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Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_ata_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c01_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c01_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c01_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c01_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c02_r1.htm.txt | 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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c03_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c03_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c04_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c05_r1.htm.txt | 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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.8 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.9 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c06_r1.htm.txt | “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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c07_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c08_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c08_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c09_r1.htm.txt | “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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c10_r1.htm.txt | 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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c11_r1.htm.txt | 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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c12_r1.htm.txt | 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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c13_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c13_r1.htm.txt | “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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c14_r1.htm.txt | 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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c15_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c15_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c15_r1.htm.txt | He was looking at the graceful, curving neck of an enormous creature, rising fifty feet into the air. He was looking at a dinosaur. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c16_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c16_r1.htm.txt | “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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c17_r1.htm.txt | “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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c18_r1.htm.txt | 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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.8 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.9 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.10 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.11 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.12 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c19_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c20_r1.htm.txt | 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.” |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c21_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c21_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c21_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c21_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c22_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c23_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c23_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c23_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt | “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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5 | Cric_9780307763051_epub_c24_r1.htm.txt | 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. |
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