little plot might end in deadlock or, worse, in a shouting match, but quite the opposite happened. Our team came to an agreement. Dinosaurs were doing well in the latest Cretaceous. Their overall diversity—both in terms of species numbers and anatomical disparity—was fairly stable. It had not been gradually declining for millions and millions of years, nor was it clearly increasing. The major groups of dinosaurs all persisted into the very latest Cretaceous—theropods big and small, sauropods, horned and duck-billed dinosaurs, dome-headed dinosaurs, armored dinosaurs, smaller plant-eaters, and omnivores. At least in North America, where the fossil record is best, we know that T. rex, Triceratops, and the other Hell Creek dinosaurs were there when the asteroid destroyed much of the Earth. All of these facts rule out the once popular hypothesis that dinosaurs wasted away gradually due to long-term changes in sea level and temperature or that the Indian volcanoes had started to pick away at the dinosaurs earlier in the Late Cretaceous, a few million years before the end. Instead, we found that there is no doubt about it: the dinosaur extinction was abrupt, in geological terms. This means that it happened over the course of a few thousand years at most. Dinosaurs were prospering, and then they simply disappear from the rocks, simultaneously all over the world, wherever latest Cretaceous rocks are known. We never find their fossils in the Paleogene rocks laid down after the asteroid impact—nothing, not a single bone or a single footprint anywhere. This means a sudden, dramatic, catastrophic event is likely to blame, and the asteroid is the obvious culprit. However, there is a nuance. The big herbivores did undergo a bit of a decline right before the end of the Cretaceous, and the European dinosaurs experienced a turnover as well. This decline apparently had consequences: it made ecosystems more susceptible to collapse, making it more likely that the extinction of just a few species would cascade through the food chain."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.16", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "All told, then, it appears the asteroid came at a horrible time for the dinosaurs. If it had hit a few million years earlier, before the dip in herbivore diversity and perhaps the European turnover, ecosystems would have been more robust and would have been in a better position to deal with the impact. If it happened a few million years later, maybe herbivore diversity would have recovered—as it had countless other times over the preceding 150-plus million years of dinosaur evolution, when small diversity declines occurred and were corrected—and ecosystems again would have been more robust. There’s probably never a good time for a six-mile-wide asteroid to shoot down from the cosmos, but for dinosaurs, 66 million years ago may have been among the worst possible times—a narrow window when they were particularly exposed. If it had happened a few million years earlier or later, maybe it wouldn’t just be seagulls congregating outside my window but tyrannosaurs and sauropods too. Or perhaps not. It’s possible the massive asteroid would have done them in regardless. Maybe there was no escape from something that big, packing that kind of punch when it barreled its way into the Yucatán. Whatever the exact sequence of events, I’m confident the asteroid was the primary reason that the non-bird dinosaurs died out. If there is one, single straightforward proposition that I would stake my career on, it would be this: no asteroid, no dinosaur extinction. THERE IS ONE final puzzle that I haven’t addressed yet. Why did all the non-bird dinosaurs die at the end of the Cretaceous? After all, the asteroid didn’t kill everything. Plenty of animals made it through: frogs, salamanders, lizards and snakes, turtles and crocodiles, mammals, and yes, some dinosaurs—in the guise of birds. Not to mention so many shelled invertebrates and fishes in the oceans, although that could be the subject of another book entirely. So what was it about T. rex, Triceratops, the sauropods, and their kin that made them a target? This is a key question. We want to answer it particularly because it’s relevant to our modern world. When there is sudden global environmental and climate change, what lives and what dies? It’s case studies in the history of life—recorded by fossils, like the end-Cretaceous extinction—that provide critical insight. The first thing we have to realize is that, although some species did survive the immediate hellfire of the impact and the longer-term climate upheaval, most did not. It’s estimated that some 70 percent of species went extinct. That includes a whole lot of amphibians and reptiles and probably the majority of mammals and birds, so it’s not simply “dinosaurs died, mammals and birds survived,” the line often parroted in textbooks and television documentaries. If not for a few good genes or a few strokes of good luck, our mammalian ancestors might have gone the way of the dinosaurs, and I wouldn’t be here typing this book."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.17", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "There are some things, however, that do seem to distinguish the victims from the survivors. The mammals that lived on were generally smaller than the ones that perished, and they had more omnivorous diets. It seems that being able to scurry around, hide in burrows, and eat a whole variety of different foods was advantageous during the madness of the postimpact world. Turtles and crocodiles fared pretty well compared to other vertebrates, and that is probably because they were able to hide out underwater during those first few hours of bedlam, shielding themselves from the deluge of rock bullets and the earthquakes. Not only that, but their aquatic ecosystems were based on detritus. The critters at the base of their food chain ate decaying plants and other organic matter, not trees, shrubs, and flowers, so their food webs would not have collapsed when photosynthesis was shut down and plants started to die. In fact, plant decay would have just given them much more food. Dinosaurs had none of these advantages. Most of them were big, and they couldn’t easily scamper into burrows to wait out the firestorm. They couldn’t hide underwater, either. They were parts of food chains with big plant-eating species at the base, so when the sun was blocked and photosynthesis shut down and plants started to die, they felt the domino effects. Plus, most dinosaurs had fairly specialized diets—they ate meat or particular types of plants, without the flexibility that came with the more adventurous palates of the surviving mammals. And they had other handicaps as well. Many of them were probably warm-blooded or at least had a high metabolism, so they required a lot of food. They couldn’t hunker down for months without a meal, like some amphibians and reptiles. They laid eggs, which took between three and six months to hatch, about double the time for birds’ eggs. Then, after the eggs hatched, it took dinosaur youngsters many years to grow into adults, a long and tortured adolescence that would have made them particularly vulnerable to environmental changes. After the asteroid hit, there was probably no one thing that sealed the dinosaurs’ fate. They just had a lot of liabilities working against them. Being small, or having an omnivorous diet, or reproducing quickly—none of these things guaranteed survival, but each one increased the odds in what was probably a maelstrom of chance as the Earth devolved into a fickle casino. If life in that moment boiled down to a game of cards, dinosaurs were left holding a dead man’s hand. Some species, however, cashed in on a royal flush. Among them were our mouse-size ancestors, which made it to the other side and soon had the opportunity to build their own dynasty. Then there were the birds. Lots of birds and their close feathery dinosaur cousins died—all of the four-winged and batlike dinosaurs, all of the primitive birds with long tails and teeth. But modern-style birds endured. We don’t know why exactly."}
{"ID": "The rise and fall of the dinosaurs [eBook - NC Digital -- Steve Brusatte -- 1, 2018 -- William Morrow -- 9780062490421 -- 819b642fffa68675f9e07cf3af773125 -- Anna’s Archive.18", "chapter": "9780062490452_Chapter_9.txt", "text": "Maybe it was because their big wings and powerful chest muscles allowed them to literally fly away from the chaos and find safe shelter. Perhaps it was because their eggs hatched quickly, and once out of the nest, the fledglings grew rapidly into adults. It could be that they were specialized for eating seeds—little nuggets of nutrition that can survive in the soil for years, decades, even centuries. Most likely, it was a combination of these assets and others that we have yet to recognize. That and a whole lot of good luck. After all, so much about evolution—about life—comes down to fate. The dinosaurs got their very chance to rise up after those terrible volcanoes 250 million years ago wiped out nearly every species on Earth, and then they had the good fortune to sail through that second extinction at the end of the Triassic, which felled their crocodile competitors. Now the tables had turned. T. rex and Triceratops were gone. The sauropods would thunder across the land no more. But let’s not forget about those birds—they are dinosaurs, they survived, they are still with us. The dinosaur empire may be over, but the dinosaurs remain."}